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Comment by SaberTail | Hacker News Reader

If you're in the USA, don't donate more than $200 to any political campaign. If you donate more than $200, then those contributions have to be reported to the FEC (Federal Election Commission). Those reports are publicly available, and include your email address and phone number. Other campaigns, then, harvest that information to build their own list.

$0 might be a better number, since campaigns will also sell their donor lists to other campaigns, but having your information out there in public means anyone running for dog catcher anywhere in the country can reach out to you to beg for money.

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>in the USA, don't donate more than $200 to any political campaign. If you donate more than $200, then those contributions have to be reported to the FEC

You may get on additional spam lists if you donate but that's not what happened to my friend that's now getting multiple campaign messages every single day.

She never donated to anybody. She simply registered to vote. Even though she avoided putting her cellphone # on the registration form, the voters registrations are public information and the databrokers hired by political campaigns cross-referenced her name & address to find her cellphone #.

Replying with STOP doesn't help. The endless SMS texts have gotten so bad that she's giving up her phone number that she's had for 25 years and switching to a new # to get her privacy back.

ActBlue and WinRed are now used by Democrats and Republicans respectively for fundraising at just about every level, even pretty local races, and they're clearly selling access to their lists.

I donated a small amount to a Democratic candidate for a legislature race in my state (via ActBlue) and spent the next year unsubscribing from mailing lists that sending me hyperbolic nonsense about national races.

I donated a small amount to a Republican presidential primary candidate (via WinRed) and got signed up for campaign spam from Republicans running tight races all over the country, as well as like fifteen subscriptions to different mailing lists run by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times.

ActBlue doesn't sell data, but they do pass your email and phone number to the people you are donating to - they are the ones who are likely selling it.

I keep a Google Voice number for this purpose. It's still free, and it's the only thing I enter online. My cell goes to humans I know.

I don't really care how much spam I get to GV. I only check it weekly or so.

Yes, I learned the hard way to never donate to political campaigns, and be very, very cautious about donating to any other nonprofit, unless you are giving the money truly anonymously. Giving to these groups means that you're going to be hounded incessantly by other organizations.

The FEC reports don't include your email address or phone number - but unscrupulous actors may use the PII from the report to try to match against another data set of emails or phones.

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