Elon Musk’s ‘VoteSafe’ site is harvesting and selling voter data
Check before registering. They want your data, not the vote.
Photo by Frederic Legrand via Shutterstock
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- VoteSafe.org presents itself as a voter registration tool, but MeidasTouch found it does not register users to vote.
- Elon Musk funded the site, and America PAC operates it to support Donald Trump’s campaign.
- Its privacy policy allows America PAC to collect names, birth dates, contact details, IP addresses, and location data.
- The policy also allows sharing or selling user information to business partners for targeted marketing.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
Elon Musk’s bogus voter registration website is collecting extensive user data and selling it.
The website was funded by Musk and is operated by America PAC, a conservative political action committee founded in 2024 to support Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
The VoteSafe.org website has been promoted as a way for Americans to register to vote and check their registration ahead of the November midterm elections.
But MeidasTouch, American progressive media platform, found that despite presenting itself as a voter-registration resource, the site doesn’t actually register users to vote.
The site's privacy policy says America PAC can collect information, including:
- Users' names
- Dates of birth
- Addresses
- Email addresses
- Phone numbers
- IP addresses
- Location
- Information about how they interact with the site
It also permits the collection of "inferences" about users, including their preferences, characteristics, behavior, attitudes, and psychological tendencies.
The policy says the information may be shared with or sold to business partners for targeted marketing.
The website plays with similarly sounding URLs, as the Vote.org website provides legitimate voter information and seeks to increase voter participation.
Vote.org describes itself as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization and offers tools for registering to vote, checking registration status, requesting mail ballots, and finding polling information.
Reportedly, America PAC has spent more than $180,000 within a week promoting VoteSafe on Meta.
During the 2024 presidential election, America PAC spent roughly $800,000 on similar digital advertising, according to reporting cited by the Black Information Network.
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People are not happy
After the claims surfaced in the media, Americans expressed outrage. On Reddit, users raised a major concern that the collected data creates reusable political profiles that can be exploited to target individuals with political content.
Such data could also be exploited for political influence. More troublingly, it creates a permanent digital footprint, unlike passwords, which can be rotated.
Have thoughts about this topic? Others do, too. Join them in the discussion.
“Anything comes from that moron and has 'safe' in it, is the opposite," said one Redditor.
“Man, I hope he gets his citizenship revoked and is deported at some point,” said another.