Klarinet Archive - Posting 000590.txt from 1999/11

From: charette@-----.org
Subj: [kl] Tech note
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 11:03:16 -0500

I just received an email from a subscriber which went (only slightly paraphrased):

"I don't remember what email address I used to subscribe. I've tried to unsubscribe. I demand that you unsubscribe anything that looks like whoever at wherever."

I don't do that. What I do is to help YOU find out how to unsubscribe your email address - it's sometimes hard to determine if you're really who you say you are. Forging an email "From:" line is relatively easy, so the software we use (ezmlm) uses a 2-step process that is much harder to spoof. The way we go about finding out who ezmlm thinks you are and how we can get you unsubscribed (even when you and I don't know your email address) is -

We look at the headers to your email because everything we need to know is there. In Outlook/Outlook Express it's under "Properties" of the email message; the headers may be accessed a different way on your mailer.

There are possibly two lines there that matter - on my Klarinet mail they look like:

Return-Path: <klarinet-return-22720-charette@-----.org> and
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:klarinet-unsubscribe-charette@-----.org>

The digest subscribers may not have that "List-Unsubscribe:" line, but that's there just for convenience's sake anyway.

As you probably guessed, the "List-Unsubscribe:" line tells you exactly how to unsubscribe, EVEN IF YOUR MAIL IS BEING FORWARDED. If I use the address:

klarinet-unsubscribe-charette@-----.org

to unsubscribe, the ezmlm software will send out a confirmation message to the address charette@-----.

If you don't see the "List-Unsubscribe:" line, then we'll create our own from the "Return-Path:" line. We'll strip out the "return-nnnnn" and substitute "unsubscribe" = Voila!

klarinet-unsubscribe-charette@-----.org

All you digest subscribers will see klarinet-digest in place of klarinet in the addresses above; you'll need to keep the "-digest" around, since klarinet and klarinet-digest have two totally separate subscriber lists.

Hopefully this will help those of you with unsubscribe problems.

Cheers,
Mark C.

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