Why Blocking Political Fundraising Texts Rarely Works — And What Actually Helps

Blocking a political text message often does little good because campaigns and PACs frequently send appeals from many different phone numbers, a tactic known as “snowshoeing.” Even after a recipient blocks one number, another text from a different number can arrive the next day, sometimes from the same organization.

George Weiner, founder of PACspam.org and head of the digital agency Whole Whale, described the problem in an interview with Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson on “The CyberGuy Report” podcast. Weiner, a father of three, said he worries that the flood of fundraising texts could cause him to miss something important. “That could be the school, right? That could be an emergency,” he said.

Weiner said he has tried replying STOP, reporting messages and registering for the National Do Not Call Registry, without success. “I have done it all, and I still get these messages,” he said.

How Campaigns Get Your Number

Political outreach operates under rules that leave room for unsolicited messages. Weiner explained that phone numbers can circulate through political donor and voter databases, and campaigns may combine registration information with commercially available data to identify potential supporters. Organizations can also buy or trade contact lists, meaning a number can end up with groups a person has never heard of.

Federal political contribution records can also expose personal information, including names and addresses, when disclosure requirements apply. Once a number enters the fundraising network, tracking every organization that holds it becomes difficult.

A Lucrative Business

Weiner’s analysis of Federal Election Commission records found that political campaigns spent roughly $65 million on texting services during the 2024 election cycle, and he believes 2026 spending could exceed that, though a final total for the current cycle is not yet available.

Looking at FEC records from December 2008 through May 2026, PACspam’s analysis found reported payments of $17 million to Switchboard, $14.4 million to Mothership Strategies and $10.6 million to Message Digital. These figures span multiple election cycles and may include services beyond texting.

“There is money to be made,” Weiner said, explaining that fundraising operations keep paying to send messages as long as the donations generated justify the cost.

Weiner also raised concerns that some PACs spend heavily on fundraising while directing relatively little money to the candidates they promote. He noted this pattern crosses party lines, with organizations tied to different parties using similar tactics — tactics he believes risk alienating the voters campaigns are trying to reach.

A Tool to Fight Back

Frustrated by the volume of unwanted messages, Weiner built PACspam.org, a free service that analyzes political fundraising texts and tries to identify the committee behind them using fundraising links and public campaign finance data. The site helps document complaints, tracks repeat offenders tied to FEC-registered committees, and includes an FEC Texting-Spend Explorer for investigating campaign spending on texting services. In some cases it can also identify the texting technology provider that delivered a message.

Weiner recommends contacting the texting platform directly when it can be identified, rather than only the committee requesting money. “They do answer,” he said, describing a response he received from a texting provider’s legal department explaining how to get on its do-not-contact list. That said, one provider’s removal list does not apply to competing platforms, and an organization can switch services.

Weiner said PACspam does not collect phone numbers. “We’re not collecting your number. I just want that message,” he said. No account is required to use the site, and Whole Whale says uploaded screenshots are processed and discarded, with personal messages not displayed publicly.

Why the Rules Don’t Fully Protect You

The Federal Communications Commission treats political texts differently depending on how they’re sent. Messages sent through an automatic telephone dialing system generally require prior express consent, but messages sent manually through peer-to-peer texting systems can fall outside those restrictions — which helps explain why so many unsolicited campaign texts get through.

The National Do Not Call Registry generally does not cover political outreach, so registering a number may cut down on telemarketing calls without stopping campaign texts. The FCC says campaigns should honor STOP requests, and for robotexts covered by federal consent rules, revocation requests must generally be honored within 10 business days. But opting out with one sender won’t remove a number from other organizations’ databases.

Practical Steps

• Reply STOP only to messages from senders you recognize as legitimate; avoid engaging with suspicious texts, which could confirm your number is active.
• Use your phone’s built-in filtering tools — such as moving unknown senders to a separate folder on iPhone, or the Spam & blocked folder in Google Messages — to reduce interruptions.
• Block individual numbers when a sender becomes persistent, understanding that other numbers may still get through.
• Forward unwanted political texts to 7726 (SPAM) to alert your wireless carrier.
• File complaints through the FCC Consumer Complaint Center for suspected rule violations, or report scams to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov.
• Donate to candidates only through their official websites rather than links in unsolicited texts, since donating through unfamiliar links can prompt more solicitations.

Commercial data removal services cannot erase legally required public campaign finance records and cannot guarantee removal from every political organization’s contact database, but limiting how widely a phone number appears online may reduce future exposure.