7 ms·

Pet peeve: unsubscribe links that take me to a page asking for my personal information (usually my email address). I'll usually close those pages and report the

by sowbug 6y ago

Pet peeve: unsubscribe links that take me to a page asking for my personal information (usually my email address). I'll usually close those pages and report the email as spam. If you know my email address, then put a token in the unsubscribe link so you can retrieve my address on your end, rather than making me retype it. If you don't know my email address -- maybe you are sending to a list, not to me -- then I consider you spam because you don't actually have the direct ability to remove me.

benjaminl 6y ago
Yeah I find it really annoying also. But surprisingly, they don’t do that just to add friction to unsubscribe. There is a real problem that it solves. Legitimate mailing lists have problems with people forwarding emails, when the recipients of the forwarded emails click the unsubscribe button, they will unsubscribe the original recipient who didn’t want to be unsubscribed.
- heavenlyblue 6y ago
  So why do they forward those emails to someone in the first place? Especially to those who don’t want them? You’re pretty much suggesting that “helping others spamming people isn’t spamming”
  - zbentley 6y ago
    Whether or not an individual forwarding an email to another individual is technically "spamming" is moot; most spam is company-to-individual/automated-system-to-individual. As to why they forward it in the first place: how would I, an individual, know whether or not my mom will want to use the 20% coupon code for a cosmetics store I just received, but don't want to use? I'd ask her. I can ask her via an unsolicited phone call or email. Am I a spammer if I do that? Similarly, if my mom clicks the "unsubscribe" link on what I forwarded, mistakenly thinking that it was sent to her directly by $costmetics_company, that sucks for me if I ever want to use their coupons. An even more annoying situation is when someone in charge of procurement for a business forwards a "shipping confirmation" email to an employee as a means of indicating that the employee's requested purchase is on its way. If that employee makes a mistake (e.g. they have a lot of commercial email in their inbox and click the wrong one/are sleepy/whatever) and clicks "unsubscribe" on that shipping confirmation, the procurement person won't get any future confirmations for any orders for anyone. There are mitigations to this (the shipper could use transactional emails without unsubscribe links, the procurement person could do something less lazy than just forwarding the email wholesale), but in the real world those often don't happen. So autofilled unsubscribe then causes problems for random upstream people, not the forwarded recipient.
    - heavenlyblue 6y ago
      That is a problem with the implementation that is simply fixable by removing the unsubscribe headers from the forwarded emails. Or marking unsubscribe links in a way that makes the forwarder remove them automatically. Someone on the other hand was trying to wave away the whole idea of one-click unsubscribe due to this which seems to me more like lobbying towards adding another step requiring one to put their email in in order to unsubscribe (or put it another way - decreasing the unsubscribes). So auto filled unsubscribe needs to exist. I never want to go back to the universe where that is not regulated and easy-to-use. Also in the UK there’s still loads of physical paper spam and I would hate if that was also the case for e-mails.
mattbeckman 6y ago
Annoying for sure, but one benefit of this approach is due to forwarding. For the moment, let's assume you have a newsletter you enjoy. If you forward an instance of that newsletter to your friend, and they aren't expecting it, they might hit unsubscribe. With one click, they'll prevent you from receiving future newsletters. I think the better approach is simply showing the "Intended for johndoe@example.com" next to Unsubscribe, but I could see why they ask for your email.
- johnbrodie 6y ago
  FWIW, this solution isn't as easy to implement as you'd think. I've seen unsubscribe pages harvested for email addresses when they show the full address and used urls/tokens that weren't sufficiently secure. In the case I'm thinking of, the home-rolled algo that generated the unique links was bugged enough that you could reverse it, and I was surprised that someone actually took the time to do so.
- joegahona 6y ago
  I believe one-click unsubscribe is a law.
  - irrational 6y ago
    Under what jurisdiction?
    - heleninboodler 6y ago
      It's definitely a rule in my house. I'm raising my kids right.
    - RandomBacon 6y ago
      United States CAN-SPAM Act.
- boomlinde 6y ago
  Just respect "unsubscribe" as the subject of a mail as a request to unsubscribe. Add a List-Unsubscribe header with a mailto link, like List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:list@host.com?subject=unsubscribe> as per RFC-2369 and use the same mailto link inside the mail body. This is convenient, conventional and solves the problem you describe, while also allowing users to add feedback as they see fit in the body. I don't see why you have to involve the web at all, but I can tell you that if I have to go through a bunch of bullshit when I want to unsubscribe I'll just mark it as spam instead. However appreciated and anticipated your newsletter is, you have to consider that most newsletter subscriptions are probably either accidental (failed to uncheck some box when signing up for something entirely different) or straight up unsolicited, and people like me will basically purge all their subscriptions without discrimination regularly as the crap builds up.
enumjorge 6y ago
I’ll add another pet peeve to the list: unsubscribe links that remove you from only 1 of N number of lists they have. You click unsubscribe but a few days later you’re still getting mail because you got removed from “news” emails but this one is a “promotional” email.
- mthoms 6y ago
