I don’t expect them to delete posts, but they are holding my email address on file, which is definitely personal information according to GDPR.

LMSC I found this when I cleaned them out weeks ago (when the notice of sale was announced

How do I ‘clean my details out’? I started sponsoring because I wanted to give something back due to the help I received on my machine, but literally about 2 days later ‘it happened’ and the people who had helped me are here so I wanted to cancel my donations there and bring it here but it proved impossible to contact anyone. Can you advise how I ensure more money is not taken from my account as I have no way of knowing at the moment and it said that the donation are auto renewal

Cheers

      JahLaza Just check PayPal and cancel any repeating payments. If your payment was recent, you could try and reverse it due to the changes.

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        JahLaza Sign in, hit Store and go from there. Also check billing and purchases.

        All purchases are managed out of your paypal account. If you paid without setting up a paypal account, you may call paypal to help you with cancelling.

        If you use apple products, you can use their hide my ip to get a unique email address; all emails will be auto forwarded to personal email id.

          Yes was PayPal,I didn’t set it up as recurring and it’s not in there as one so should be fine from that perspective. The forum states that they are auto renew that’s why I ask

          I checked within PayPal and that payment is inactive. Also the renew date has past for me and nothing happened.

          1: In my case, I had set it initially without a Paypal account. I called paypal and gave the email
          notification reference citing the give away is set to an auto-payment. They did tell me it is to be paid automatically. This was cancelled months ago.

          2: If you go to store on your account, on the left-side top, you will get bills and purchases. You hit that, you will be able to manage your renewals. It was showing auto-renew, which I cancelled. You can also edit your PIIs through the store link.

            Just to let you know. I’ve just heard back from verticalscope. They have deleted my account, and the posts I made have had the username changed to a random number so that I can’t be identified from it. GDPR regulations obviously get better support than being a sponsor or volunteer moderator.

            In case anyone else wants to do the same I sent my request to: privacy@verticalscope.com, with my forum username, email and the forum website, and said that:

            “I withdraw my consent for you to collect, use or disclose any of my personal information. Please delete my account and remove my personal information from your servers, and confirm when this has been done.”

              dfk41 I do look at some of the posts. However tempting it may be to post, I have resisted the temptation by not even signing in.

              A good example is the our old Vostok thread. It’s losing the relevance, if not already. It’s a shame some experienced long timers don’t even get it. 😊

                CFUK gets around 3 times less posts per day than us. A lot of recent posts have been quite toxic.

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                I’ve not signed in since the move but I’ve used it once or twice as a search engine to get answers to my more “beginner” questions.

                Unsurprising that things have become toxic when the heart of it has been removed.

                  Baldrick I’ve not signed in since the move but I’ve used it once or twice as a search engine to get answers to my more “beginner” questions.

                  Unsurprising that things have become toxic when the heart of it has been removed.

                  I think once the moderators (me Systemic and Rob left), then posting started to return to type, sometimes from new members and also from other members who ought to know better. We would never have let it go that far. I’m quite glad we have all moved on and so far in our community, there has been no need to moderate anything and hopefully it will stay that way. Moderation is one of the least interesting aspects of a forum.

                  I think the thing to make absolutely clear to people is: Vertical are a large corporate, they don’t care if the forum dies, it makes no difference to their bottom line. They will show 7 adds boxes per page that change to give 14 impressions. Every page you look at will generate 14 impressions if you spend any time on it. They advertise almost anything, and high value stuff.

                  • If you use an ad blocker, they don’t care, the ads are still served and they get paid for the impressions. They make money every time you look, or will once they migrate the forum.
                  • If no one ever posts, they don’t care (you have seen the dead forums in the links I gave)
                  • The supposed honeypot of data attracts new fish, who join post a few times and leave due to a dead forum
                  • The actual data and data quality isn’t important, just the SEO…they keywords used, as it acts like a fishing net when people do searches. Quantity not quality
                  • You can’t hurt them or their bottom line
                  • They did suffer a massive data breach, but there shouldn’t be any private data on there to concern you

                  I didn’t set up this forum to hurt them, or even try to hurt them. I set this up to give us a community space that wasn’t commoditised. I’m fed up with helping forum owners who crap on the membership. I have seen with amazement mention of the good old days by a few, who have no idea of how much the first forum owner crapped on them before selling up to Tait, for a lot of money, and I mean a LOT.

                  It might help set an example to other communities/forums…I don’t know. All I do know is, this felt like the right thing to do.

                  I certainly don’t want to give Vertical any more data to monetise for their corporate pockets. UK forum, Canadian company, even their taxes are not paid here, and soon the forum will migrate to Xenforo and be a standard “cookie cutter forum” hosted in Canada. They always seem to find volunteer moderators to help paid admins who have 30 forums to manage or possibly much more (keeps their costs to the minimum). I felt sorry for the Moderator with almost 9K posts on the GTA Aquariums forum, she was obviously an active member before they took over, and it took her a while to realise what was going on and stop posting..but eventually the dead forum sucked the life out of her.

                  I am sure they will find moderators for CFUK and good luck to them…me I will just look on and shake my head in amazement. The 3 of us moderators managed to save CFUK from closure, make it profitable…We had no choice, and still it was sold, for short term gain and a community destroyed.

                  I’m not angry, but after almost 20 years of non-profit in coffee, as a hobby, I do get fed up with the bull I see spouted from all those making money from it. Patrick Rob and I have proved we can run a forum well and create a community space…and we will continue to do our best here..

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                      DavecUK well I’m grateful that you and the other guys have done so. I’ve said so in a few posts that I’ve been surprised with the generosity (and patience) of the people in this forum. But it certainly warrants saying so again 😉
                      So thank you to all.

                      It’s a sad state of affairs where communities can be monetised in such a way.

                        Just had a little peep at CFUK, saw a post trying to warn members about Verticalscrote. I’m surprised so many people (including an advertiser) don’t seem to get what’s really happened, and going to happen to that forum.

                        They really ought to read this thread…. because that forum dying, is absolutely the right thing to happen. I think VS activities in destroying communities need to be tempered by people realising how easy it is to do what we have done. Especially when free platforms exist to run forums that are not businesses, and won’t be sold out from under the members. VS only want the 11 years of posts. It was very saddening to see a post extolling the good old days and some Christmas globe. Especially when the destruction of that forum really started the day Glenn (1st owner) sold it a few years ago, rather than give it to the members. I was rather shocked when Tait told me how much he had paid Glenn for the forum…and I’m not easily shocked.

                        I hope more CFUK members wake up and smell the coffee in the new year, and join us here. I suspect there are still some people who don’t understand why we jumped ship.

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                          DavecUK I agree. We do hope the members from elsewhere join us here.

                          There is a risk though, some — even some seasoned - members from there won’t hesitate to start a mud-slinging match here requiring

                          Giphy - 😊

                            DavecUK Your message reminded me to go to the Mara X OPV mod thread and place the following message:

                            I doubt it will help much, but can’t see a reason not to do it.

                            On a positive note it seems VS won’t even bother to look at and remove all the messages there pointing here.