I’ve had to block Keychron, the mechanical keyboard company, from sending me emails via my hosting provider’s SPAM filter.
Luckily, I use separate email addresses for purchases, web accounts, and correspondences; but even with these measures in place it’s just gotten too much. Keychron have been sending me multiple emails a week from the “support@keychron.uk” email address, with no available option to unsubscribe.
Parsing the HTML of the email I could find an unsubscribe link, but the actual link never worked; it just took me to a blank webpage. Parsing the source of this page I just found a bunch of incomprehensible JavaScript and some <p> tags which, if displayed, would’ve stated that I was unsubscribed. But the emails have just kept coming.
I can’t say I’m shocked at the behaviour; they are a for-profit company under late stage capitalism. However I’d love to know what has caused this to happen now as opposed to earlier? Are they struggling financially? Are they just ramping up for the winter spending flurry? Is it that mechanical keyboard enthusiasts are borderline addicts who can’t help but buy a new keyboard every X number of months or years?
I kid about that last point; mechanical keyboards are fun but they’re not my thing other than for practicality. My brief foray into the murky depths of getting a mechanical keyboard kit was tough and left me with the impression that the hobby must be the domain of masochists – hardly any switches or keycaps were in stock, nothing is simple, and the notion of “group buys” makes me shudder. I digress.
Keychron doesn’t score very highly on Trustpilot, and I have to admit I always resented the fact that their GNU/Linux support amounted to “Check out our Facebook support group for peer support”, and the keyboard likes to pretend it’s an Apple keyboard even when set to “Windows”, leading to the need for workarounds and hacking at scripts.
- Keychron on Trustpilot UK
- Getting the Function keys of a Keychron working on Linux on Do Hoang’s blog
- A list of workarounds for keychron keyboards on GNU/Linux on Github
In any case, this annoyed me enough to write a blog post. I suppose it’s because I’m used to dealing with actual SPAM, but corporate SPAM seems to be something I’ve managed to avoid thusfar so it’s particularly irked me. I doubt I’ll be in the market for another keyboard anytime soon – but if I am I certainly won’t risk getting anything from Keychron again!