Subscribe by mail

[Malcolm's Dad]

Hi Brad. I'd like to subscribe. I won't do anything financial over the internet. I won't even use my credit card at the store unless its absolutely necessary. After what happened at Target I'm glad I don't. Can I mail a check or money order? If yes who is the pay to and where to mail? 

 

My profile is blank, don't even want to put my full name on the internet. If you don't want to put this information on the internet I understand. The email address is in the profile if you prefer to use that. I don't want any hackers getting into my personal information or yours either.

 

Thanks.

[bradl]

I appreciate the intent. Certainly no one should do anything they are not comfortable with. The current subscription process is fully automatic for group changing and expiry and reminders and whatnot. I'm not sure how deep into maintaining a manual process I want to go, so I'll need to do a bit of research to figure out how that would need to work.  I'll let you know by PM if I sort it out. 

 

Thanks!

[Malcolm's Dad]

Thanks for the reply. I understand, business matters take time and resources. We need you to run the forum and not be its account manager. Tell you what. I have friends that use paypal. They tell me I'm nuts for being so cautious. I tell them oh yeah? Look what happened at Target and that's not the only place where accounts have been hacked and identities stolen. We hear about Target because its a well known store and makes for a good news story. Having worked in communications and telephones I know how easy it is to capture data off a net. Used to do it myself. I would capture network sessions on a monitor and put it on a floppy disk. That is how we would troubleshoot network problems in the old days. These were not internet sessions, they were leased private lines from the telephone company. Been out of the business for a while but I'm sure internet sessions can be captured the same way. Well I'm rambling. If I get a friend to send via paypal is there a way to indicate its for Malcolm's Dad or will it use the name on the paypal account as the forum member?

Thanks again.

[bradl]

Regrettably any "back channel" process, including PayPal, doesn't address the forum integration issue. I will PM you (or document it in a post)  if I figure out a low-hassle way to do this.

[bradl]

OK, PM sent.

 

For anyone you may have terrified into paralysis I've figured out how to do this manually.

 

I can manually add a credit to a user account.  At that point a subscription package can be purchased using the credit balance as the payment method (at checkout  there will appear a link to "apply credit to balance" -- click on that link). The completed subscription transaction will automatically change group assignment for the subscription period.

[Malcolm's Dad]

Oh boy I hope I didn't scare people too much. Security is much more of a concern today than it was long ago. Identity theft wasn't heard of in the 1980's. A physical credit card might get stolen but that was it. Then in the 1990's identity theft started to appear. Today there are commercials on the radio advertising protection for your money and your home. I was at a computer store the other day the salesman wanted to put me in the store computer. I told him no and explained why. He said I understand, my credit card was hacked and it was a real hassle to straighten it out.

This is way off topic for the forum I apologize for taking up your time. The internet has given people amazing abilities to communicate and share information. This forum is a wonderful example of that. It has also given an amazing ability to be devious and criminal. We must be on guard and aware of what can happen.

[Malcolm's Dad]

Many thanks to Brad I got subscribed. Brad had to walk me through the process a couple times. He is a patient helper. My friends still tell me I'm nuts. They order stuff all the time using a credit card or paypal and have had no problems. I still don't trust the internet and want to avoid problems so I do things the old fashioned way. I want to spend my time playing with Malcolm.