Stay Informed: Facts vs Disinformation

ActBlue Facts

ActBlue is a fundraising platform that legally and securely enables donors to contribute to political candidates, political action committees, and other political and nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations. We rigorously protect donors’ information by maintaining a robust security program and strict fraud prevention measures – often beyond what is required by law. ActBlue holds itself to the highest legal and ethical standards, and all contributions made through ActBlue are disclosed in full compliance with federal, state, and local laws.

Election 2024: Alarming Disinformation Efforts Targeting ActBlue

There has been an alarming increase in efforts to spread disinformation about ActBlue in the lead up to Election Day 2024. These efforts have been discredited and criticized by campaign finance experts:

• Adav Noti, Executive Director of the Campaign Legal Center and former FEC General Counsel, said that widely disseminated claims of Maryland donors making unknowing contributions were “at best, not very careful and at worst deceptive as to the data that’s produced.” When asked if a video provided evidence of wrongdoing, Noti said: “Not even remotely.”

• A report by Fast Company, a leading business publication, on recent allegations against ActBlue called the accusations “flimsy,” “misleading,” and “misinformed,” and cited campaign finance experts explaining that such claims are “not serious” and lack merit.

Facts are essential.

Here are some important facts and information about ActBlue:

The security of our platform and donors’ information is a top priority. Our security measures help confirm the identity of donors, root out potential unlawful foreign contributions, protect donors from financial fraud, and flag potentially fraudulent activity.

• Contributions made through ActBlue are promptly reviewed, and if they fail to meet our rigorous standards of compliance, are rejected.

• We use a widely trusted external fraud prevention tool to assess donations for indications of fraud. The tool uses behavioral modeling and evaluates over 140 behavioral signals such as the age of the card, card type, the issuer country, recent address changes, and proprietary signals at the individual cardholder level to help flag fraudulent behavior. Donations that are flagged with risk factors are also manually reviewed.

• We use the industry-standard Address Verification Service (AVS) to ensure cardholder addresses match those at issuing banks.

• Our certified credit card security program to protect donor information receives the highest ratings for compliance and payment security standards possible for merchants under the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

• We require donors entering a new credit card number when giving on the ActBlue platform to submit their Card Verification Value (CVV).¹ (More information on CVV is below.)

• We offer a variety of account-level security features including authentication tools for secure sign-in, security dashboards, and customizable security notification emails. 

ActBlue takes additional steps to verify donors’ identities as part of its security efforts.

• ActBlue clearly discloses contribution rules, including that only U.S. citizens or lawfully admitted permanent residents may contribute and that contributions must be made on a donor’s own personal credit card. ActBlue requires passport information from donors entering an address outside of the United States.  

ActBlue requires donors entering a new credit card number when donating on the ActBlue platform to submit their CVV. 

• CVV is a security feature on credit and debit cards that merchants may choose to use to help prevent unauthorized transactions. CVV is not an identity verification method but rather a way to help verify that the person making the transaction has physical access to the payment card. 

• It is one part of several pieces of information (e.g., card number, expiration date, name, address, IP address, transaction history, etc.) that are used collectively to assess the legitimacy of an online transaction.

• ActBlue requires donors to provide their CVV when they make a contribution on our platform with a new card, a practice we began expanding last year and required for all in January 2024.

Data reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has been misconstrued. Here’s how it really works:

• ActBlue serves as a non-profit conduit that enables individuals to make secure and legal contributions to political candidates, political action committees, and other political and nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations through the ActBlue platform.

• Because of this model, contributions made on platforms like ours often show up at least twice in public FEC records, because both ActBlue and the receiving campaign or committee are required to report it.  FEC rules require ActBlue to itemize every contribution made through its platform, regardless of amount.

• Monthly donations and tandem contributions (in which the donor splits one contribution between several candidates or committees) are each counted as separate individual contributions on FEC reports, as are optional tips to ActBlue. This can result in a high number of FEC report entries, including many that appear duplicative.

• Additionally, FEC reports often lump multiple donors with the same name together. This can make it difficult to easily identify which contributions should be associated with each individual donor, especially donors with common names.

ActBlue’s platform is designed with transparency in mind to give donors full control and confidence in their donations from start to finish.

• We are committed to ensuring that all donors have a positive experience contributing through ActBlue, and we promptly address customer service inquiries, including donor questions about a charge on their credit card, their account, or using the platform.

Our easy-to-use contact form allows consumers to communicate directly with our Support team to ask questions, request refunds if needed, or obtain other assistance. Our in-house Customer Support team responds promptly to donor requests.

1. There are, however, a few exceptions in situations where performing CVV verification would result in PCI DSS
   noncompliance. ↩︎