Previous years

In previous years, ORCJ sent out ORCJ announcements using Charlie’s private Gmail account. This had its downsides:

• There was no once-and-done unsubscribe button. People would request to be unsubscribed with an emailed request and then through human error would either not be unsubscribed or they would be unsubscribed and later resubscribed.

• Gmail only allowed so many emails at a time, and so we would have to split our big email list into multiple tedious smaller batches. As a consequence, we were at risk of violating Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation and best practices.

Choosing MailerLite instead of Gmail

In 2025 ORCJ switched to using a USA-based email marketing company named MailerLite to send email and manage email subscriptions. Using this service gave ORCJ these features:

• Every email message you get has an effective Unsubscribe link at the bottom that doesn’t require human intervention on our part. In at least the most common email reader Gmail, the Unsubscribe is even duplicated at the top of the message.

• Bulk email sends are now gently paced to not overwhelm other mail systems. This makes it less likely that ORCJ announcements will end up in your spam folder.

Concerns with third-party email marketing corporations

There are some concerns with giving all the ORCJ names and email addresses to a third-party, USA-based email marketing service such as MailerLite:

• MailerLite is a USA-based email marketing company. Anyone receiving ORCJ email from us will have their name and email address stored in the USA at a USA email marketing company. This is not entirely without risk, since the mailing lists of USA corporations are available to the USA government upon demand, and you may not want your name and email on file there, associated with everyone else on the same mailing list. (We continue to look for a non-USA email marketing service, ideally one based here in Canada.)

• MailerLite defaults to tracking all email message opens and every link click inside of email messages, but we have turned off almost all of that tracking in our messages. We don’t track when you open any of our messages. The Unsubscribe button will track you (as it must), as will the Sent by MailerLite advertising link that can’t be disabled in the free version. All other links will not track your use of them.

ORCJ will use MailerLite

We will be using the USA-based MailerLite to send out ORCJ announcements (instead of using a personal Gmail account), but with tracking minimized. Here’s what we’ve done here at ORCJ:

• We have turned off the tracking of if/when you open ORCJ email messages. No open tracking information is sent to MailerLite when you open our message to read it.

• We have stopped incorporating most clickable links in our email messages, because MailerLite has no option to disable link tracking. We have reverted to using “plain text” URLs in the messages. Many email readers such as Gmail will turn “plain text” URLs back into clickable links without any tracking attached.

• The two exceptions to “no tracking” are at the bottom of every message: (1) the Unsubscribe link that has to identify you to MailerLite to unsubscribe you, and (2) the Sent by MailerLite advertising link that can’t be disabled in the free version. Both those links will send tracking information to MailerLite if you click on them. No other links will track you.

Opting out of our mailing list and MailerLiteIndex

We asked for your consent before we added your name to our mailing list; we warned you of the risks. You can opt-out of our ORCJ mailing list instantly by using the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email message, and you can even have us remove your name and email address completely from the MailerLite email marketing corporation.

You can ask us to have MailerLite completely remove your name and email address from their USA company within 30 days by either sending us an email request or calling Charlie at 416-427-2177 and leaving a voice message, any time of day or night.

(Unnecessary detail: If you use the Unsubscribe button in one of our messages, then MailerLite will stop sending you our email messages, but it will continue to purposely remember all your contact details and email history in the USA. You have to contact us to have us tell MailerLite to delete your account entirely.)

If you do decide to opt-out of our MailerLite email messages, we might have an alternative for you. See the next section.

Receiving ORCJ messages in alternate waysIndex

If you contact us to ask us to remove you completely from the MailerLite USA email marketing corporation, please let us know if you are severing all contact with ORCJ (no more email, ever), or if you would still like to receive ORCJ announcements, just not via MailerLite.

We may or may not try to keep a separate list of people and send them individual non-tracked email announcements using manual methods.

• We could do it the old way, using Gmail (alas, also a USA-based email service). While Gmail does not track messages using hidden links, your name and address will of course be stored and remembered by Google USA (instead of by MailerLite). Google offers no option to have your name and email address completely removed from its servers. (If we sent you ORCJ email in prior years, you are already remembered somewhere in Google’s servers. Sorry.)

• We could send you messages using a non-Gmail email service that does not remember or track your email address, e.g. through a private ISP.

Let us know what you would prefer, if you don’t like MailerLite but want us to stay in touch by email. We make no guarantees about whether we will still able to send you ORCJ updates if you opt out of the regular MailerLite email list, but we will consider it.

If you really don’t care about privacy or security, you can follow ORCJ on the facebook and/or you can follow the current year ORCJ event on the facebook. We will post updates there.

How they track your email message openingIndex

An email marketing service tracks when you open your message by hiding a tiny unnoticed 1-by-1 pixel image link in the bottom of each message. That image link points to their service and is coded to match your name and email address, so when you open your email and that invisible image loads, the mailing service knows it was you. That is why many email readers include an option to “not load externally-stored images”, to avoid triggering this image link that reveals information about the message you just opened.

If you use View Source to look at the HTML source of an email message that is tracking you, you will find the tiny one-pixel image at the bottom of the message. It might look something like this (this is from MailChimp):

<img src="https://biodanza.us.list-manage.com/track/open.php?u=3103415e6fe7&id=491de&e=eec8c" height="1" width="1" alt="">

Those numbers on the image link identify you and the message number back to the tracking service. If you don’t load external images, the service won’t know you opened that message.

How they track your email message link clicksIndex

You can tell if the link clicks in your email message are being tracked by previewing the actual URL that your browser will use when you click on a link in your email message text. The email marketing corporation replaces all the original link URLs in the message with coded links that go to their servers first.

If the links in your message go to some unknown domain accompanied by lots of coded numbers, instead of directly to the item being linked to, then your link clicks are being tracked.

If you “mouse over” a link in your email client or browser, you should see preview text at the bottom of your browser window that shows exactly where the link URL goes. For example, here is a tracking link URL inserted by MailerLite:

https://vxyalo.clicks.mlsend.com/tj/c/y2ji1iVijEyMjA2NjcsXCJsXCI6MQMgNcNQOkMILwcwOEMIMcNEMMNUN0LJIoNQYgMIGkTwi

That unknown vxyalo.clicks.mlsend.com domain name is a clear indication that your link clicks are being sent to an email tracking service. MailChimp often uses the domain list-manage.com to track you.

The coded text that is part of this tracked URL tells MailerLite exactly which link this is and exactly who clicks on it. Once MailerLite records the click, it transfers your browser to the real URL location.

For people who read email in a browser using Gmail, non-tracked links are blue but not underlined, whereas tracked links are underlined.

The Unsubscribe link at the bottom of MailerLite email messages is tracked, and we can’t remove that: the link is required for anti-spam regulation compliance. Remember that using Unsubscribe still leaves your name and email address on file at MailerLite in the USA. If you want to be completely removed from MailerLite, send us an email asking us to ask MailerLite to completely remove you from their systems.

HistoricalIndex

See the preface to the 2025 EMail Message Tracking document regarding our accidental use of email tracking links in December 2024.