Hi Gang,
Thanks for your message. I've just checked into this and have news to report.
In essence, we have unfortunately sent out the wrong newsletter to the wrong audience. The safeguards we had in to stop this from happening didn't kick in properly, due to poorly tested code. I have personally gone in to validate the code and can confirm it won't happen again.
Just to recap on a few points:
1) We have accidentally mailed some myWritersCircle.com customers with SelfDevelopmentForum.com newsletters -- on November 17th and December 1st. This is entirely our fault, and we sincerely apologize for the trouble caused. It's incredibly embarassing!
2) The Smart Writers newsletter, Trent, the self-help forum, etc -- aren't "evil beings." They're just our newsletters. They're the thing which enables us to keep this forum running. Without them, we wouldn't be able to generate the pennies of income that help keep this site alive.
3) No data has been shared where it shouldn't have been shared. The same company runs both forums, and administrators have access to the same information. We simply selected the wrong newsletter to send to the wrong list.
4) To unsubscribe, just uncheck the box to receive announcements. Marking as "Spam" or just letting our mail hit your spam folder is a really poor way to handle e-mail, and results in us continuing to send messages when we shouldn't be. Just uncheck the box to stop receiving announcements.
I hope this makes sense.
Again, I'm sorry, and can assure you that this will not occur in future.
Kindest,
Karl