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> We were also informed that our normal, business communications with paying customers should have unsubscribe notices appended to them. You should have an uns

> We were also informed that our normal, business communications with paying customers should have unsubscribe notices appended to them. You should have an unsubscribe link. You should also have your business address and identify yourself. Even if it's not required by the letter of the law, you should add it. As an example: Amazon automatically opted me into an "alert" when a wishlist I viewed had a new viewer. Since it's an "alert" and a "business communication" it has no unsubscribe. This is spam - this is an ad hidden as a notification.

kazinator 5y ago
Though that may be a nice opinion, your ISP has no business dictating that to you.
- Godel_unicode 5y ago
  Abusix isn't their ISP, they're an email blocklist provider. Telling people what they need to do to not get blocked for being abusive is literally their job.
  - hansel_der 5y ago
    yea, in an ideal world, the blocklist provider would educate others in how to avoid beeing blocklisted. yet, if this course is met with success then the blocklist provider is out of business. there seems to be some conflict of interest here.
    - smf 5y ago
      Please see my comment below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30227886 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30227886 and the subsequent threads below. Not all blocklist providers are the same.
      - hansel_der 5y ago
        terribly sorry that you felt personally implicated, that was not my intent. thou every security-for-profit scheme suffers from afromentioned conflict of interest.
thaumaturgy 5y ago
~rsync runs a storage service for offsite backups. You think they should add a one-click "unsubscribe" link to service alerts?
- boopmaster 5y ago
  if the service is managed: customers should be able to manage notification preferences tailored to the severity of the issue, methinks.
  - thaumaturgy 5y ago
    That's not how unsubscribe links are supposed to work. Once the unsubscribe is activated -- and it's supposed to be very easy to activate -- then it's permanent. There's no "un-unsubscribe", "oops I clicked it again", "some other service glitched and clicked it for me". Further, there's a distinction made between "commercial" and "transactional" messages in both law and etiquette. The unsubscribe link is expected in commercial messages, not transactional ones. Abusix didn't know what they were talking about.
    - wl 5y ago
      > Further, there's a distinction made between "commercial" and "transactional" messages in both law and etiquette. The unsubscribe link is expected in commercial messages, not transactional ones. Most of the junk that gets through my spam filter are transactional or other "mandatory" messages intended for someone who fat fingered their email address. If those senders don't want to be marked as spam, they need to provide a way for me to make the messages stop.
      - thaumaturgy 5y ago
        Email confirmations should be standard but that's not what we're talking about here (and I'd expect that ~rsync is handling that properly). Unsubscribing from transactional emails eventually causes the following support conversation: "Hi, uhh, rsync? Yeah, so, I'm having trouble logging in to my account and we really really need our backups, our intern just nuked a database. Yeah, it's uhh... cto@company.com. What do you mean my account's not active? ... ... Why didn't you just tell me my card expired? Well yeah, of course I unsubscribed, but I still wanted to know my account was being shut down!" There's a scale of headaches happening here. At one end of the scale we have "nuisance", as in, "I'm getting too much email, or I have a stupid email address, or I don't know how to filter messages from reputable senders", and at the other end we have "job-ending cockup", as in, "I'm just now finding out that a critical part of our disaster recovery plan hasn't been working for a long time because somebody somewhere was inconvenienced by a notification, and I'm finding this out now because today happens to be the day we really need that disaster recovery plan". Pushing the needle away from the nuisance end moves it closer to the disaster end.
Shared404 5y ago
For rsync however, it seems more likely that it's instead things like disc quota or expiring service. At least based on my understanding of rsync-the-company and rsync-the-hn-commenter.
rsync 5y ago
"You should have an unsubscribe link. You should also have your business address and identify yourself." What would that even look like ? You're a paying customer of a service - they charge you every month - and you use that service ~daily ... and then you unsubscribe to emails ... So then what ? We just keep taking your money and when the service fails or there is an outage or critical notification we ... just don't send it ?
- zamadatix 5y ago
  Yes, just because I use your service doesn't mean I want to see every outage notification status update as an email. Preferably email subscription status would be granular so I can select what I want to get not what some idealized average user would want to get.
  - cbm-vic-20 5y ago
    I've been a paying customer of rsync's service for more than a decade. The only mail I get is the monthly invoice, and roughly once-per-year notice of infrastructure changes that may temporarily affect availability.
    - zamadatix 5y ago
      Oh I have no doubts whatsoever the volume is low and the messages sent intended to be genuinely important to the vast majority of customers, rsync seems very reputable based on what I've heard over the years on HN. It's still nice to have granular subscription though even for rare things you think 95% of users may like to hear about e.g. I've been using a similar service since 2015 and I have 0 interest in receiving their downtime or scheduled maintenance notifications as I don't care enough to take a special action for a failed sync or two in the first place so... I don't opt to receive them and I appreciate that option. I don't get the invoices emailed so I haven't had to think about it one way or the other there.
- scarface74 5y ago
  Yes. I explicitly told you I didn’t want any emails from you.

kazinator 5y ago

Though that may be a nice opinion, your ISP has no business dictating that to you.

