Political email from single use email address
April 2, 2018 9:08 AM Subscribe
I own my own domain, and use distinct email addresses for any website that requests my address. For the the case of my Marion County Indiana voter registration email address, I received a political solicitation recently. This is the first message I have received other than my first email contact with voter registration (in 2015).
Does anyone know if this sort of sharing of email addresses is allowed? Should I report this as a data breach? The blatantly political stance of the message seems inappropriate with what I would think should be a non-partisan government agency, especially since according to the unsubscribe info for the solicitation, I was 'opted in' two months ago.
In all the years that I have been using distinct email addresses, I have had very few instances of reuse. This particular one makes me very uncomfortable.
Any suggestions of what to do?
Is this something the state can just give out?
Unsubscribe and let it go?
Write to the voter registration email and ask why this address is being sold/given away?
Something else?
Does anyone know if this sort of sharing of email addresses is allowed? Should I report this as a data breach? The blatantly political stance of the message seems inappropriate with what I would think should be a non-partisan government agency, especially since according to the unsubscribe info for the solicitation, I was 'opted in' two months ago.
In all the years that I have been using distinct email addresses, I have had very few instances of reuse. This particular one makes me very uncomfortable.
Any suggestions of what to do?
Is this something the state can just give out?
Unsubscribe and let it go?
Write to the voter registration email and ask why this address is being sold/given away?
Something else?
The voter file includes your email address (and more), and can be had by political organizations and the news media for the low, low price of $5,000. More info for Indiana here.
posted by brentajones at 9:18 AM on April 2, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by brentajones at 9:18 AM on April 2, 2018 [2 favorites]
As an addendum: this is all perfectly nonpartisan! The data is available to whoever asks for it, if they're affiliated with a campaign. Generally, the idea is that it's beneficial to democracy if campaigns are able to access voter information. It lowers the bar to entry (otherwise, you'd have to pay data brokers to get any information at all). It lets elected representatives connect with their constituents and it lets their challengers also connect with their (possibly future) constituents.
That's the idea anyway.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:22 AM on April 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
That's the idea anyway.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:22 AM on April 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
The important thing to note is that, in general, voter registration information is public (with some protections for things like SSNs). It is, however, sometimes hard to access and each county stores it differently, etc. There are companies like the ones above that specialize in gathering and formatting all that info and then selling it to various political groups, and where the county/state does it they work at underfunded county/state speeds. So that's probably why it took it 2 years for you to get on someone's list. You can probably expect many more solicitations now, congratulations.
posted by brainmouse at 9:23 AM on April 2, 2018
posted by brainmouse at 9:23 AM on April 2, 2018
As others have noted, voter registration information is generally available to anyone who's willing to jump through the bureaucratic hoops established to get it. However some states do have laws about using that information for solicitation, which may be part of why you didn't get on anyone's list until two years later (i.e. the information had to pass through several hands before someone unscrupulous enough to use it got hold of it).
Another possibility is that this was matched to your name through some other aggregator. If you attended a political event, or otherwise interacted with the sender of the message, it's possible that they entered you into their database, which then automatically linked that data to your voter registration data. In theory they shouldn't be emailing you without getting your affirmative consent, but lots of groups are fairly sloppy about keeping track of where they got someone's email, and they may not even realize that you never signed up - they just assume that if they have an email address in their system you must have given it to them at some point.
posted by firechicago at 10:07 AM on April 2, 2018
Another possibility is that this was matched to your name through some other aggregator. If you attended a political event, or otherwise interacted with the sender of the message, it's possible that they entered you into their database, which then automatically linked that data to your voter registration data. In theory they shouldn't be emailing you without getting your affirmative consent, but lots of groups are fairly sloppy about keeping track of where they got someone's email, and they may not even realize that you never signed up - they just assume that if they have an email address in their system you must have given it to them at some point.
posted by firechicago at 10:07 AM on April 2, 2018
Yeah, this is a simple records request. I'm a little surprised you don't get these more often.
posted by kevinbelt at 10:25 AM on April 2, 2018
posted by kevinbelt at 10:25 AM on April 2, 2018
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:17 AM on April 2, 2018 [3 favorites]