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They don't read like phishing emails. They're not asking for donations or information or giving a link to click on or anything. They're the exact kind of reply you'd expect to get when messaging a Senator or Representative about an issue: a boilerplate response summarizing the issue, stating their position and thanking me for writing in.
I just never sent any message, nor did I give anyone permission to send one on my behalf.
What's the scam? Baiting me into replying in order to reel me in? Checking if there's a human on the other end? Trying to sway public opinion ahead of an election?
This is suspicious. Reach out to their office. Maybe it is a mistake maybe it was malicious.
And that's the other thing, why Minnesota? They have my name and email, that's not too surprising: I'm well aware of how easy that information is to come by. But they couldn't be bothered to look up what state I live in and realize that it would be a waste of time to target me?
Sending emails isn't free, even if you have a mail server or a botnet to do it for you, it still takes time and computing power and bandwidth. So why wouldn't you try to whittle down the list as much as possible?
It seems more likely that the replies might be genuine, but the message that prompted them wasn't.
It's a safe bet that the staff at these offices wouldn't have the time to verify that the message actually came from one of their constituents, especially if they're receiving them in bulk. I'd expect the replies to be mostly automated anyway, but the messages would still affect their internal statistics.
If someone's using a mass email campaign to try to sway members of Congress, that's really fucking concerning to me.