Elon Musk’s new voter registration push comes with a major catch: its website collects a staggering amount of information about users.
Votesafe.org records names, home addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, and locations, according to a Popular Information report. It also tracks every page users view and every link they click.
“The slick voter registration website, currently being promoted to millions of people, is a digital surveillance machine,” journalist Judd Legum wrote Tuesday while detailing the “hidden dangers” of the MAGA ally’s voting site.
Votesafe.org is operated by Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, according to Legum. Just days ago, the site changed its privacy policy and removed language limiting how the organization could use personal information.
The new policy allows America PAC to “share" or “sell” information to its “business partners,” including whether someone is registered and — where legally permitted — how that person submits a ballot.
But there’s more, Legum warned readers.
“In addition to selling your personal information, America PAC can also sell ‘inferences’ it makes from the information it collects including ‘psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities and aptitude,’ he wrote. “The ‘business partners’ can then disclose your information to other parties.”
The website sends personal details to advertising systems operated by Facebook and Google, the report found. It also generates a device fingerprint that can follow users even after they delete their cookies.
Musk’s new voter push comes as the former Trump administration official pledged to pour over $100 million into the November elections. Central to that effort appears to be the data collected through Votesafe.org, Legum said.
“Votesafe.org is not just a website but a platform that can be white-labeled by Musk’s ideological allies,” he concluded. “The data is then sent to America PAC’s servers.”
