Are you getting inundated with political texts and wondering how they got your number?
Our news partners at WSOC-TV in Charlotte looked into who is behind these texts and how the process starts long before you know it.
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Anytime you’re online — no matter how careful you are — chances are, someone is collecting data on you, data mining your interests and habits. And, of course, your voter information is already public record.
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“All of that information is sold and purchased on a daily basis across the country,” political consultant Larry Shaheen Jr. told WSOC.
Shaheen says some of the buyers are businesses that do political texting. “There’s a ton of companies that do this,” he said.
Political campaigns then hire those companies to text you, companies like RoboCent.
“A regular standard SMS, which is just 160 character segments, is going to be 3 cents and then adding a picture to that increases the character limit to 1,500 and allows you to attach a graphic… flyer, picture of the candidate and their family, or a sample ballot. And that’s going to be 7 cents for registered messaging,” RoboCent’s Travis Trawick said.
If it’s a legitimate campaign, not a scammer, the number that shows up on your phone should be from the campaign, not spoofed.
Now, that doesn’t mean someone is manning that line. So, if you call back you might not get a real person.
Companies like RoboCent allow you to opt out of its texts.
“We have a Do Not Contact list on our website that anybody can apply their number to and that removes them from our entire network, not just the individual campaigns that may be texting them,” Trawick said.
Second, Trawick says his company vets clients thoroughly to make sure they’re legitimate and that legit ones play by the federal rules, including, he paraphrased, “Any political text that you get, you reply STOP, S-T-O-P, that’s it, you will not get a text from that organization again.”
He can’t speak for every business and, unfortunately, you never know if the one texting you follows the law or breaks it.
Bottom line: it’s hard to completely stop the texts. If it’s a legitimate campaign, text STOP and they should listen. But if it’s a scammer there’s not much you can do. If you feel a text breaks the law, you can file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission here.
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