MySQL Bugs: #50181: somehow I got on the MySQL spam list

Bug #50181	somehow I got on the MySQL spam list
Submitted:	8 Jan 2010 11:11	Modified:	2 May 2012 18:56
Reporter:	Walter Doekes	Email Updates:
Status:	Closed	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Websites: bugs.mysql.com	Severity:	S2 (Serious)
Version:	N/A	OS:	Any
Assigned to:		CPU Architecture:	Any

Description:
Half an hour ago, I received a message from MySQL with the subject "Free Guide: Virtualization for MySQL on the VMware Platform"

At the top it states:
"""You are receiving this e-mail at because you elected to receive general communications from Sun Microsystems, Inc. To update your communications preferences, please see the links at the bottom of this message. We respect your privacy and post our privacy policy prominently on our web site: http://www.sun.com/privacy"""

I most certainly did not elect to receive general communications.

I only subscribed to the bugs.mysql.com to report a bug, not to receive these messages. And if there was any prominent button/checkbox at subscribe time, I would have seen it and selected the do-not-send-me-anything option.

How to repeat:
Subscribe to bugs.mysql.com and wait.

Suggested fix:
If you're going to send irrelevant messages to bug reporters, ask them first.

Analyzing this report. I have created an account as you suggested.
Will get back to you once I get some results.

Also see: http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=49824

I also get lots of mail from MySQL I never asked for explictly. Most annoying after attending last UC I started getting mails from a handful of other vendors who had also attended the UC what were completely irrelevant to me. I was very angry that MySQL had shared my privacy with others without my permission. Some (two) of those were very difficult to get rid of actually, as they continued to send even after I unsubscribed - in one case I had to prepare a very aggressive BLOG and threaten to publish it if it did not stop.

After some research and experimenting, here's the result:

* In your profile page, there is an option for the newsletter, which you can choose to receive or not. 
* The above option does not influence your receiving marketing email, which are sent to all the people who register;
* You can unsubscribe from receiving further messages using the link at the bottom of the email itself;
* Thus, everyone who registers, receives at least one message, and can opt out through the link at the bottom of the email.

We have requested a more user friendly change of this "feature".

Thank you for looking into this.

As far as I'm concerned, you can close the issue. Or you could also keep it open for reference until the "feature" is fixed.

Regards,
Walter

Bug closed by user request. 
Privacy policy discussion will continue in Bug #49824.