  Indeed. And locating the page where you can unsubscribe to all these lists is usually made intentionally difficult with various dark patterns.
- mimimi31 6y ago
  I recently unsubscribed from all but one (the account tips) of the Firefox newsletters, because they were sending too much stuff I wasn't really interested in. The next day I get a new Email from them. Subject: "Was it something we said? crying emoji". Body: "If you want to go... we won't stop you. [...]" Footer: "You're receiving this email because [...] subscribed to Firefox Account Tips. Yeah, thanks for the ~~tip~~ spam. Felt like going through one of those dark pattern flows that Spotify or Amazon have when you try to unsubscribe from their paid plans, trying to guilt you into reconsidering.
  - drngdds 6y ago
    That's pretty ironic coming from a company whose main value proposition is "we aren't assholes like other tech companies are." That and the annoying crap you have to disable when you install Firefox to get a blank new tab page. (Still better than Google, though.)
    - wolco 6y ago
      How can you get a blank page? What do I need to delete?
      - kbrosnan 6y ago
        The simplest way is to click the gear on the new tab page and uncheck items you don't want. If you uncheck everything you will still have the gear icon present. If you want to hide that then your are in userChrome.css territory.
hart_russell 6y ago
100%. It’s pure laziness or technical ignorance on their part.
r1ch 6y ago
My favorite one is where the unsubscribe link is behind a Cloudflare country IP block. Subscribed in the US but can't unsubscribe after moving.
- Taylor_OD 6y ago
  My favorite is when the unsubscribe gateway isnt https.
  - wolco 6y ago
    Worried that your isp knows you unsubscribed?
    - komali2 6y ago
      I don't think https prevents ISPs from knowing what domains you try to resolve - that would be where a VPN would come into play surely?
      - robotnikman 6y ago
        Correct. DoH is also useful for preventing ISP's from snooping on that too IIRC.
      - chipperyman573 6y ago
        The domain would only be relevant if the domain was a specific opt-out domain. If it was just https://company.com/unsubscribe https://company.com/unsubscribe, DNS would only reveal company.com. The path (/unsubscribe) will be encrypted.
fossuser 6y ago
This is the worst one I've ever seen: https://twitter.com/zachalberico/status/1247951473876422656?s=20 https://twitter.com/zachalberico/status/1247951473876422656?... It's basically impossible to know if you've done the right thing.
- ipython 6y ago
  Wow. I’m actually more confused after reading their “explanation” > Sorry for any confusion. Select the box next to each desired communication option or deselect to stop communications. So... if I uncheck the “unsubscribe” button that stops communications?!?
  - fossuser 6y ago
    I believe that's the correct answer (since the boxes were checked when I first opened the page). Yeah - very confusing though.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  They clarified in a reply: Marriott Bonvoy Assist @MBonvoyAssist 9 Apr Replying to @zachalberico Sorry for any confusion. Select the box next to each desired communication option or deselect to stop communications Now I think I understand what they are saying, but it’s not a great explanation either. A new sentence before the ‘or’ would have been helpful.
naggie 6y ago
I just got an email from redhat, for which the unsubscribe mechanism asks for contact information and a survey. Pic: https://twitter.com/callanbryant/status/1266400315940786178 https://twitter.com/callanbryant/status/1266400315940786178
geofft 6y ago
If you forward someone else something from a mailing list, should they have the ability to unsubscribe you from that list without your consent?
- goguy 6y ago
  Nothing stopping them doing that the other way either.
  - geofft 6y ago
    I think I don't follow, what's "the other way"? I run a newsletter where both subscribe and unsubscribe do double-opt-in (i.e., both subscribing and unsubscribing send you an email with a confirmation URL with a token - each newsletter has an unsubscribe link but that link doesn't include the token). Maybe this is a mistake? Is the norm that anyone can unsubscribe anyone else from newsletters?
    - mrob 6y ago
      The term "double-opt-in" is spammer propaganda. It falsely implies that getting your email added to a spammer's mailing list, regardless of how it happened, is "opting in".
      - geofft 6y ago
        OK, fine, maybe I shouldn't use the term. Pretend I said, "I run a mailing list where I want to make absolutely sure that nobody is receiving mail without their active and informed consent and that nobody is unsubscribed without their active consent either." I think my question still stands?
      - realityking 6y ago
        Then it is a remarkably good piece of propaganda as it has the blessing of, at least, German courts. https://www.telemedicus.info/urteile/Wettbewerbsrecht/Werbung/1298-BGH-Az-I-ZR-16409-Double-opt-in-Verfahren.html https://www.telemedicus.info/urteile/Wettbewerbsrecht/Werbun...
redstripe 6y ago
This would certainly be convenient, however if your mailing lists contains a lot of old people then they forward your emails to their friends. Their friends who are annoyed by this then unsubscribe the original recipient without noticing that the email was forwarded by their friend. This is a real problem for us - not a made up scenario. So we remove the auto-filled email on the unsubscribe form.
- tcgv 6y ago
  A way to mitigate this issue is to ask for a confirmation before marking the email address as unsubscribed, showing the retrieved email address in a large font as to prevent someone who received a forwarded email from mistakenly unsubscribing someone else.
tartrate 6y ago
If that happens, it _is_ spam.
maybeiambatman 6y ago
My Pet Peeve: Google doesn't let you unsubscribe to YouTube TV emails via their "Unsubsribe" button. https://twitter.com/mohd_irteza/status/1227772431605149696?s=19 https://twitter.com/mohd_irteza/status/1227772431605149696?s...

