Forced fullscreen email spam signup

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Longtime lurker, here. I haven't logged in for quite some time, and I've never posted, to my knowledge. Yet, I don't think I've ever gotten this kind of crap on this site before. Anyone else get this?

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No way to exit without literally signing up for spam. And it does it sneakily. It does say "please confirm that you'd like to continue getting email updates from diyaudiostore" but I don't think I've ever received spam or any email from this site. If I had I would have never returned.

So you click "manage email preferences" and are forced to sign up before you can unsubscribe. It shows options as "Please Choose!" as if you'll have some sort of choices. Nope. You click that, and BAM you just signed up for spam.

Listen, folks, you have a right to try and make money with your site. You have an obligation to attempt to make the site sustainable. No one is arguing that. But if my first impression of your store is one of bamboozlement, why the fark would I ever buy anything from it?
 

PRR

Member
Joined 2003
Paid Member
What is "Unsubscribe store updates and continue"? Does that do "NO!!" or does it lead to the same rabbet-hole?

The diyaudiostore.com spam IS infrequent. I have (in many years) one Store email from May 13 2018. I unsubscribed from that email and none since. (Oddly the confirmation came from newsletter@diyaudio.com not diyaudiostore.com )

It appears that newsletter #2 was in 2010 and the next was 2017. That's infrequent to me.

I suspect this is not so much DIYAudio as MailChimp (the mailer they contract). Other newsletter operators are not so nice as the DIYAudio folk. To cut complaints (and blocks) MailChimp may run their own verifications.
 
I use MailChimp for my newsletters. It's a responsible company. They require a two-step opt-in (first click opt-in and provide your email address then click a link in a sign-up email to verify that you have access to that email address). They also comply with the various anti-spam laws and require that senders of mass email include an unsubscribe link and contact information (including a physical address) in every piece of mail.

What I don't like is the in-your-face popups that some websites use to "encourage" you to sign up for their mass email. I would never do that. I find such popups enormously distracting and sleazy.

I think I might have received three mass emails from the DIY Audio Store. I don't mind. I like to see what they have going on. Others may not want those emails and should, thus, click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of them.

Tom
 
I didn't click "unsubscribe to store updates" because I don't remember subscribing. I clicked "manage email preferences." And once there you're stuck unless you subscribe, so that's crappy.

I did peek in my spam folder and it turns out there is email from Diy Audio Community(contact@diyaudio.com). Nothing from diyaudiostore, however. So I was on some kind of mailinglist, but I was unaware of it. I guess if it's been more than 30 days since a diyAudio store mass email it would have been automatically deleted.

I've heard of the laws regarding cookie usage, and certainly many sites have come up with creative and annoying ways to alert users to that. I just don't recall being bugged about emails like this. I do, however, receive spam from supposedly reputable organizations. I've attempted to unsubscribe several times, unsuccessfully. So if you did send a bunch of spam, possibly nothing would happen.
 
Administrator
Joined 2004
Paid Member
It's simply a form that asked if you would like to receive future emails from this website.
As Kevin noted, it's now a legal requirement. It's straight forward and should only appear once.

Jason should see this and figure out the problem with the email preference hangup.
 

PRR

Member
Joined 2003
Paid Member
...I don't remember subscribing.

Neither do I; I *assume* that when I Joined the forum I Consented to email from the forum, and that this Store (which may be since I Joined) is included in that.

Therefore this is technically an UN-subscribe.

...So I was on some kind of mailinglist, but I was unaware of it.

I agree that this popping up from a mail-list so infrequent that you do not know you are on it IS disturbing.

...if it's been more than 30 days since a diyAudio store mass email it would have been automatically deleted.

I keep most email "forever". Due to various glitches my archive is spotty past 10 years. Digging deeper I find another in 2013, making 3 in 8 years.
 
Switches things on and off again
Joined 2000
Paid Member
No way to exit without literally signing up for spam. And it does it sneakily.

See that bright blue button at the bottom that says "Unsubscribe store updates and continue"? You are most welcome to press that - we don't want to email people that don't want to be emailed.