Godel_unicode 5y ago
Abusix isn't their ISP, they're an email blocklist provider. Telling people what they need to do to not get blocked for being abusive is literally their job.
- hansel_der 5y ago
  yea, in an ideal world, the blocklist provider would educate others in how to avoid beeing blocklisted. yet, if this course is met with success then the blocklist provider is out of business. there seems to be some conflict of interest here.
  - smf 5y ago
    Please see my comment below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30227886 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30227886 and the subsequent threads below. Not all blocklist providers are the same.
    - hansel_der 5y ago
      terribly sorry that you felt personally implicated, that was not my intent. thou every security-for-profit scheme suffers from afromentioned conflict of interest.

thaumaturgy 5y ago

~rsync runs a storage service for offsite backups. You think they should add a one-click "unsubscribe" link to service alerts?

boopmaster 5y ago
if the service is managed: customers should be able to manage notification preferences tailored to the severity of the issue, methinks.
- thaumaturgy 5y ago
  That's not how unsubscribe links are supposed to work. Once the unsubscribe is activated -- and it's supposed to be very easy to activate -- then it's permanent. There's no "un-unsubscribe", "oops I clicked it again", "some other service glitched and clicked it for me". Further, there's a distinction made between "commercial" and "transactional" messages in both law and etiquette. The unsubscribe link is expected in commercial messages, not transactional ones. Abusix didn't know what they were talking about.
  - wl 5y ago
    > Further, there's a distinction made between "commercial" and "transactional" messages in both law and etiquette. The unsubscribe link is expected in commercial messages, not transactional ones. Most of the junk that gets through my spam filter are transactional or other "mandatory" messages intended for someone who fat fingered their email address. If those senders don't want to be marked as spam, they need to provide a way for me to make the messages stop.
    - thaumaturgy 5y ago
      Email confirmations should be standard but that's not what we're talking about here (and I'd expect that ~rsync is handling that properly). Unsubscribing from transactional emails eventually causes the following support conversation: "Hi, uhh, rsync? Yeah, so, I'm having trouble logging in to my account and we really really need our backups, our intern just nuked a database. Yeah, it's uhh... cto@company.com. What do you mean my account's not active? ... ... Why didn't you just tell me my card expired? Well yeah, of course I unsubscribed, but I still wanted to know my account was being shut down!" There's a scale of headaches happening here. At one end of the scale we have "nuisance", as in, "I'm getting too much email, or I have a stupid email address, or I don't know how to filter messages from reputable senders", and at the other end we have "job-ending cockup", as in, "I'm just now finding out that a critical part of our disaster recovery plan hasn't been working for a long time because somebody somewhere was inconvenienced by a notification, and I'm finding this out now because today happens to be the day we really need that disaster recovery plan". Pushing the needle away from the nuisance end moves it closer to the disaster end.

Shared404 5y ago

For rsync however, it seems more likely that it's instead things like disc quota or expiring service. At least based on my understanding of rsync-the-company and rsync-the-hn-commenter.

rsync 5y ago

"You should have an unsubscribe link. You should also have your business address and identify yourself." What would that even look like ? You're a paying customer of a service - they charge you every month - and you use that service ~daily ... and then you unsubscribe to emails ... So then what ? We just keep taking your money and when the service fails or there is an outage or critical notification we ... just don't send it ?

zamadatix 5y ago
Yes, just because I use your service doesn't mean I want to see every outage notification status update as an email. Preferably email subscription status would be granular so I can select what I want to get not what some idealized average user would want to get.
- cbm-vic-20 5y ago
  I've been a paying customer of rsync's service for more than a decade. The only mail I get is the monthly invoice, and roughly once-per-year notice of infrastructure changes that may temporarily affect availability.
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    Oh I have no doubts whatsoever the volume is low and the messages sent intended to be genuinely important to the vast majority of customers, rsync seems very reputable based on what I've heard over the years on HN. It's still nice to have granular subscription though even for rare things you think 95% of users may like to hear about e.g. I've been using a similar service since 2015 and I have 0 interest in receiving their downtime or scheduled maintenance notifications as I don't care enough to take a special action for a failed sync or two in the first place so... I don't opt to receive them and I appreciate that option. I don't get the invoices emailed so I haven't had to think about it one way or the other there.
scarface74 5y ago
Yes. I explicitly told you I didn’t want any emails from you.