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Ask HN: How to get my contact info off US political party's list
10 points by kaycebasques 5 days ago
I donated to one of the main political parties in the USA a few years back. I must have left my email and phone number, or they found it. Big mistake. Now I get hundreds of emails and texts from random political candidates, none of whom I have ever said I explicitly support, or really have any context about whatsoever. So it seems like the political party has my email and number in some central list, and they distribute it to all of their candidates to use. Is that correct? Is there anything I can do to get my contact info off this terrible, terrible list?
3 comments
Bender 5 days ago
If they do not have unsubscribe links or headers that allow your email client to unsubscribe then email rules matching their keywords that either reject their emails with "Invalid User" or put the emails in a folder and mark them as read then check the folder once in a while to ensure friends did not end up in it. Options depend on the rule limitations of your mail provider.

If they are selling your address cross-marketing into dirty lists then report every email as spam to your email provider. If that does not help register on SpamCop [1], configure the hosts you send and receive email on and then paste the email headers into their interface. SpamCop's database is used by a number of providers as one of the factors to determine spam score.

[1] - https://www.spamcop.net/anonsignup.shtml

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jaredsohn 5 days ago
For SMS, you can block text messages that match keywords via apps like VeroSMS on the iPhone. There may be similar apps on Android.

I personally don't think it is possible to get yourself off all of the lists so I do that and mark as spam in gmail.

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bubbamack 5 days ago
Nope.

I made that same mistake a long time ago. Fortunately after many years I slowly stopped getting texts and emails - probably cuz it was a just a small donation.

Unfortunately I still constantly bombarded by one of the parties - because a long time ago I was registered as one - even though I changed it to no party affiliation a years ago. Once you're on those types of list you are f'd.

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