by sowbug 6y ago

benjaminl 6y ago

Yeah I find it really annoying also. But surprisingly, they don’t do that just to add friction to unsubscribe. There is a real problem that it solves. Legitimate mailing lists have problems with people forwarding emails, when the recipients of the forwarded emails click the unsubscribe button, they will unsubscribe the original recipient who didn’t want to be unsubscribed.

heavenlyblue 6y ago
So why do they forward those emails to someone in the first place? Especially to those who don’t want them? You’re pretty much suggesting that “helping others spamming people isn’t spamming”
- zbentley 6y ago
  Whether or not an individual forwarding an email to another individual is technically "spamming" is moot; most spam is company-to-individual/automated-system-to-individual. As to why they forward it in the first place: how would I, an individual, know whether or not my mom will want to use the 20% coupon code for a cosmetics store I just received, but don't want to use? I'd ask her. I can ask her via an unsolicited phone call or email. Am I a spammer if I do that? Similarly, if my mom clicks the "unsubscribe" link on what I forwarded, mistakenly thinking that it was sent to her directly by $costmetics_company, that sucks for me if I ever want to use their coupons. An even more annoying situation is when someone in charge of procurement for a business forwards a "shipping confirmation" email to an employee as a means of indicating that the employee's requested purchase is on its way. If that employee makes a mistake (e.g. they have a lot of commercial email in their inbox and click the wrong one/are sleepy/whatever) and clicks "unsubscribe" on that shipping confirmation, the procurement person won't get any future confirmations for any orders for anyone. There are mitigations to this (the shipper could use transactional emails without unsubscribe links, the procurement person could do something less lazy than just forwarding the email wholesale), but in the real world those often don't happen. So autofilled unsubscribe then causes problems for random upstream people, not the forwarded recipient.
  - heavenlyblue 6y ago
    That is a problem with the implementation that is simply fixable by removing the unsubscribe headers from the forwarded emails. Or marking unsubscribe links in a way that makes the forwarder remove them automatically. Someone on the other hand was trying to wave away the whole idea of one-click unsubscribe due to this which seems to me more like lobbying towards adding another step requiring one to put their email in in order to unsubscribe (or put it another way - decreasing the unsubscribes). So auto filled unsubscribe needs to exist. I never want to go back to the universe where that is not regulated and easy-to-use. Also in the UK there’s still loads of physical paper spam and I would hate if that was also the case for e-mails.

