Millions of Americans receive relentless, high-frequency political fundraising text messages that create an intrusive presence in daily life. One recipient documented receiving 725 such messages in a single year, despite never making a political donation, because campaigns mistakenly linked their phone number to a relative who had.
The Data Brokers and AI Matching Behind the Texts
As reported by WIRED, most of these fundraising messages contain tracking links that lead to the donation processing platform ActBlue. Many links include tracking codes referencing a firm called Sterling Data Company. Sterling is an artificial intelligence data broker that compiles databases of tens of millions of political donors, combining details such as age, location, and donation history to help campaigns target potential contributors.
Federal Election Commission records show that major political committees, including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Joe Biden’s joint fundraising committee, have paid Sterling millions of dollars for donor lists. Nearly half of the text messages received by the reporter contained tracking codes pointing back to Sterling.
Why Opting Out Fails
Despite replying with various stop commands or profanity dozens of times, the messages continued unabated from multiple numbers and campaigns. According to Sterling CEO Martin Kurucz, high-frequency solicitation is a necessary strategy because only a small fraction of people donate, making large-scale messaging essential.
Kurucz acknowledged to WIRED that contact databases are imperfect, but stated that moderate-confidence matches remain accurate enough to use because non-engaged wrong numbers eventually drop out. While legal action has occasionally yielded settlements for harassed recipients, most misdirected contacts have few viable options to halt the flood of political outreach.
