One of our testers reported that when they signed-in using Google (our chosen SSO) in order to vote. That a PollUnit account was set up in their name without their permission. The message displayed when signing-on with Google does not say that a PollUnit account will be created from the Google information. They found this rather disturbing, as do I. We do not want to require our participants to set-up a PollUnit account.
You’re right, the current wording is not fully clear. We will revise the text and describe this more explicitly.
From a technical perspective, a user record is always created at PollUnit when signing in via Google, Facebook, or GitHub. This is required to store votes reliably, prevent multiple participations, and correctly associate participation with a user.
If we did not store this data, the benefits of Single Sign-On (SSO) such as recognizing participants across sessions and reducing multiple participations would not be possible.
Using SSO without creating a PollUnit account is not possible, as the user record is an essential part of how SSO works within PollUnit. However, no separate credentials (username/password) need to be created, since the account is automatically linked to the selected provider.
Will you be using the newly created PollUnit account to send emails of any type to our participants?
Users receive notifications from PollUnits they have participated in. For example, if a user submits an entry to your PollUnit and you approve or reject that submission, the user will receive an email notification.
Users can disable email notifications at any time in their user settings.
Newly created accounts can also be deleted in the settings.
PollUnit does not send promotional, advertising, or marketing emails of any kind.
We ae not using the approve/reject feature, so we're OK there. Are there other notifications they will receive. Is ther any way the Administrator can turn off notifications for all participants? We don't want to flood participants in-boxes.
We try to keep emails to a minimum so we don’t flood inboxes. You can enable »Notify participants about new photos/comments« (advanced step), but this option is turned off by default.
When closing a PollUnit, you can also choose »Notify participants«. This option is turned off by default as well.
I'd like to learn more about the Notify participants about new photos/comments feature, but can't locate any documentation. Can you explain exactly what it does and how? Might want to do this.
We notify notifiable users whenever new options or comments are added. In the context of a PollUnit Photo Contest, options refer to new uploads or submitted photos.
Who receives notifications?
To protect user privacy, PollUnit collects as little data as possible. If participation without a PollUnit account is allowed, users can choose to join either as a registered user or as a guest. Please note that guest participants cannot receive notifications.
Email notification frequency
Notifications are sent in intervals, which each user can configure individually:
Users can adjust these settings at any time in the »My Account« section.