This defines whether new members receive a confirmation request when joining the mailing list. The confirmation request is an email message telling the person that they have requested to join this mailing list, and that the person has to respond to the confirmation message in order to become a full member. The new member's status is set to Confirm until the confirmation response is received, and the person does not receive mail from the mailing list until the confirmation is received.

The reply-to email address given in the subscription confirmation request message is a unique address for that member. You may want to include this address in the body of a customized confirm document you send out. Thus, the reply-to address is constructed by using the following text:

lyris-confirm-%%memberidchar%%@yourdomain.com

This failsafe confirm address allows a member to reply to a single confirmation request and confirm their membership for all their lists. The contents of the reply is irrelevant, so long as it is addressed to the confirm address.

If a member visits your website and signs up for four of your lists, you can have Aurea List Manager send the new member a single confirmation message for all four lists by using the oneconfirm option of the add command. When the member replies to this one confirmation request message, the reply goes to the failsafe confirmation address. When Aurea List Manager receives mail at this address, Aurea List Manager confirms all outstanding confirmation requests for that member. Prospective members cannot confirm to some lists but not others.

Advantages of Confirm Subscribes

Confirmation serves several purposes. It is quite common for people to mistype their email address when subscribing to a mailing list using the web interface. Without confirmation, Aurea List Manager is going to waste effort trying to send mail to this incorrect address.

Another need for confirmation is to counter a common form of electronic harassment. The harasser signs someone they wish to harm to many mailing lists (perhaps several hundred), and that person is then flooded with unwanted electronic mail. If that person's email server is not perfectly configured, the email server may crash, or prohibit other people sharing the email server from receiving their email. At the very least, it uses bandwidth and other resources.

The Confirmation feature blocks this form of electronic harassment. If the harasser subscribes someone to 100 Aurea List Manager mailing lists (all with Confirm set to Yes), the person receives 100 confirmation messages but no further messages. If the person does not respond to the subscription confirmation messages (as they should not), the memberships are not activated.

We highly recommend that all Open mailing lists use the Confirm feature as this form of electronic harassment is quite common and is very bothersome to the victim.

This setting determines whether email requests to unsubscribe are immediately acted upon by Aurea List Manager, or whether it is going to send a request to the member asking them to confirm that they want to unsubscribe from the list.

The three options for Confirming Unsubscribes are to confirm only questionable unsubscribes, to confirm all unsubscribes, and to never confirm unsubscribes (the default setting).

For announcement lists we strongly recommend that you use the default setting, and that you do not use the setting that requires confirmation of all unsubscribes. Announcement list members tend to find this extra step frustrating, and may accuse you of being a spammer.

If an unsubscribe confirmation email message is sent, the message informs the person to reply to the given message, if they want to be unsubscribed, or to ignore the message if they do not want to unsubscribe. Once a person responds to the confirming email to confirm leaving the list, they receive the Aurea List Manager default goodbye message. Members who confirm their unsubscribes do not receive any goodbye document you specify for the list.

Advantages of Confirm Unsubscribes

One reason to confirm unsubscribes is that people are sometimes nasty and try to unsubscribe people that they do not like. They can do this by forging an unsubscribe request and sending it on behalf of that person.

Another reason to confirm unsubscribes is when you are using the failsafe unsubscribe %%email.unsub%% address in your message. This mechanism places the recipient's email address and unsubscribe email address at the bottom of their message. If someone forwards this message to another, that person could unsubscribe the subscriber by following the unsubscribe instructions in the message.

Because most lists are not subject to this problem, the default is to never confirm unsubscribes. If you are concerned about people unsubscribing others, use the setting that confirms only questionable unsubscribes. With this setting, only when a unsubscribe request comes from an address different from that subscribed to the list does the member receive a confirmation request.