Using SuiteCRM 7.8.31. When running email campaigns I found that many emails get their opt-out link clicked immediately upon receipt, together with all other links, even if received in the middle of the night. As I can see it, the only explanation is that the recipientās email handler checks every link for possible malware etc. and then inadvertently (from our perspective) also unsubscribes the recipient, regardless of there is such an intent or not.
One way around it would be for the unsubscribe link to take the user to a new customized page where he/she would need to either enter his/her email address and then confirm or complete some other action for the unsubscribe action.
I would think that other users have already solved this in some fashion and am interested in different solutions.
I never heard of this but I guess it is possibleā¦
I would start by checking those web requests to see if thereās anything particular about them, so that you can tell them apart from the genuine (humanly clicked) requests.
Itās quite likely that the user-agent string is different.
I can see in the Email Campaign results that all links in the campaign email were clicked at the same time, even in the middle of the night. I know some companies employ software to check all incoming emails for malware. I hypothesize that this software automatically examines each link in every email for possible malware and thus - inadvertenly - unsubscribes the recipient.
If the unsubscribe link would take the recipient to a custom page where they would need to take some additional action I would think we could avoid the above.
I would think this would be a widely encountered problem seen by other users?
If you do some logging or debugging in the SuiteCRM endpoint (whichever php file is handling the web request coming in from the clients, or the clientsā security checks app), you should be able to inspect that
OK, thanks will look into that. I still think a more complex unsubscribe process might be an āeasierā way to address this from the senderās standpoint.
Has anyone modified the opt-out process so that when the opt-out link in a campaign email is clicked the recipient is taken to a page where he/she has to click on a button to opt-out?
This would eliminate a security scan of links leading to opt-out, regardless of the recipientās intention.
Hereās a thread showing what I did back in 2019 which has eliminated the problem of spam checkers following the unsubscribe link. The page that gets loaded by clicking the unsubscribe link has a box that must be checked to actually follow the real unsubscribe link.
Thank you very much - after a minor modification your code worked beautifully on 7.8.31.
However, I discovered that two different domains managed to unsubscribe programmatically despite the requirement to click the box and then hit the button. I know this with certainty because (1) the mailing was sent during the night and (2) the unsubscribe link was hit for a number of recipients at these two domains within a minute or two. Thus, it seems that whatever mail server software they use is smarter than I thoughtā¦