What Happens to Your Data When You Enter a Sweepstakes

Entering a sweepstakes almost always means handing your name, email, and sometimes your phone number to a sponsor and its partners. Here's what they can do with it, and what you can do about it.

Updated September 13, 2026

What you actually hand over when you enter

A typical sweepstakes entry form asks for your name, email address, and mailing address so a sponsor can contact and ship to a winner. Many forms also collect a phone number, birth date (often to confirm you meet a minimum age), and one or more marketing checkboxes. The official rules — the document every legitimate sweepstakes is required to publish — should name not just the sponsor running the promotion, but also any co-sponsors or third-party partners who will also receive your information. A long, generic list of "participating sponsors" with no names is a sign that your entry is being used mainly to build a marketing list, not to run one giveaway.

Marketing email: the opt-out is not optional

Once you enter, expect marketing email from the sponsor and possibly its partners. Federal law limits what they can do with it. Under the CAN-SPAM Act, every commercial email has to include "a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting marketing email" from the sender in the future, and the sender must honor that opt-out request within 10 business days. Once you've opted out, a sender is barred from selling or transferring your email address to anyone else, even to a different company, except to help someone else comply with the law. An unsubscribe link that's missing, broken, or still sends mail weeks later is a legal violation, not just an inconvenience.

Phone calls and the Do Not Call Registry

If your number is on the National Do Not Call Registry, most telemarketing calls — including many promotional calls tied to a sweepstakes — are already off limits. There are two well-established exceptions: a company can still call if you have an existing business relationship with it (generally tied to a purchase or payment, typically expiring within 18 months of your last transaction), or if you've given "express agreement in writing" that specifically includes the phone number you can be reached at and your signature. Some sweepstakes entry forms build that written consent into the fine print above the submit button — which is exactly why it's worth reading before you check the box, rather than assuming a simple entry form can't lead to phone calls.

If you live in California: broader rights by law

California residents have specific, enforceable rights over personal information under the California Consumer Privacy Act, regardless of what any individual sweepstakes sponsor's privacy policy says. Those rights include the right to know what categories of personal information a business has collected about you, where it came from, and who it has been shared with or sold to; the right to have that personal information deleted, with some exceptions; and the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information — including through a single, browser-level "Global Privacy Control" signal that a business has to honor automatically, without you having to contact each sponsor individually.

When a privacy promise turns out to be false

A stated privacy policy is a legal promise, not just a formality, and sweepstakes companies have been held to it. In June 2023, the Federal Trade Commission took action against Publishers Clearing House, alleging — among other things — that the company's own privacy policy falsely claimed it did not "rent, license, or sell" the personal information of sweepstakes entrants to third parties, while its entry process pushed users toward sharing more data than they realized. It's a useful reminder that "we respect your privacy" on an entry page is a specific, checkable claim, not just a slogan — and one a federal regulator has been willing to enforce against a well-known sweepstakes company.

What you can generally ask for

Regardless of which state you live in, it's reasonable to ask a sponsor directly what data it holds on you, to ask it to delete that data, and to opt out of any further contact — most official rules list a contact address or email for exactly this. If a sponsor doesn't respond, your state's consumer protection office or attorney general is the next step, and — for the specific federal rights above — so is the FTC.