E-mail solicitations from Rodale?

[Ryan]

Is anyone else suddenly getting a bunch of solicitations from Rodale publications? In recent days, I've suddenly been getting inundated by solicitations from Prevention and, more recently, Men's Health. I never signed up to receive these solicitations. I've begun unsubscribing and it seems to be working but it's a bit disturbing that they somehow signed me up for these solicitations in the first place.

My best guess is that they are lifting e-mail addresses out of their forums, either on Running Times or - assuming my account still exists there - Runner's World. This is the only way I've ever given Rodale my e-mail address. I find it disappointing, though, that Rodale might be grabbing e-mail addresses out of their forums to automatically subscribe people to these solicitations that people never explicitly agreed to receive. I'm sure there's something in the forum user agreement that says you allow Rodale to send solicitations but would be disappointing if they were trying to slip something through the back door like that.

[Andrew A.]

Not I, so likely not via RT forums.

[Ed]

I only get one e-mail from RW but that is likely from being registered as a race director.

I am getting e-mails from a plethora of millionaires that want to give me their money.

[Ryan]

Ed, how could you turn those down?

I'm putting this together after getting Women's Health and Rodale Books solicitations this morning. I double checked the e-mail address they sent these to and it's an address I only used in one place - on the RW forums, for an account I haven't touched in nearly 6 years from what I ran remember.

I'm just finding it a bit annoying unsubscribing to now 6 "subscriptions" that I never signed up for in the first place.

[Ed]

That is annoying -

I am also getting e-mails that look like they came from myself.  I am afraid to open them to unsubscribe from them.

[Ryan]

If they look like they are coming from you, don't try to unsubscribe. That will just get you in deeper. The only reason I attempted to unsubscribe from these was that I verified that the unsubscribe link was going to a legit Rodale property and that the e-mail was also sent from a legit Rodale property. Normally, I try to find a way to just block e-mails that look like spam. Just deleting all e-mails that include the words viagra, cialis, stock, or a few other words cut the number of e-mails I was getting per day by more than half.

Also, I hope you're not getting too much through your Hillrunner.com account. I bumped up server side security checks a bit about a month ago to try to cut down on both spam coming in and spam going to other servers with attempts to mask using a fake hillrunner.com "from" address.

[Andrew A.]

I recently subscribed to Running Times again online and have from that point been getting them from Rodale for Bicycling, Prevention, etc.  I just kept marking them spam in gmail and now they are filtered and I never see them unless I go to the spam folder.