The “activist“ tools include, among other things, a text-spamming and calling feature, both of which employ the users’ actual phone number. In contrast, Democratic phone banks always anonymize phone calls to protect the privacy of volunteers. There’s also a feature that invites users to upload all their phone’s contacts into the app. Users’ friends will no doubt appreciate this giveaway of their lucrative personal information once they start getting spammed with texts and calls.

I declined to give Turning Point my phone book, skipped the spam texts, and instead hit “knock on doors.” Then I hopped in my car to try to find the “voters near me” listed in the app …

As I drove, a list of target contacts appeared, with the names, addresses, ages, and phone numbers of people up and down the road. Several entries were tagged with a red flag indicating that the address was home to multiple voters over the age of 75—a potential goldmine because older voters tend to vote more than younger ones.

Wow.