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Here’s why you can’t shake those unhinged political texts

2026年选举政策报告：这就是为什么你无法摆脱那些疯狂的政治短信。即使你从未进行过政治捐款，你也可能会收到政治短信。

You might be receiving political texts even if you’ve never made a political donation.

即使你从未进行过政治捐款，你也可能会收到政治短信。

“Its James Talarico. Can you please please please please pretty pretty please rush in even just $1?” “Who’s working to elect James Talarico? Marxists.” “Wow! Wow! Wow! Mark Kelly just made a HUGE announcement!” “We asked Ben Verlander, MLB analyst and former Tigers prospect, to record a quick video about the election this Tuesday, November 3rd.” “See which of your friends or family members have voted in the past and remind them to vote this year.”

“我是詹姆斯·塔拉里科（James Talarico）。能不能拜托拜托拜托拜托你，哪怕只捐1美元？”“谁在努力让詹姆斯·塔拉里科当选？是马克思主义者。”“哇！哇！哇！马克·凯利（Mark Kelly）刚刚发布了一个重大公告！”“我们邀请了MLB分析师、前老虎队新秀本·维兰德（Ben Verlander）录制了一段关于本周二（11月3日）选举的简短视频。”“看看你的哪些朋友或家人过去投过票，并提醒他们今年去投票。”

If any of these messages sound familiar, it’s likely because they’re part of the massive stream of text messages flooding your phone leading up to the US midterm elections on Tuesday. The scale of the issue is not entirely clear, but call-blocking company Robokiller found that 15 billion political texts were sent in 2022, thanks in part to a Supreme Court decision the year prior that made it easier to send some mass calls and texts without consent.

如果这些信息听起来很熟悉，那很可能是因为它们是周二美国中期选举前充斥你手机的海量短信流的一部分。这个问题的规模尚不完全清楚，但呼叫拦截公司Robokiller发现，2022年发送了150亿条政治短信，这在一定程度上要归功于前一年最高法院的一项裁决，该裁决使得在未经同意的情况下发送某些群发电话和短信变得更加容易。

Alex Quilici, CEO of spam protection service YouMail, has an even higher estimate of 25 billion to 30 billion political texts this year, but caveats it’s an informal approximation. The volume is about the same to 10 percent higher than in 2024, he says.

垃圾邮件防护服务YouMail的首席执行官亚历克斯·奎利奇（Alex Quilici）对今年的政治短信数量给出了更高的估计，即250亿至300亿条，但他提醒说这只是一个非正式的估算。他说，这个数量与2024年相比持平或高出10%。

There’s some good news and some bad news about these messages, says PIRG consumer watchdog director Teresa Murray. “The bad news is that political calls and political texts are exempt from the do-not-call-list rules,” Murray says. “The good news is that the election is next Tuesday, and hopefully within a few days after that, we’ll know what the results are and there won’t be any need to have any texts, or calls, or emails anymore after that.”

PIRG消费者监督机构主任特蕾莎·默里（Teresa Murray）表示，关于这些信息，有好消息也有坏消息。“坏消息是，政治电话和政治短信不受‘谢绝来电名单’规则的限制，”默里说。“好消息是选举就在下周二，希望在那之后的几天内，我们就能知道结果，此后就不再需要任何短信、电话或电子邮件了。”

There are still some things consumers can try to stem the flow of these messages blowing up their phones — but it likely won’t significantly reduce it before Tuesday.

消费者仍然可以尝试采取一些措施来阻止这些轰炸手机的信息流，但在周二之前，这可能不会有明显的减少。

“In between all of the ‘legitimate’ political texts … there are going to be some scams in there”

“在所有这些‘合法的’政治短信之间……也会夹杂着一些诈骗信息。”

The simplest thing you can do is send “stop” or block and report the messages as spam, which will notify your service provider of a likely spam number. That probably won’t result in any immediate change, Murray says, but if enough people report the same number in a certain period of time, the provider might begin to block it or label it as spam.

你能做的最简单的事情就是发送“停止”（stop），或者屏蔽并将这些信息举报为垃圾短信，这将通知你的服务提供商这是一个可能的垃圾短信号码。默里说，这可能不会带来任何立竿见影的变化，但如果足够多的人在一段时间内举报同一个号码，提供商可能会开始屏蔽它或将其标记为垃圾短信。

You can also file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission or your state attorney general if you believe a number is using an autodialer without your consent — something that even the people behind political texts are not supposed to do. Whatever you do, Murray says, do not click any links you receive from numbers you don’t know.

