Correct. NEVER give out your email and name.
You said — “Correct. NEVER give out your email and name.”
Well, in regards to the poll, you can’t vote unless you include name and zip code and e-mail address. What they use that for is for the legislators (on issues), so they can have some hard data for them, and not have it represent some “cyber-nonreal person”.
Now, I have an e-mail address that already gets a mailing from them. I found out once before that voting or registering an opinion with them will get you on their mailing list (well, “not exactly” and I’ll explain later). So, that other e-mail address I have was used, and I just decided to keep getting the mailings there.
BUT, one thing that I will point out about these guys is that they will honor unsubscribes, so there’s no problem in getting off their list. And they don’t farm out the mailing lists to anyone else. So, it’s not going to get spread around.
And, now I see, when you vote and confirm that you are the person at that particular address that you gave them, they will also send out *another* e-mail for confirming that you want to be on their mailing list. Now, you can either say yes to that second e-mail, or you can just ignore it (and that will keep you off the mailing list).
I did it by first confirming that I would like to be on the mailing list, and then when I got the e-mail confirming that I was now on the mailing list, I responded to take my name and address *off* the mailing list. And they did it immediately.
And yes..., you do have to be careful where you give out your name and e-mail address. If you’re suspicious about an outfit, just use some other “throwaway” e-mail address for those things. And simply don’t give your correct name. That’s all you have to do.
The main thing here is that they are not scavenging and harvesting e-mail addresses to sell for other people to use — and — they will immediately take you off their mailing list any time you want.
Regards,
Star Traveler