mattbeckman 6y ago

Annoying for sure, but one benefit of this approach is due to forwarding. For the moment, let's assume you have a newsletter you enjoy. If you forward an instance of that newsletter to your friend, and they aren't expecting it, they might hit unsubscribe. With one click, they'll prevent you from receiving future newsletters. I think the better approach is simply showing the "Intended for johndoe@example.com" next to Unsubscribe, but I could see why they ask for your email.

johnbrodie 6y ago
FWIW, this solution isn't as easy to implement as you'd think. I've seen unsubscribe pages harvested for email addresses when they show the full address and used urls/tokens that weren't sufficiently secure. In the case I'm thinking of, the home-rolled algo that generated the unique links was bugged enough that you could reverse it, and I was surprised that someone actually took the time to do so.
joegahona 6y ago
I believe one-click unsubscribe is a law.
- irrational 6y ago
  Under what jurisdiction?
  - heleninboodler 6y ago
    It's definitely a rule in my house. I'm raising my kids right.
  - RandomBacon 6y ago
    United States CAN-SPAM Act.
boomlinde 6y ago
Just respect "unsubscribe" as the subject of a mail as a request to unsubscribe. Add a List-Unsubscribe header with a mailto link, like List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:list@host.com?subject=unsubscribe> as per RFC-2369 and use the same mailto link inside the mail body. This is convenient, conventional and solves the problem you describe, while also allowing users to add feedback as they see fit in the body. I don't see why you have to involve the web at all, but I can tell you that if I have to go through a bunch of bullshit when I want to unsubscribe I'll just mark it as spam instead. However appreciated and anticipated your newsletter is, you have to consider that most newsletter subscriptions are probably either accidental (failed to uncheck some box when signing up for something entirely different) or straight up unsolicited, and people like me will basically purge all their subscriptions without discrimination regularly as the crap builds up.

enumjorge 6y ago

I’ll add another pet peeve to the list: unsubscribe links that remove you from only 1 of N number of lists they have. You click unsubscribe but a few days later you’re still getting mail because you got removed from “news” emails but this one is a “promotional” email.

mthoms 6y ago
Indeed. And locating the page where you can unsubscribe to all these lists is usually made intentionally difficult with various dark patterns.
mimimi31 6y ago
I recently unsubscribed from all but one (the account tips) of the Firefox newsletters, because they were sending too much stuff I wasn't really interested in. The next day I get a new Email from them. Subject: "Was it something we said? crying emoji". Body: "If you want to go... we won't stop you. [...]" Footer: "You're receiving this email because [...] subscribed to Firefox Account Tips. Yeah, thanks for the ~~tip~~ spam. Felt like going through one of those dark pattern flows that Spotify or Amazon have when you try to unsubscribe from their paid plans, trying to guilt you into reconsidering.
- drngdds 6y ago
  That's pretty ironic coming from a company whose main value proposition is "we aren't assholes like other tech companies are." That and the annoying crap you have to disable when you install Firefox to get a blank new tab page. (Still better than Google, though.)
  - wolco 6y ago
    How can you get a blank page? What do I need to delete?
    - kbrosnan 6y ago
      The simplest way is to click the gear on the new tab page and uncheck items you don't want. If you uncheck everything you will still have the gear icon present. If you want to hide that then your are in userChrome.css territory.

hart_russell 6y ago

100%. It’s pure laziness or technical ignorance on their part.

r1ch 6y ago

My favorite one is where the unsubscribe link is behind a Cloudflare country IP block. Subscribed in the US but can't unsubscribe after moving.