如果你认为某个号码在未经你同意的情况下使用了自动拨号器——即使是政治短信背后的操作者也不应该这样做——你也可以向联邦通信委员会或你所在州的司法部长投诉。默里说，无论你做什么，都不要点击你从陌生号码收到的任何链接。

“In between all of the ‘legitimate’ political texts that are going out to support this candidate, or vote against that candidate, or vote for this issue, or whatever, there are going to be some scams in there,” Murray says. “If you want to donate money at this point, I would recommend going directly to the website for that political candidate, or for that PAC, and donating it that way.”

“在所有为了支持某位候选人、反对某位候选人、支持某项议题等等而发出的‘合法’政治短信中，确实会夹杂着一些诈骗信息，”默里说。“如果你现在想捐款，我建议直接访问该政治候选人或政治行动委员会（PAC）的网站，通过那种方式进行捐赠。”

How did all of these campaigns get your number in the first place? If you’ve donated to a political candidate or issue group, that might seem obvious. But campaigns are also likely getting your information — including details about whether you might be likely to contribute to or vote for their candidate or issue — through data brokers that have nothing to do with politics.

这些竞选团队最初是如何得到你的号码的？如果你曾向某位政治候选人或议题团体捐过款，这似乎显而易见。但竞选团队也很可能通过与政治无关的数据经纪人获取你的信息，包括你是否可能为他们的候选人或议题捐款或投票的详细信息。

Data brokers collect and sell information from both public and private sources, such as public voter rolls, your online behavior observed by advertising web trackers, and loyalty programs. By collating all of this information, campaigns can try to infer your behavior, though they also might end up with outdated info, like old addresses that lead you to getting texts about a state you no longer live in (or even erroneous info that invites them for states you never lived in).

数据经纪人从公共和私人来源收集并出售信息，例如公共选民名册、广告网络追踪器观察到的你的在线行为以及忠诚度计划。通过整理所有这些信息，竞选团队可以尝试推断你的行为，尽管他们最终也可能得到过时的信息，比如旧地址会导致你收到关于你不再居住的州的短信（甚至是因为错误信息而收到你从未居住过的州的短信）。

“As a consumer protection advocate, it’s so frustrating to have to say, ‘What can each individual person do?’”

“作为一名消费者权益倡导者，不得不说‘每个人能做什么呢？’这真是太令人沮丧了。”

“Errors in the processing of this information and the identification of individuals are very prevalent,” says Sara Geoghegan, consumer privacy program director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Sometimes multiple people use the same device. Sometimes people have similar names. Sometimes people move. And this is such an unregulated ecosystem that there aren’t really rules in place to make sure that this is being effective and accurate, let alone free from bias, discrimination, and verified for privacy impact before processing this information.”

电子隐私信息中心（EPIC）消费者隐私项目主任萨拉·格奥根（Sara Geoghegan）表示：“在处理这些信息和识别个人身份时，错误非常普遍。有时多个人使用同一台设备。有时人们名字相似。有时人们会搬家。这是一个非常缺乏监管的生态系统，实际上没有规则来确保其有效和准确，更不用说在处理这些信息之前确保其没有偏见、歧视，并经过隐私影响验证。”

“As a consumer protection advocate, it’s so frustrating to have to say, ‘What can each individual person do, and how many numbers do they need to block, and what are the toggle and privacy settings that they should toggle on?’” Geoghegan says. Meanwhile, “the companies that are trading in our most sensitive information are the ones who should stop harmful surveillance and the use of harmful technologies to have us better engage civically with our society, and not the other way around,” she says.

“作为一名消费者权益倡导者，不得不说‘每个人能做什么，他们需要屏蔽多少个号码，他们应该开启哪些切换开关和隐私设置？’这真是太令人沮丧了，”格奥根说。与此同时，她说：“那些交易我们最敏感信息的公司，才应该是停止有害监控和使用有害技术的一方，从而让我们更好地参与社会公民活动，而不是反其道而行之。”

“I’ve spoken to people, someone last week who said, ‘Why would I even donate again when I get put on all these lists?’”

“我曾与人交谈过，上周有人说：‘当我被列入所有这些名单时，我为什么还要再次捐款呢？’”

Geoghegan worries that the harm of being bombarded with unwanted political texts isn’t just that people get annoyed, but that they stop engaging civically as a result. “Having this surveillance apparatus that invades people’s privacy and really annoys them actually pushes people away from this,” she says. “I’ve spoken to people, s

格奥根担心，被不想要的政治短信轰炸的危害不仅仅是让人感到烦恼，而是导致人们停止参与公民活动。她说：“拥有这种侵犯人们隐私并真正惹恼他们的监控机制，实际上是在把人们推开。”“我曾与人交谈过，某……”