Why

Most people opening these emails are not lobbyists or donors with spare cash. They are working families, retirees, and older adults on fixed incomes. Many already struggle to pay for their own care, medicine, or rent. Then the inbox fills with urgent asks for “just $15,” “chip in before midnight,” and “double your impact.”

That is not generosity finding people who asked for it. It is a machine. Campaigns, advocacy groups, consultants, and donation processors industrialize pressure: fear, guilt, fake deadlines, and the same payment rails over and over. The email rarely asks whether the person on the other end can afford groceries this week.

If someone wants to give, they will open a website and donate. They do not need a constant stream of fear-mongering political agendas in their inbox to remind them. Real support is voluntary. Harassment dressed up as urgency is not.

Older adults are hit hardest. They grew up treating mail and email as more trustworthy than they are. They want to help. They click. They give again. The operation does not care that the money came from a Social Security check or a shrinking nest egg. A little ask, repeated hundreds of times a year, is how life savings get skimmed.

SolicitBlock exists because those senders have no business treating your inbox like a cash register. We start by spotting the ask on your device, without uploading your mail. Over time, as our intelligence gets stronger, we intend to block most of this traffic by default for people who want that protection.

Today the product warns and lets you block in place. Auto-block and Spam enforcement stay behind a controlled switch until the data quality is good enough that we are not guessing. The privacy line does not move: your email still never leaves the browser for classification.

If you cannot afford your own care, you should not be paying for someone else’s campaign. That is that.