Election Day Spam: Blocked Texts Jump 955% as Campaigns Flood Israeli Phones

Israelis woke up to a wave of campaign texts on election day. Fisherman Security says blocked spam rose 955% compared with an ordinary Tuesday morning, with the Democrats sending the largest share of the political messages it caught.

The figures, published on Tuesday, October 27, come from Fisherman Security's spam filtering app, which Calcalist reported is installed on thousands of phones in Israel. They show what the app saw and blocked, not every text sent in the country.

A morning of campaign messages

According to the company, blocked spam rose 955% compared with the same hours on an average Tuesday, and 534% compared with the previous Tuesday. By 10 a.m., political campaigning made up 65.1% of the messages in its monitored traffic, and 78% of messages were being blocked.

Which parties sent the most

Among the political messages Fisherman identified, the Democrats accounted for 23.1%, followed by Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar at 12.2% and Otzma Yehudit at 11.8%. Likud made up just 0.3%, according to figures published by Israel Hayom.

The numbers reflect which campaigns relied most heavily on mass texting, not how Israelis intend to vote. Parties use different channels, and Likud has long invested in its own field operation, apps and social media.

1,788 sender names

Fisherman also said the Otzma Yehudit campaign used 1,788 different sender names, including numbered variations, to get around blocking. Rotating sender names is a common way to slip past filters that block a known sender after users report it.

A record week for text messages

The surge did not start on election day. Calcalist reported that Cellcom carried 213 million text messages on its network on the day before the vote, compared with 120 million on the eve of the 2022 election. That figure covers all traffic on the network, not only political messages.

Israel's anti spam law is aimed at commercial advertising, election messages have long sat in a gray area, and every campaign brings complaints from voters who never signed up to receive them. With polls open until 10 p.m., the messages were expected to keep coming until the last minute.