TimothyH

Don't ever sign up for anything at bicycling.com or give bicycling.com your email address.

Every day I get a dozen emails from em-bicycling.com or news-bicycling.com or 123-bicycling.com. I've had to blacklist these domain and it continues daily from different domain names.

Unfortunately my Ironmail appliance doesn't allow wildcard blacklists and so I'm going to have to blacklist the IP address of the spam server if possible.

/rant


-Tim-

SpeshulEd 

I'm a big fan of their website...below I've circled the actual parts of the article, everything not circled is ads, as they now demand you turn off your ad blocker in order to access the site.



The top menu literally sticks in the middle of the page.


Total garbage. I yell at them on twitter all the time.

BlazingPedals

I quit that rag about the turn of the century. They're still around?

jay ray

Wish I had read your post about six months ago.

FBinNY 

It's simple enough to unsubscribe using the link at the bottom, and IME they're pretty good about it.

DrIsotope

Step 1: Subscribe using an email address you do not POP/IMAP.
Step 2: Respond to the email to verify (I used an ancient sbcglobal.net address-- I have like 10 aliases on there from the '90s)
Step 3: Continue to browse site with Ad-Block enabled.

The site with Ad-Block on is easy to use.

Milton Keynes

I can read all their articles with a javascript blocker and adblocker enabled just fine. The webpages are a bit wonky with a menu going down the left half of the page, but scroll down and there's all the articles with no ads. Click on an article and I can read the whole thing. Nothing's nagging me to get rid of my adblocker.

JPow90

Great to know, had been looking at their website recently and been thinking about joining up, but won't now... thanks for the heads up, and sorry that you're having to deal with that :/

Trsnrtr

I quit them when they were shills for AOL back in the early '90s.

SpeshulEd 

What adblocker do you use or did you just enter your email? I get the warning using ABP.

I usually just avoid that site, but if there's a better adblocker out there, I want it!

sdmc530

yep, website sucks I still get there mag though. I do like reading it but I don't pay for it either, wouldn't probably actually buy it.


I too tell them there site sucks every chance I get but doesn't seem to matter because it never changes.

exmechanic89

Let me add to the haters, I feel the same way - that site sucks, lol. I get their spam relentless, but what kills me about them more than anything is that the articles are complete crap, like that donut write-up someone posted. And their forums are pitiful if you're actually looking for any real info on anything, prolly the worst I've read. As long as Bicycling has been around, you'd think they'd have a better site. Oh and the ads are delivered in volumes!

Sy Reene

not much in print mags left for bicycling worthwhile, but I think Road Bike Action ain't too bad. ymmv

Sangetsu

Ditto.

Up until the the Le Mond years, it was a great magazine. As a teenager I loved it, and bought a new issue each month. Back then it was about cycling, riding to interesting places, with well-written stories (or so I thought at the time).

But it evolved away from the simple pleasure of bicycles and cycling, and became "trendy". The focus was now about "finding one's self on a bike." I find myself on a bike whenever I ride one, I don't ride a bike to find spiritual enlightenment, I ride because I enjoy doing so.

And then the ads. I like old-style ad layout, Bike Nashbar always had a two-page layout, with many products, and few photos. Nowadays Bicycling has more ad space and ad literature than it does articles and information.

I haven't read an issue of Bicycling in more than a decade now, and I haven't visited their website since Bush was president.

Aidoneus

I get the electronic edition of their magazine from my library, no email spam. But the magazine seems to consist of little more than ads.

gpsblake

Turn off Javascript and it stops the ads from loading.

But you know it's bad that I stopped subscribing to them over the Fat Guy on a Bike fraud story they ran but yet they keep sending me "special editions" free of charge. Goes right in the trash.

Cyclist0108

Sometimes if I am going to be stuck in a middle seat for six hours on an airplane, I will buy their magazine. But I always wind up wondering why. It's worse than Macworld.

Gaelen

All publications are little more than ads these days. Their articles don't have much substance and I feel they have way too many tips on training/nutrition. I bought a subscription in September because I thought it would be a good starting point to get into cycling culture, and I have one of their older books on road cycling that was really helpful, but, I won't be renewing.

Milton Keynes

I'm just using AdblockPlus. I'm also using NoScript to block the Java. These are plugins in the Firefox browser.

SpeshulEd 

Yep, I added a java script blocker to chrome and now I can view the site without the hassle.

bikecrate

The only time I get a cycling mag is the TDF edition of one of the UK based magazines (I don't remember which one).

SloButWide 

Bicycling has decided that the biggest problem in cycling is the lack of women cyclists, and tilted their coverage to "fix" that problem. I suspect it's to make the magazine more attractive to advertisers, as women in general spend more. If you follow them online, many of the other articles are from other Rodale magazines - like exercise tips from Men's Health, and recipes from Prevention. Oh well, easy enough to ignore.

sotoo

Unsub and/or block the offenders?

canklecat

Unsubscribing doesn't work when your data has been sold to other spammers. An unsub message only confirms it's a valid email address and they'll keep spamming you. Blocking or filtering are the only solutions in these cases.

I got on a spam list that hit full force on January 1 this year. I'm assuming it's related to one of the online bicycle retailers I registered with for orders. No idea which for certain, but I know which I registered with toward the end of 2016, around Nov-Dec, so those are the most likely offenders.

None of the emails trace back to any of the valid online retailers I'm registered with, but it's likely they sold their customer database, or it was stolen (happens occasionally when a dishonest employee or contractor gets access to customer databases). The only clue that they're all from the same source using the same database is all the emails are addressed to me by real name, but in a peculiarly and uniquely garbled fashion, all misspelled and mis-capitalized the same way.

Fortunately my main email accounts have intelligent filters that learn as I flag these as spam, so I'm seeing fewer as the year goes on. It was dozens a day back in early January, now only a few a day, with most being automatically filtered out and trashed.

Cyclist0084

I guess I've been lucky (knock on wood). They have two of my e-mail addresses (for a few years at least) and I've never gotten any spam from them.