5 ms·

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.
    - vorpalhex 5y ago
      The service is not meant to cater to the lowest common denominator. If you unsubscribe from critical notifications and get screwed over.. that is on you. It is not fair to the rest of us to be inundated with endless spam just so some screwup can be kept from doing something stupid.
      - girvo 5y ago
        Transactional email from a backup service you deliberately signed up to isn’t spam, so congratulations you’ve got what you’re after. Now someone will likely reply shifting the definition of what “spam” is to include Rsync’s critical service emails, and now the term spam is so wide as to be meaningless. At that point it’s on you to manage your own spam filter if you truly feel “your critical backup service is down” is spam. I haven’t been inundated with endless spam for about a decade. Abusix don’t know what they are talking about, and basically all services that let you manage your email notifications still send through critical “your service is about to be turned off because your card details failed” emails regardless of how many checkboxes you disable — and for good reason.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        Karunamon 5y ago
        I got dogpiled on here a couple weeks ago for the temerity to suggest that "spam" is, by definition, unsolicited. Unreasonable people like this put companies in no-win situations.
        vorpalhex 5y ago
        I did not solicit emails from that service. I solicited them to store my data. Did you solicit every nag and advert Amazon sends you? That you bought something from someone does not mean your email inbox is now free game.
        girvo 5y ago
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  You can always login and re-enable an email on the service. The service is allowed to request information needed to process the unsubscribe. I get emails for some dude's Chevy when it needs servicing. I can't unsubscribe. I am stuck getting emails about a car I have never owned from some dealer in Pittsburg. I need an opt out that lets me communocate "hey, some dumbass fatfingered his email, stop spamming me."
  - thaumaturgy 5y ago
    Genuine question: your comment and a bunch of others make me wonder why people seem unable to filter email by sender. That used to be a pretty standard part of having an inbox. Are you using a mail client or service that doesn't have filtering built in? Do you find it difficult to set up a filter rule? Are you unfamiliar with filter rules? Do you use filters but just ideologically object to any unwanted email? I'm honestly curious.
    - ohyeshedid 5y ago
      The conversations about spam are usually incredibly nebulous, as there's different perceptions and perspectives. I think what you're picking up on, is that some folks don't differentiate between commercial email filtering services, and personal spam filters. There's conflation of email 'I don't care about and don't want', bulk UCE, shifty list operators with shifty 40 page terms, etc.
    - wl 5y ago
      Gmail filters are incapable of marking things as spam. Worse, if something matches a filter rule, it's whitelisted.
      - thaumaturgy 5y ago
        Well, that's horrible and explains a lot. Thanks.
    - vorpalhex 5y ago
      It's a chore, and it is a never ending one. I have several thousand senders blocked. However, 1. Some senders intentionally send ads and actually useful notifications from the same address, making filtering more difficult 2. Better yet, some senders constantly shift their address so they are almost unblockable without going to arbitrary keyword blocking I would like to live in a world where instead of me doing stupid amounts of work to not get a flood of spam.. people just don't spam. I am lucky - I can literally throw money and tech at this problem. Most people are not lucky. I would much rather spam be elimited as a whole.

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.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    The service is not meant to cater to the lowest common denominator. If you unsubscribe from critical notifications and get screwed over.. that is on you. It is not fair to the rest of us to be inundated with endless spam just so some screwup can be kept from doing something stupid.
    - girvo 5y ago
      Transactional email from a backup service you deliberately signed up to isn’t spam, so congratulations you’ve got what you’re after. Now someone will likely reply shifting the definition of what “spam” is to include Rsync’s critical service emails, and now the term spam is so wide as to be meaningless. At that point it’s on you to manage your own spam filter if you truly feel “your critical backup service is down” is spam. I haven’t been inundated with endless spam for about a decade. Abusix don’t know what they are talking about, and basically all services that let you manage your email notifications still send through critical “your service is about to be turned off because your card details failed” emails regardless of how many checkboxes you disable — and for good reason.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - Karunamon 5y ago
        I got dogpiled on here a couple weeks ago for the temerity to suggest that "spam" is, by definition, unsolicited. Unreasonable people like this put companies in no-win situations.
      - vorpalhex 5y ago
        I did not solicit emails from that service. I solicited them to store my data. Did you solicit every nag and advert Amazon sends you? That you bought something from someone does not mean your email inbox is now free game.
        girvo 5y ago
vorpalhex 5y ago
You can always login and re-enable an email on the service. The service is allowed to request information needed to process the unsubscribe. I get emails for some dude's Chevy when it needs servicing. I can't unsubscribe. I am stuck getting emails about a car I have never owned from some dealer in Pittsburg. I need an opt out that lets me communocate "hey, some dumbass fatfingered his email, stop spamming me."
- thaumaturgy 5y ago
  Genuine question: your comment and a bunch of others make me wonder why people seem unable to filter email by sender. That used to be a pretty standard part of having an inbox. Are you using a mail client or service that doesn't have filtering built in? Do you find it difficult to set up a filter rule? Are you unfamiliar with filter rules? Do you use filters but just ideologically object to any unwanted email? I'm honestly curious.
  - ohyeshedid 5y ago
    The conversations about spam are usually incredibly nebulous, as there's different perceptions and perspectives. I think what you're picking up on, is that some folks don't differentiate between commercial email filtering services, and personal spam filters. There's conflation of email 'I don't care about and don't want', bulk UCE, shifty list operators with shifty 40 page terms, etc.
  - wl 5y ago
    Gmail filters are incapable of marking things as spam. Worse, if something matches a filter rule, it's whitelisted.
    - thaumaturgy 5y ago
      Well, that's horrible and explains a lot. Thanks.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    It's a chore, and it is a never ending one. I have several thousand senders blocked. However, 1. Some senders intentionally send ads and actually useful notifications from the same address, making filtering more difficult 2. Better yet, some senders constantly shift their address so they are almost unblockable without going to arbitrary keyword blocking I would like to live in a world where instead of me doing stupid amounts of work to not get a flood of spam.. people just don't spam. I am lucky - I can literally throw money and tech at this problem. Most people are not lucky. I would much rather spam be elimited as a whole.