As the 2024 general election approaches, voters across the country will likely see their phones blowing up with political text messages as local and national candidates compete for votes before the polls close.
Although Illinois is not a presidential swing state, the state has been among the most targeted by political text messages, alongside other highly populated states like California and Texas.
Despite the overall number of political robocalls decreasing over the past two years, political text messages are on the rise, according to Robokiller, a call-blocking service.
“It can be very frustrating for individuals to receive a deluge of text messages, emails or phone calls and have no real recourse to stem the tide,” John Verdi, senior vice president from the “Future Privacy Forum” think tank. said.
According to Robokiller, more than 15 billion political text messages were sent in 2022, or about 50 messages for every phone in the country – a figure expected to be even higher for the 2024 elections.
“It’s a political problem, it’s a thorny problem and it’s unlikely to get better between now and Election Day,” Verdi said.
According to Verdi, political messages, whether sent by email, text message or phone calls, are largely unregulated.
“We don’t want the government to put its thumb on the scale when it comes to political speech. But at the same time, these kinds of messages, when sent in a commercial context, are often subject to strong guarantees.” said Verdi.
According to the Federal Communications Commission, campaign calls and text messages are exempt from National Do Not Call Registry requirements, and campaigns can send messages without the recipient’s consent.
Many wonder how campaigns access their information in the first place.
“I think people don’t fully realize that their data is already available in some way, and that it can be bought or sold. And if you’re a political campaign, you’re trying to achieve certain “It’s often easier to buy this information from a broker who can provide it to you immediately, and you can target these people for your campaign,” said Zulfikar Razman of Aura, a demographics company. digital security.
Campaigns are not allowed to use auto-dialing technology under FCC rules, but campaigns often upload voter data to texting services such as Callhub, which advertises that its operatives can manually send up to 1 500 text messages per hour.
How to Stop Political Text Messages
The first step is to simply try to text “STOP” in all caps, which can be considered a rejection by automated systems which may then remove the number from the database.
“The other thing people can do if they receive unwanted text messages is to forward those spam text messages to the Federal Communications Commission and send them to the text short code 7726 which says SPAM for the duration on your phone “, Verdi said.
Moving forward, Razman said you can take steps to protect yourself before texting and calling begins.
“If you plan to donate to campaigns anywhere that may collect your information, it would behoove you to have a separate email address for this sort of thing, so that all your scam and spam emails are directed to one location,” Razman said.
Warning: fraudulent texts
A lot of the political texts you might receive this time of year are likely scams.
These messages often include some urgency, which may ask for monetary donations or encourage you to register to vote. Experts advise not to click on any links sent from a number you don’t know.
Voters are also advised to be alert to the phrase “would you please,” which security experts say is a rare phrase in the United States but common in former British colonies like India. Nigeria and Pakistan, which is an indicator of fraudulent messages. .
