What’s the deal with this?
Every now and then I forget how annoying it was last time, and I think it would be nice to donate money to some sort of charity, and then they proceed to spam me for the following year. A couple years later I forget about he experience, and the cycle begins again.
In the span of two years the following happened:
* Original Charity I actually donated money to started emailing me
* then a second local charity I did NOT donate money to
* then I began getting messages from a local political candidate who was friendly with first charity
* soon after that Another local political candidate
* Then a statewide political action committee.
At no point in that original donation flow was I ever even asked “can we email you other communications?” I presume the “we will share your email with anyone we damn well please” was baked into whatever boilerplate privacy policy existed in the background of the site they used to collect and process donation payments. Which is a whole other problem.
Is “getting out of hand” a hyperbolic reaction to how cavalier the use of mailing lists and newsletters have become when people sign up just to use a personal finance app or donate to causes?
If the unsubscribe link goes to a third party site, it's literally indistinguishable from a phishing attempt.