While it might seem normal to get texts asking about voting preferences during an election, Canadians should be wary of messages from unknown senders and do a little research before responding — or don’t reply at all.
Earlier this month, I received a text from “Lily” claiming to be with ERG National Research and conducting a poll about voting preferences in the upcoming election.
The message seemed innocent enough and there wasn’t anything particularly unusual about it.
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Despite the message looking innocent, I decided to look up ERG National Research online before responding. I found a notice from the Canadian Research Insights Council (CRIC) warning that it received complaints about ERG sending these types of messages.
“ERG National Research is NOT a member of CRIC. The messages they are sending are not in compliance with CRIC Standards. They do not indicate the purpose for asking these questions and they do not provide a way to contact them with questions or concerns,” reads CRIC’s warning.
After that, I decided not to reply to the text.
However, I wasn’t the only one to receive a message from ERG, and the message wasn’t as innocuous as it seemed. Some Canadians who received ERG texts spoke to CBC News about what happened after they responded to the message. Follow-up texts from ERG asked for additional personal information, such as people’s postal codes and names. That set off alarm bells for many.
Could be legitimate, but hard to tell
CRIC CEO John Tabone told CBC News that he looked into ERG after getting regular reports from people who saw the CRIC notice.
According to Tabone, ERG was listed as a communication service provider (CSP) for ElectRight, which is in turn listed as a CSP for ERG, on the CRTC Voter Contact Registry. Tabone also found that ERG and ElectRight use the same corporate mailing address. ERG didn’t have a website, but ElectRight did.
ElectRight’s website describes itself as providing “comprehensive, professional political campaign services at every level to some of the leading politicians in Canada,” noting that it’s about “winning the right way.”
The website lists services like live campaign calling, polling solutions, data services, virtual town halls and more. It also advertises an ‘Intelligent Voice Broadcasting’ service to “reach hundreds of thousands of people with your message – INSTANTLY.”
Tabone told the CBC that the company might be legitimate, but it’s tough with such a lack of transparency.
Concerns over ERG aren’t new, either. Robertson Technology Group published a blog post in October 2024 about ERG and warned that even replying with ‘STOP’ to unsubscribe from the messages could provide valuable information. Doing so confirms that the number is active and monitored, which could lead to an increase in spam texts, calls, or phishing attempts.
What to do if you get a concerning text
So, if you get one of these messages from ERG or another organization, you probably shouldn’t reply immediately. Instead, Canadians should look up organizations online to learn more. Like with ERG, a quick search could reveal enough to confirm whether a text is trustworthy.
Regarding untrustworthy messages, Canadians should definitely not reply and instead block the number and/or report it as spam.
Unfortunately, it’s not entirely clear who’s responsible for investigating these types of messages.
The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) told CBC News that people concerned about election-related spam should contact the Commissioner of Canada Elections and Elections Canada. Anyone concerned they might be a fraud victim should contact the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
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