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Hey developers, stop forcing me to login to unsubscribe

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Re: Hey developers, stop forcing me to login to unsubscribe

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. If I remember well, LinkedIn is one of the worst offenders. I hate how much unnecessary mail they send!

So how well has that tactic worked to thwart LinkedIn so far? Have they been permabanned from sending to gmail yet? Oh, thought so.

That explains why I never get email from LinkedIn! Thanks everyone. I do like LinkedIn because its acts like a honeypot for recruiters, they just go there first. Keeps it simple.

Re: Hey developers, stop forcing me to login to unsubscribe

#103
post #48
post #45

Just press the SPAM button in your mealreader. Problem solved.

What if your mail reader doesn't have a spam button?

(If the question's serious...) many email providers that give IMAP access will let you set up a "mark spam" folder and they'll check it to update their spam filter for you.

Otherwise, search for "your mail reader" and "mark spam" and you'll probably figure something out.

Re: Hey developers, stop forcing me to login to unsubscribe

#105
post #24

Hear, hear. If you're worried about legit customers getting unsubscribed against their will (because that is TOTALLY a significant occurrence...), you can have a dual approach. Unsubscribing without authentication sends one final message which has an undo link; unsubscribing while authenticated shows a confirmation on the site instead of the inbox. I know, the "Here's an email to confirm that you hate our emails" mes…

If your unsubscribe links are something impossible to guess (e.g., " https://example.com/spam/unsubscribe?d= , randomly generated string, which is a key into your DB>"), how could someone possibly get unsubscribed against their will?

What if I forward you a newsletter that I thought was interesting and you click the unsubscribe link?

Re: Hey developers, stop forcing me to login to unsubscribe

#106
post #24

Hear, hear. If you're worried about legit customers getting unsubscribed against their will (because that is TOTALLY a significant occurrence...), you can have a dual approach. Unsubscribing without authentication sends one final message which has an undo link; unsubscribing while authenticated shows a confirmation on the site instead of the inbox. I know, the "Here's an email to confirm that you hate our emails" mes…

Do you have an example in mind of what makes that a significant occurrence?

I subscribe to patio11's newsletter. Then I send a particularly good article from the newsletter to you via forwarding email. You say "Screw this" and hit the unsubscribe link.

Happens all the time, and now you've unsubscribed someone who is a high value member of the list.

Re: Hey developers, stop forcing me to login to unsubscribe

#107
post #24

Hear, hear. If you're worried about legit customers getting unsubscribed against their will (because that is TOTALLY a significant occurrence...), you can have a dual approach. Unsubscribing without authentication sends one final message which has an undo link; unsubscribing while authenticated shows a confirmation on the site instead of the inbox. I know, the "Here's an email to confirm that you hate our emails" mes…

If your unsubscribe links are something impossible to guess (e.g., " https://example.com/spam/unsubscribe?d= , randomly generated string, which is a key into your DB>"), how could someone possibly get unsubscribed against their will?

You (subscriber who wants the mail) forwards it to a friend who wants to /dev/null it; friend clicks unsub link and original subscriber stops getting the messages.

Re: Hey developers, stop forcing me to login to unsubscribe

#108
post #63

At Zapier, we jumped through a lot of extra hoops to make sure that emails are categorized and you can easily opt-out with a single click (no matter if you are logged in or not). Some emails cannot be opted out of (the only two right now are payment transactions and forgotten/reset password) but everything else can be. We have a lot of other cool stuff in emails like single click logins, viewing pixels with custom pa…

We do the same and just got our first request to unsubscribe from our receipt emails since we don't provide an unsubscribe link on it. Waiting for our first person to complain about our reset password email, have a feeling its coming soon.

Re: Hey developers, stop forcing me to login to unsubscribe

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The typical reason is that there's a whole host of systems that might be sending e-mail on behalf of the company, so there might be some delay (generally far less than 30 days) for it to flow through whatever integrations are set up, and hey - since there's going to be a delay anyway, why potentially shoot yourself in the foot by giving yourself less than what you're entitled to by law?

Sending unwanted email to the maximum allowed by law doesn't seem like a quality business practice.

I'm assuming that the thought process businesses are going through goes something like:

- We have a complex series of integrations (marketing automation -> CRM system -> app -> transactional e-mail provider) (as one example) where propagation isn't real time and could take a few days (if say, each of these were propagated on a nightly batch).

- Something could go wrong with any of these.

- It's better to err on the side of caution and give a super-conservative estimate and always beat it by a huge margin, than give an accurate estimate and occasionally break it (particularly with something as sensitive as unsubscribes).

Re: Hey developers, stop forcing me to login to unsubscribe

#110
post #21

Companies like LinkedIn are training users (at least me) to report as spam instead of unsubscribing because it's an exercise in futility to try to opt-out of their spam.

For me it's 1 warning that future spam will result in a domain block.

Then the domain block goes into place. /dev/null, auto-trash, or whatever the local filter rules support.

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