Is this just how it’s gonna be till Election Day?
Is this just how it’s gonna be till Election Day?
- never signed up for anything like this,
- never donated to or signed up for emails from the DNC, et al.,
- political texts like this come all the time, and
- I hesitate to reply “stop” because I don’t want them to know this is a live number (is my instinct here outdated/inapplicable?)
Respond to nothing. Block everything.
Your number is on a list of real numbers with real identities associated with them that was sold to them. Data brokers sell this information daily. They already know your number is real, but in order to comply with the law, they have to provide you with a legitimate option to opt out, so you will actually stop receiving correspondence from them if you ask them to stop (it is legally required). If not, they could be subject to a fine, but you'd obviously have to file a complaint with the relevant regulatory body for that.
If you do not attempt to opt out, they cannot be fined for spam if this is part of a legitimate donation campaign. If you don't reply, they will continue sending messages to you in the future. It costs them almost nothing to do, so even if they didn't know your number was real, they would do it anyway. Most of the people who donate from these messages don't reply through text message anyway. And if this were an actual scam, then there is nothing they gain from receiving a text back so long as you do not open their link. But again, in order for legal action to be taken (since these political reach outs are legal and not spam so long as there is an option to opt out), you must first try to opt out.
EDIT: Feel free to block the number after opting out. If they are legitimate (though the name is really fishy), then opting out will remove your number from all of their solicitors' lists, so you won't get texts or calls from different numbers working for the same campaign. Again, replying doesn't give them anything even if it is a scam, as your number was obtained from a real list sold to them by a data broker; they already know the number is in service. Just don't click the link in the text, and don't reply with anything other than
stop."White dudes for Harris"
A few different things contribute to this and, unfortunately, there’s very little you can do to fix it. I’ve spent (wasted) a ton of time trying to prevent it on my end.
- If you used your phone number on your voter registration, reregister immediately without your phone number. This is public information and it’s where these things start.
- Find contact info for your local, county, and state parties. All sides. Call them up and ask that your information be removed from their database(s). You might have to escalate a bit because usually phone bankers don’t know how to do it or don’t understand why you want privacy. Worst case scenario you can pull out a sob story about an abusive ex and how your information isn’t supposed to be public at all. That will usually get your shit pulled.
- While you’re on those calls, try to find out where they either send or pull their data from. Next go there and do step 2 again.
- Repeat step 3 as many times as it takes.
However, individual candidates who may have received a copy of your data or canvassed you might not get the notice. Eventually their copies of your data might get leaked. You have no control over this and no recourse. I know this from personal experience. Through a unique mixup with a name, I have slowly watched my data go from politician to politician to now general spam. It’s not coming from data brokers because the only place the mixup happened was with political data.
Best of all, the FTC doesn’t give a shit. If someone “manually” sends you a political text, it doesn’t require prior consent. The “manual” setup for this is a bunch of VoIP shit that doesn’t actually go back to a real human ever and is about as “manual” as the fully automated assembly lines from How It’s Made where a human is standing nearby with a clip board saying “yup that’s a widget.”
is my instinct here outdated/inapplicable?
Yes.
It's so cheap to send SMS messages, and you don't pay for undeliverable messages, so they can just send to random numbers.
They also receive deliverability responses for each number. So they know whether a phone received the message whether or not you reply.
Finally, if you reply STOP you're unlikely to fit their demographic very well anyway. As in... they're not trying to reach the type of people who will actively try to avoid receiving these messages.
That said, there's probably no point replying STOP because most firms just wont honor it in the long term. As in they might not message you for the remainder of that particular messaging project (campaign), but they'll just start a new campaign tomorrow with a new sender and no "STOP" requests.
welcome to the election season in the United States.
Political messages also are allowed to circumvent the CAN-SPAM act and other messaging regulations. I have plans to just leave my phone in airplane mode until mid-November. Sure, people may think I died, but at least I'll have peace.
They (politicos) argue it's necessary to get the word out, one party in particular has a habit of sourcing their messaging through various vendors that may or may not follow the rules.
Legally, they must honor stop. They can be reported and fined too.
...of course in real life, it's super hard to stop all this trash messaging nobody wants. Wonder how much carbon this spamming generates.
I just got this same bullshit.
My wife gets a ton of political texts intended for me. Best I can tell is because her cell phone number is under my name with T-Mobile. (Used to be a Sprint account before the merger) I've never used her number to sign up for anything under my name. So it would seem either Sprint sold it or an employee leaked it or something.
I have a Google voice number and pretty much don't get political texts. The Google voice number rings a T-Mobile prepaid phone, that number doesn't get political texts either.
I keep getting emails from some republican Colorado group and I don’t even live in the US!
US politicians not making literally everything about race challenge [IMPOSSIBLE]
The scammers always have a field day with elections because so many people are too politically charged to do research. By LAW, every US campaign has to have the actual name of the person who's sending texts and if it doesn't, you know it's a scam. If you have T-Mobile, you can forward the text to 7726 (SPAM) and they'll shut it down. Never ever respond to these. Don't even say "STOP" because then they'll know it's a number connected to a real human and not a business... a human they can scam.
I have definitely seen an uptick in these over the last two weeks. Multiple times a day, some calls, too. I was involved in some activism 10-15 years ago so I accept it (still baloney tho). It has started on my work phone as well...
This is what dying of cringe in text message format looks like.
Look, no campaign wants to annoy voters but also they want everyone to be contacted. Just respond with "STOP" and it will stop. Unfortunately, every campaign buys your data so nearly ever campaign will send you a text.
Also, they use various services to send these texts so each the numbers sent from will change so you can't just block them.
In regards to not having signed up, depending on what state you're in, the parties can query your voter records, some states make your phone number available in those queries. There are other avenues too, like Colorado's DMV sells your personal information to third parties without your consent, for example.
I would be afraid its a trap, like clicking the link might add me to a radical MAGA hit-list or something.
I consider myself lucky because I can't recall ever getting any messages like that from either side. Closest I've come is mail for local candidates for non-presidential office.
There really is a white dudes for Harris group that's doing an event this week. A friend (who's crazy smart and i would trust him above most) share info about it. I was initially skeptical because of the name but looked into it because it came from him. I thought they had an interesting writeup about changing the white dude image.
Yes ... Get used to it
Your instinct is wrong. If you want them to stop, you have to tell them to stop.
Yes, they will add you to other phone lists, but I think they'll do that whether you text STOP or not. Also, it takes like 5 seconds.
A friend told me that if you use undesirable language (please don't stoop to racial slurs), they'll mark your number as 'hostile'. This will propagate to other lists, removing you from them before you're even added. She swears (pun intended) by it.
Edit: it's important you don't threaten them, lest you be added to a different kind of list...
Filters are your friend. If this is a text message, there are SMS apps which can filter messages by content.
I block all unknown numbers.
I practically disabled SMS on my phone. Let's see them spam me on Matrix.
Sounds legit.
/s
Got 9 in one day. If they include a name it’s never mine