Oregon Hikers

I recently got an email solicitation from TKO:

You invest your money in hiking gear, you invest your time in researching hiking destinations, but have you ever invested in hiking trails?
It's time to give back.

I have never given TKO my email address, I have never contacted them directly, I have (nor want) no communication with them aside from incidentally using "their" service by being here. My only inference is that TKO has harvested the email addresses we used to sign up here, and is now spamming us with fundraising solicitations. Has anyone else who has otherwise had no contact with TKO gotten this email?

I volunteered to become a moderator here and have made some small donations to TKO, but like you I would look askance at receiving an email solicitation from TKO without ever having given my permission to do so. I have not received any such email, yet, but the fact that you did is sufficient to establish that TKO is making such solicitations. I would advise them to rethink this policy.

I got that email, but I think it's probably because I did a trail work party recently, not because I've been on the site since 2007.

I don't think it's so wrong for the TKO to take advantage of what is probably its biggest data source. The two non-profit boards I am on have worked really hard to come up with relevant contact lists, and I can tell you it's really, really tough! It might be kind of spammy just to send an email to everyone on ORhikers, but it's probably more effective than not doing it at all!

Personally, I'm happy to work on a trail with the TKO, but unless I see more pro-access advocacy, I'm not interested in donating.

Charley wrote: ↑

November 13th, 2019, 10:19 pm

The two non-profit boards I am on have worked really hard to come up with relevant contact lists, and I can tell you it's really, really tough!

Undoubtedly, but regardless of the actual backstory/chain of custody of this forum ("it's actually been TKO since the beginning, they're the same thing, etc"), back when I signed up it was not a "service of TKO," and I was only signing up for this forum. I have never (as far as I know) interacted directly with TKO and cannot otherwise fathom how they would have my email address, so if they are harvesting email addresses from user signups here without the users having first opted in for such a thing, I would consider this a serious breach of privacy. It's entirely possible they bought a contact list from some other nonprofit group (which is its own separate issue), but I would like to hear TKO admin people weigh in on where they got the contact list for that email spam blast.

I got the email too (it went to my spam folder), and this forum is definitely where they got the address from. I'm not up in arms about it, though; life's too short.

TKO isn't really my thing, although I've been on TKO work parties. I prefer to bring my folding saw when I go out and clear off trails that I'm walking on. A lot of progress can be made just throwing branches off a trail. Sometimes there'll be a thicket of branches that's difficult to walk through, but in 10 minutes I can untangle it and clear the trail.

But a lot of projects require a bigger organization like TKO.

I don't mind getting occasional emails asking for money.

Junk emails sort of accumulate and I'll occasionally unsubscribe to turn off emails from a particular source. My conspiracy theory mind wonders if this just lets them know this is a real email address so they can sell it to other people

I got one too. I clicked unsubscribe. It said it was successful and gave a list of reasons to choose from as to why i was unsubscribing. I chose ' I didn't sign up to receive emails' and hit submit. Nothing happened, it wouldn't submit. So, I don't really know if I'm unsubscribed or not.

adamschneider wrote: ↑

November 14th, 2019, 1:31 am

I got the email too (it went to my spam folder), and this forum is definitely where they got the address from. I'm not up in arms about it, though; life's too short.

Same here.

adamschneider wrote: ↑

November 14th, 2019, 1:31 am

I got the email too (it went to my spam folder), and this forum is definitely where they got the address from. I'm not up in arms about it, though; life's too short.

Heh, looking at your email I see how you can tell.

Funnily enough, I didn't get the email. I always donate to help cover the server costs ever since they took over the billing for that. That might be why I didn't receive it.

You could point TKO to the MailChimp "Importance of Permissions" page

https://mailchimp.com/help/the-importan ... ermission/

And it's in their terms of use at MailChimp

https://mailchimp.com/legal/terms/

So you could report them if you were so inclined and if enough people did, they would probably lose their account. I wouldn't complain if anyone did, consequences are good for people. I once took a whole large website down for violating my DMCA rights after they told me to F.O. it took them over a month to get back up.

I don't recall how or if I subscribed to the list but I do feel in 2019 you shouldn't expect an organization like this to harvest emails without an opt in policy or announcement. Maybe it's in the forum registration terms but I haven't looked.

I simply unsubscribed, but yeah, TKO, you can do better.