McLauchlan, Kevin wrote:
Michael Adams [mailto:[email protected]]
Under what situation does one have trouble getting off
the list?
Here's one.
I was a long-time subscriber to another list, and then needed to
change something, BUT my company had made a change in our e-mail
system. My e-mail address went from being
<firstinitial+familyname>@address.com to being
<firstname.familyname>@address.com.
They allowed a grace period of a couple of years, during which
incoming mail to <firstinitial+familyname> was accepted
along with the
new address. But of course, you see the problem. Long before the
two years was up (in fact the first day of the change) OUTGOING mail
began coming from <firstname.familyname>@address.com.
Thus, with the same e-mail account as I'd always had, I could no
longer send unsubscribe or confirmation e-mails from my old
self - the
self that had originally subscribed... the self that would be
recognized by the automated listserver.
This is a no brainer, explain the problem to the IT dept. and he/she
would look after it for you.
Your comment "no brainer" implies that it takes no brains to solve the
problem and therefore I'm lacking seriously. Obviously, you don't work
for (and have never) a large-ish corporation with the IT department
located a thousand miles away and buffered by procedures and processes.
While it is possible to nag them until they deal with a problem like
that, it risks having them be less accessible and helpful when a _real_
problem arises.
Anyway, this was years ago, and somebody (a few posts back) assures me
that listserver software now accepts confirmation e-mails from other
than the original (subscribed) address... which was not the case when I
had the problem.
Just to clarify here -- the unsubscribe request itself must either come
from the subscribed account, or use the indirect form with the
subscribed account included in the address (with an equals sign instead
of an at sign). The unsubscribe confirmation e-mail is sent to the
subscribed account, but the operative part of it is a "cookie" that
works from any account that responds to that confirmation message. So
your new account would have received the message (during the grace
period) and you could have responded to it successfully from your new
account. You'd then have gotten a "goodbye" message sent to the old
account and passed along to the new one, and the old account would have
been properly unsubscribed. I agree with you -- the solution for this
problem is not obvious. (I've dealt with IT departments, too -- I can't
help but think of Dilbert's "Mordak, Preventer of Information Services"!)
I merely provided an example where somebody asked "Under what
situation..."
By the way, here's another one you can toss snide "no brainer"
assertions at:
Some corporations have very convoluted filtering systems, consisting of
multiple, overlaid spam-filtering tools, domain-blocking, and all sorts
of other approches combined. Users of the mail system don't get access
to all mail that has been filtered out.
By contrast, if the company outsources that task to a mail-filtering
service, their screening is usually more integrated, and users can
access the withheld mail or can edit "white lists" to ensure that
certain mail always comes through (like messages from the spouse or from
the heirs to Nigerian fortunes :-) ).... But that's not the case for
everybody who's a cog in a big impersonal system.
At any rate, I grant that the majority of those who are failing to
unsubscribe are probably failing to read (and heed) ALL the words in the
unsubscribe instructions. The fact that so many don't even realize that
those intructions are at the bottom of (most) posts is indicative.
HOWEVER, less than two years ago, on this list, we had examples of
people not receiving the message footer parts. In fact I recall
receiving posts from _some_ posters (who posted only to the list, not to
individual members) where the incoming message did not contain the
unsubscribe administrivia at the bottom. I forget what was the source
of that situation, but it might be relevant to some of the people having
trouble.
- Kevin (still intentionally subscribed and still getting benefit from
this list)
Anybody who's getting a lot of unwanted list mails would probably see
the trailer on at least some of them, if they looked. But if somebody is
trying to get off the list, I don't think there's much point in telling
them they should have looked there. I think we should be kind and just
give people the information they need, not scold them for not having
seen it -- especially since your example points out one of the ways the
standard solution would fail. The users-help information mentions the
indirect form, but it isn't clear what happens with the unsubscribe
confirmation. By the way, another situation is what led me into
investigating this whole thing in the first place. Somebody was
maliciously subscribed to a number of mailing lists, including this one,
from another account that forwarded the traffic. If the unsubscribe
confirmation message was also forwarded, the victim could have used the
same indirect unsubscribe technique to unsubscribe the spoof account,
but more probably they'd need help from the ISP of the spoofer. After
all, they could have set up a filter to intercept the unsubscribe
confirmation and not forward it, or simply resubscribed periodically.
Glad you're finding this list useful, I think it's one of the best
things about OOo and open source projects in general that we can help
each other out so easily, and that most people do so in the right spirit.
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