Mailchimp requires us to be GDPR compliant, so yes, we are collecting consent from all past members. If you don't want it, click unsubscribe. If you want to edit your preferences at any time, we have created a dedicated page for you right here. Whatever you want :) We've made it really easy to make your choice and update that choice any time you want. In addition you can of course click unsubscribe in response to any of our emails (which are sent with Mailchimp), yadda yadda.

The fine for non compliance is "minimum EUR20,000,000", but this is actually nonsense and won't be dealt to anyone but to the most egregious bad actors. Can the EU go after a non-EU website for non compliance? Will they? Is this all nonsense? Probably. Did we experience GDPR-mageddon on May 25th 2018? No. Did companies spend millions of dollars becoming GDPR compliant for nothing? Probably. Do you have to take this stuff really seriously if you serve traffic to EU visitors? Maybe. If you are based in the EU? Definitely. If you are based outside of the EU? It's arguable. Did some companies make millions shilling GDPR compliancy? Absolutely.

But it's good to ensure people only get the mail they want, so we have a good system here for people to make that choice, and maintain it. I personally think GDPR is a great thing for the world in general, and it got a lot of people to think hard about people's privacy. I'm very happy we can say that we now only communicate with people if they want that communication.

So you click "manage email preferences" and are forced to sign up before you can unsubscribe. It shows options as "Please Choose!" as if you'll have some sort of choices. Nope. You click that, and BAM you just signed up for spam.

It's a toggle button :)

I didn't click "unsubscribe to store updates" because I don't remember subscribing

diyAudio has been around for 20 years and a few years back we split off the store to its own domain. Before GDPR we just sent people emails about new store stuff (about once a year), or new diyAudio stuff (again about once a year), but to be truly GDPR compliant you need to be able to prove that a person on your list actually made a definitive choice to join a mailing list. What they saw, what they clicked, when it was, what they agreed to. It needs to tell them they can unsubscribe at any time, and also what they can expect to receive and how often. This popup does all that, in fact we can look back at the logs and tell what you had for breakfast the morning you make your choice.

When people join diyAudio now, they have to actually choose very purposefully if they want to join the store and community mailing lists. We didn't have that before, so this popup collects that information and stores it in meticulous detail so we are GDPR compliant, which is what Mailchimp requires us to be. If you don't make that choice, you miss out on some great (and presently incredibly infrequent) updates, but hey, up to you.

Jason should see this and figure out the problem with the email preference hangup.

There is no problem. It requires you to make a choice, and you can toggle it on or off. If you don't want to make a choice, that's fine - you just can't use the website until you do :) Once you do, you can change it any time. Not that hard, really...

It's straight forward and should only appear once.

Correct. Make a choice, move on, you'll never see it again.
 
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See that bright blue button at the bottom that says "Unsubscribe store updates and continue"?

The only bright blue button I see says, "confirm store updates and continue." The button you're describing is white with a thin blue line around it. Maybe I'm being pedantic... But based on years of combating spam, I'm always leery of unsubscribing to something I have no recollection of subscribing to. Granted, I know this is mainly valid when viewing an actual email and for other reasons, but still.

I didn't get what I suspect most would expect when I clicked manage email preferences. I did get to unsubscribe, as I said in my first post. I'm saying the way it's done is annoying. I'm just giving you feedback.

Mailchimp requires us to be GDPR compliant...

The law doesn't require the interface you've chosen. Just that permission is given for cookie and I guess email usage. You chose, or the developer for the software you chose came up with that interface and the bizarre management setting.

Plus, had I not logged in today, I would not have been asked. A quick search reveals that the GDPR deadline was May. I apparently have been getting these newsletter emails despite GDPR being in effect about six months. GDPR requires site operators to, "run a re-permission campaign to refresh that consent, or remove the subscriber from the mailing list." So how important was GDPR...

It's a toggle button :)

To the unfamiliar they're mystery buttons. Because it's not clear what's going to happen when you click them, and there's no way to get around the interface to familiar-looking forum settings to see things the way one's used to. But to be pedantic again, they're not even toggle buttons.

Here's toggles:

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With properly labeled toggles or check boxes, one knows the current state of settings and exactly what's going to happen when you click on one.

I'm giving you feedback, and clearly it's as annoying to you as your not even "GDPR compliance" is to me. So maybe I should go back to lurking.
 
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