The Big 3's Great Political Pass-Through: Why Your Phone is a Campaign Dumping Ground
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While carriers claim to fight spam, they've essentially rolled out the red carpet for billions of predatory political texts, leaving consumers to fight a losing battle against data brokers and unregulated blasts.
### OPINION: The Carrier Complicity
Let's be clear about what is happening to our smartphones during election season: the Big 3 carriers have effectively become unpaid interns for political campaigns. As first reported by The Verge, these telecom giants are presiding over a digital wasteland where predatory SMS blasts bypass every meaningful consumer protection filter.
When you look at the sheer volume of these messages, it becomes evident that the carriers aren't just failing to stop the tide—they are providing the infrastructure for the flood. Robokiller, a call-blocking firm, found that 15 billion political texts were dispatched in 2022. Even more alarming are the estimates from Alex Quilici, CEO of the spam protection service YouMail, who suggests that this year's volume could reach between 25 billion and 30 billion political texts. Quilici notes that this volume is roughly the same as, or up to 10 percent higher than, the totals seen in 2024.
### The Regulatory Void
Why is this happening? Because the rules are designed to protect the senders, not the recipients. Teresa Murray, the director of the consumer watchdog PIRG, explains to The Verge that political calls and texts are exempt from do-not-call-list rules.
Furthermore, the legal floodgates were opened wide by a Supreme Court decision in 2021, which The Verge reports made it easier to send mass texts and calls without obtaining prior consent. This has created a perfect storm: a legal environment that encourages mass-messaging and a carrier environment that does nothing to mitigate the fallout.
### The Data Broker Pipeline
One of the most insidious parts of this mechanism is how your number ends up on these lists. Campaigns are sourcing information through data brokers who scrape public voter rolls, track online behavior via advertising web trackers, and mine loyalty programs.
These brokers attempt to infer your voting behavior, but the process is riddled with errors. Sara Geoghegan, the consumer privacy program director at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, tells The Verge that errors in identifying individuals are "very prevalent." This results in the surreal experience of receiving political texts for states you have never lived in or no longer reside in.
### The 'Solution' is a Joke
When you ask the carriers or the regulators how to stop this, the advice is laughable. Murray suggests that users can send "stop," block numbers, or report messages as spam. However, Murray admits that this likely won't result in any immediate change; the hope is that if enough people report the same number, the provider *might* eventually label it as spam.
Worst of all, this openness creates a security nightmare. Murray warns The Verge that "legitimate" political texts provide a perfect cover for actual scams, advising consumers to avoid clicking any links from unknown numbers and instead go directly to a candidate's official website.
### The Bottom Line
If you believe a number is using an autodialer without your consent—which The Verge notes is something even political campaigns are not supposed to do—you can file a complaint with your state attorney general or the Federal Communications Commission.
As Sara Geoghegan tells The Verge, it is "frustrating" to have to tell individuals how many numbers they need to block. The reality is that the Big 3 carriers have decided that the convenience of political campaigns outweighs the privacy and sanity of their customers.