That's not entirely accurate.
It's true that you can receive unsolicited emails, as we've all experienced before. This is called opt-out marketing, where companies receive your email address whether you deliberately provided it or not. There's also opt-in marketing where you deliberately provide your email address (i.e. for a newsletter or to receive promotional offers). In either case, unless Elixir received your email address, they cannot legally contact you.
It is impossible that they received your email address from us, as we never took it from you or provided any way for them to receive it through us. Any redirects to Elixir's page from our end were never redirected to this 'freebie page that expires super quick' (what web people call a 'squeeze page').
In fact, the only redirects we provided were one that redirected to a photo which showed the different string gauges available (this photo was hosted on Audiofanzine, so it's impossible that it got nor provided any of your email information to Elixir). The other redirect was to
this page here on Elixir's site, which as anyone who wants to can see, doesn't ever ask for contact information.
In fact, the only way Elixir received any email information from our members was directly from me, and I only gave the contact information of 20 testers, as obviously we needed their addresses for contact and to send the strings and goodies. These testers willingly gave me their email addresses, knowing I needed it to contact them. If they ever receive unsolicited emails from Elixir, they can easily opt-out. Because they received free strings (and I think a t-shirt), I don't think they thought clicking on 'unsubscribe' was too much of a burden. In any case, you were not one of the 20 testers.
Now, if you're seeing elixir advertisements on banners or in the middle of youtube videos or whatever, that's likely because of the use of cookies (i.e. recently I've researched and bought a few pedals. While researching on a site which uses cookies, they found out I was looking for pedals, and now I see nonstop Earthquaker Devices pedal commercials, even if I never once looked at Earthquaker Devices...). You can
allow or block cookies on your end to help minimize this. We, however, can't adjust your cookie settings, nor control other sites and their use of cookies.
Your response was pretty sarcastic, so I'm sorry if my comment rubbed you the wrong way or disrespected you or something. But it's literally impossible that the links/posts on HR or Audiofanzine made you get unsolicited emails from Elixir. Hope that helps.