Oh, Elon!

He’s up to his old tricks again.

Elon Musk Is Back in the GOP Fold…

Oh, and not only is Musk holding back, money-wise, he’s actively taking steps to make himself more obnoxious and toxic. How? Why, with a little site called votesafe.org. Given that friend-of-Musk Donald Trump is trying hard to kick people off of voter rolls, Americans have good reason to be nervous that they might have an issue with their registration. The correct site to check, and make sure, is vote.gov.

Certainly, votesafe.org (and we are very deliberately not linking to it; the above link goes to a story about the site), sounds legitimate. And it’s being aggressively promoted on social media right now, with ads like these:

The first clue that something is fishy here comes when you try to use votesafe.org. While vote.gov does not ask for personal information, votesafe.org demands the following:

• First, middle, and last name
• Date of birth
• Full home address
• E-mail address
• Cell phone number

Further, while it’s invisible to the user, the site installs cookies that collect:

• IP address and location (This information is used to derive each user’s city, zip code, approximate longitude and latitude, time zone, and Internet provider.)
• Browser, operating system, screen size and language of your device
• What website referred you to votesafe.org
• Every link you click
• Every page you look at
• Your voter registration status
• Your district

Once votesafe has this information, it uses it to hit you with targeted political advertising on Instagram, Facebook, eX-Twitter, YouTube and other sites. It also forwards the information to marketing firms that use your information to try to sell you products.

As readers have probably guessed by now, votesafe.org is owned and operated by Musk’s America PAC. It is also possible, though not yet proven, that some of the information it’s compiling was made possible by the data thefts perpetrated by DOGE. For example, most states won’t give out people’s voter registration status to private vendors. But some version of that information is in the various databases that DOGE pirated.

This is all kinds of sleazy, of course. And it’s also much more likely to be effective than spending a paltry amount of money on Susan Collins’ campaign. But Americans hate, hate, hate to have their privacy abused and exploited like that. And if this project, which is hardly secret, gets wide attention, then Musk will become the most radioactive thing this side of Chernobyl. Frankly, it seems like something that should be getting more attention from the political media. (Z)

Oh, Elon! 

Note: If you warn other folks about votesafe, and I hope you do, I recommend not giving out the votesafe web site in an email or text message, because that will automatically be converted into a clickable link. Instead you can refer to it as votesafe dot org or something similar. If you give out the actual link, there is the risk that someone will click on it by accident or curiosity. Yeah, I know. Nobody clicks on links—except when you don’t want them to.