Hi there,
I do think a connection to the mail chimp server by default, when a user is just visiting my site, is a violation of European GDPR. The site which is using the plugin would need to ask the user for allowance to do that, before the request is send, which isn’t really an option for most of us. Please consider, we can’t embedd Google Fonts or Google Maps any more without doing the same. So maybe there is a chance for a “disable” button in the future?