Greetings, beloved Kossacks. We all hate the deluge of political fundraising spam … it’s incessant, annoying, and disrespectful. (And I believe it’s hugely damaging for the overall Democratic brand as well … but that’s a whole separate discussion).
I’ve posted on this topic before … (here and here for example) … and a few years ago set up http://www.EthicalEmail.org to help explain some of the ways you can protect your inboxes.
Well, now there’s a small but important change potentially underfoot from ActBlue that would make a BIG difference … they’re apparently considering a checkbox on all donation forms that would let you opt out of sharing your email and phone number with the recipient candidate or committee.
This won’t do much for the emails and phone numbers already out there in the list-selling spam ecosystem, that horse has already left the barn, BUT it would be an important step for donor privacy overall moving forward.
So, I set up a petition to help encourage them to do the right thing … that’s here: Ask ActBlue to protect our privacy as donors.
(And rest assured, your info isn’t going to be shared with anyone at all from that petition, save a delivery of name, city and state to ActBlue once we get to 1,000 or more signers.)
Overall, this won’t be an easy problem to solve, but as the old saying goes … How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Your name on that petition is a small bite in the right direction.
(To be clear, elephants should be protected, not eaten … they’re really magnificent creatures. But you get my point.)
