Stuff that occurs to me

All of my 'how to' posts are tagged here. The most popular posts are about blocking and private accounts on Twitter, also the science communication jobs list. None of the science or medical information I might post to this blog should be taken as medical advice (I'm not medically trained).

Think of this blog as a sort of nursery for my half-baked ideas hence 'stuff that occurs to me'.

Contact: @JoBrodie Email: jo DOT brodie AT gmail DOT com

Science in London: The 2018/19 scientific society talks in London blog post

Friday 14 September 2012

The risks of forwarding mailing list emails to a friend ;)


I've just unsubscribed myself from a mailing list and received this delightfully poetic, if plaintive, acknowledgement in response:
"We have removed your email address from our list.
We're sorry to see you go.
Was this a mistake? Did you forward one of our emails to a friend, and they clicked the unsubscribe link not realizing they were in fact unsubscribing you from this list? If this was a mistake, you can re-subscribe at: [redacted]"
Hopefully everyone already knows to edit out any "view this email online" or "unsubscribe" link before sending it on (I have to do this every time I forward any mailing list email to my Posterous blog for example)... but that's why. These emails are packed full of live links that include your email address and can be used to unsubscribe you :)

Perhaps it would be better to have this sort of thing as a two-step process - click to unsubscribe, but nothing actually happens until you confirm.

And while I'm at it, don't forget that if you produce a mailing list email newsletter thing which includes an unsubscribe link you also need to (as in I think you should, it's not a requirement) include a ilink.

This is because (do I really need to write this?!) you might hope that people WILL forward your email and the recipients might subscribe.

I never trust those "forward this to a friend" systems that require me to enter my email address and someone else's (I think it's rude to give you my friend's address without checking with them first which is why I always use my own email system to alert them to something they might want to join). Does anyone actually use them?

1 comment:

  1. "web chat software" (which linked to what seemed to be spam) said "Yes, That will be happen some time to sending the Emails in professional environment. Everyone should aware of the risk while sending the Emails."

    I bet this multi-purpose comment appears all over the web on posts such as this ;)

    ReplyDelete

Comment policy: I enthusiastically welcome corrections and I entertain polite disagreement ;) Because of the nature of this blog it attracts a LOT - 5 a day at the moment - of spam comments (I write about spam practices,misleading marketing and unevidenced quackery) and so I'm more likely to post a pasted version of your comment, removing any hyperlinks.

Comments written in ALL CAPS LOCK will be deleted and I won't publish any pro-homeopathy comments, that ship has sailed I'm afraid (it's nonsense).