Nov 252011
Scarleteen is gearing up for their end-of-the-year fundraiser and I would really very much like to send some of my readers over to help out. Click the image below to find out how — hey, it can even be tax-deductible! Go now, and please spread the word about this very worthy organization.
This is something I’ve done will continue to do. I’ll definitely be sending those conversations and promoting.
So I went to make a donation, but it turns out Scarleteen won’t accept your credit card w/o an email address. And it is Scarleteen that requires this: credit card companies don’t deal in email addresses.
My SPAM filter broke a while ago, and I’ve been swimming in sewage ever since, so I’m feeling more than usually protective of my email address right now. So they didn’t get my donation. (I suppose I could mail them a check, but then they get my street address. Choose your poison…)
I went to their Contact Us page to tell them this, but you you can’t even contact them w/o providing an email address (despite their clear statement that you won’t get a response from them even if you do…)
Perhaps you have a back-channel to these people.
Perhaps you could explain to them that the kind of people who support sex-ed, and support the empowerment of teens, are also the kind of people who are likely to value their own privacy, and to understand the privacy implications of disclosing their email address on the internet.
Hi Steven,
You realize that you had to leave an email address to make this comment, right?
I passed on your concern to Heather at Scarleteen. With a site as huge and as open to user-generated content as Scarleteen, *of course* she’s had to require an email address in order to send an email. I do too, even for this relatively small site. Why? Because otherwise we’d be absolutely overrun with spam. However, neither Scarleteen nor I ever use those addresses for nefarious purposes. I would not support an organization that did.
Also, as far as I can tell *and* according to Heather, it is PayPal who is requesting your email address — not Scarleteen. I’ve donated to them for years via PayPal and I can vouch that it is PayPal and not Scarleteen who requires your email address.
If your spam filter has broken, I would strongly suggest switching to Gmail. I get hundreds of spam emails every day that I never see because they are sent straight to spam. If you have a domain-name based email address, that can be channeled through Gmail so that your involvement with spam is kept to a minimum.
In short, Heather is doing what she needs to do to keep Scarleteen spam-free, and the requirements for donations are entirely appropriate. Please reconsider your stance.
You’re right, it is PayPal.
I wasn’t looking carefully.
My apologies.
I will contribute via PayPal.
PayPal already has my email address anyway.
And I fixed my SPAM filter :)
:-) we love your blog. and we have just started our own. so trying to spread the world. we have blogrolled you:-)
interviews with an escort
Sigh. I miss your blog posts. I’m not whining, really I’m not. I’ve been blogging for seven years and I’ve taken a break now and then. I’m just sayin’. I miss your blog posts. How are the kids? How’s the new lover? How are you?
Betty