Taylor_OD 6y ago
My favorite is when the unsubscribe gateway isnt https.
- wolco 6y ago
  Worried that your isp knows you unsubscribed?
  - komali2 6y ago
    I don't think https prevents ISPs from knowing what domains you try to resolve - that would be where a VPN would come into play surely?
    - robotnikman 6y ago
      Correct. DoH is also useful for preventing ISP's from snooping on that too IIRC.
    - chipperyman573 6y ago
      The domain would only be relevant if the domain was a specific opt-out domain. If it was just https://company.com/unsubscribe https://company.com/unsubscribe, DNS would only reveal company.com. The path (/unsubscribe) will be encrypted.

fossuser 6y ago

This is the worst one I've ever seen: https://twitter.com/zachalberico/status/1247951473876422656?s=20 https://twitter.com/zachalberico/status/1247951473876422656?... It's basically impossible to know if you've done the right thing.

ipython 6y ago
Wow. I’m actually more confused after reading their “explanation” > Sorry for any confusion. Select the box next to each desired communication option or deselect to stop communications. So... if I uncheck the “unsubscribe” button that stops communications?!?
- fossuser 6y ago
  I believe that's the correct answer (since the boxes were checked when I first opened the page). Yeah - very confusing though.
lostlogin 6y ago
They clarified in a reply: Marriott Bonvoy Assist @MBonvoyAssist 9 Apr Replying to @zachalberico Sorry for any confusion. Select the box next to each desired communication option or deselect to stop communications Now I think I understand what they are saying, but it’s not a great explanation either. A new sentence before the ‘or’ would have been helpful.

naggie 6y ago

I just got an email from redhat, for which the unsubscribe mechanism asks for contact information and a survey. Pic: https://twitter.com/callanbryant/status/1266400315940786178 https://twitter.com/callanbryant/status/1266400315940786178

geofft 6y ago

If you forward someone else something from a mailing list, should they have the ability to unsubscribe you from that list without your consent?

goguy 6y ago
Nothing stopping them doing that the other way either.
- geofft 6y ago
  I think I don't follow, what's "the other way"? I run a newsletter where both subscribe and unsubscribe do double-opt-in (i.e., both subscribing and unsubscribing send you an email with a confirmation URL with a token - each newsletter has an unsubscribe link but that link doesn't include the token). Maybe this is a mistake? Is the norm that anyone can unsubscribe anyone else from newsletters?
  - mrob 6y ago
    The term "double-opt-in" is spammer propaganda. It falsely implies that getting your email added to a spammer's mailing list, regardless of how it happened, is "opting in".
    - geofft 6y ago
      OK, fine, maybe I shouldn't use the term. Pretend I said, "I run a mailing list where I want to make absolutely sure that nobody is receiving mail without their active and informed consent and that nobody is unsubscribed without their active consent either." I think my question still stands?
    - realityking 6y ago
      Then it is a remarkably good piece of propaganda as it has the blessing of, at least, German courts. https://www.telemedicus.info/urteile/Wettbewerbsrecht/Werbung/1298-BGH-Az-I-ZR-16409-Double-opt-in-Verfahren.html https://www.telemedicus.info/urteile/Wettbewerbsrecht/Werbun...

redstripe 6y ago

This would certainly be convenient, however if your mailing lists contains a lot of old people then they forward your emails to their friends. Their friends who are annoyed by this then unsubscribe the original recipient without noticing that the email was forwarded by their friend. This is a real problem for us - not a made up scenario. So we remove the auto-filled email on the unsubscribe form.

tcgv 6y ago
A way to mitigate this issue is to ask for a confirmation before marking the email address as unsubscribed, showing the retrieved email address in a large font as to prevent someone who received a forwarded email from mistakenly unsubscribing someone else.

tartrate 6y ago

If that happens, it _is_ spam.

maybeiambatman 6y ago

My Pet Peeve: Google doesn't let you unsubscribe to YouTube TV emails via their "Unsubsribe" button. https://twitter.com/mohd_irteza/status/1227772431605149696?s=19 https://twitter.com/mohd_irteza/status/1227772431605149696?s...