CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

We are about to launch an email campaign, and recognising that people will (hopefully!) forward messages to their friends and colleagues, we wanted to deal with potential unsubscribes affecting the wrong recipient. Eg, if Dave receives a CiviMail with an unsubscribeUrl, and forwards it to Jess, { ... repeat ... } then the final recipient might click on the unsubscribeUrl and unsubscribe Dave.

CiviCRM does notify the user of the address which is to be unsubscribed, but given people's strong dislike for unexpected email we thought that some folks might click through the unsubscribe button without reading. Easy to do.

So, with a bit of tweaking (and using only a custom template) I've added some code that helps ensure the user really wants to unsubscribe the address that the URL affects, by asking them to enter it into a checkbox.

I've got a couple of finishing tweaks to make, then I'll post the code here. I'd like it available to others, and also I had to code it using jQuery (I'm less familiar with Dōjō) and would love it if a Dōjō speaker could give me tips on how to use that toolkit as well, so it's available to all CiviCRM users.

(Hey ... doesn't Joomla package jQuery by default now too?)

Yes - I didn't know about that feature at first but discovered it in the list of CiviMail action tokens.

However, we aren't anticipating that any great portion of users will be able to resist the allure of familiar methods - like hitting the fwd button ... :S

And dgg - any thought about taking something like this in to core as it seems like a useful enhancement to me - unless you know others would be annoyed with requiring their 'opt outers' to have to type in their email address as confirmation.

@peted: you are SO lucky i stumbled in today of all days. here you go!

{if $confirm}
<div class="messages status">
    <dl>
      <dt><img src="{$config->resourceBase}i/Inform.gif" alt="{ts}status{/ts}" /></dt>
      <dd><label>{$display_name} ({$email})</label> {ts}has been successfully unsubscribed.{/ts}</dd>
    </dl>
</div>
{else}
<div>
    <form action="{$confirmURL}" method="post" onSubmit="return validateOptout();" >
      {if $groupExist}
        <div class="messages status">
          Unsubscribing {ts 1=$display_name 2=$email} %1 (%2){/ts}<br/>
        </div>
<p>
Before we unsubscribe you, we'd like to check that you didn't get this email from a friend who
forwarded it to you, in which case you may not actually be subscribed to this mailing list.
</p>
<p><b>Please confirm</b> that you are the final recipient of the address <em>{$email}</em> by typing that email address in the box below.</p>
<h2>Type this email address below to complete opt-out:</h2>
<h3>{$email}</h3>
<br>
<input type="text" name="confirm_address" value="" size="36" id="optout-entry">
<input type="hidden" name="confirm_address_check" value="{$email}" id="optout-check"><br><br>
</p>

<p>You are requesting unsubscription from the following mailing lists:</p>

            <table class="selector" style="width: auto;">
                {counter start=0 skip=1 print=false}
                {foreach from=$groups item=group}
                <tr class="{cycle values="odd-row,even-row"}">
                 <td><strong>{$group.title}</strong></td>
                 <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;{$group.description}&nbsp;</td>
                </tr>
                {/foreach}
            </table>
        <center>
          <input type="submit" name="_qf_unsubscribe_next" value="{ts}Unsubscribe{/ts}" class="form-submit" />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
           <input type="submit" name="_qf_unsubscribe_cancel" value="{ts}Cancel{/ts}" class="form-submit" />
        </center>
      {else}
        <div class="messages status">
          {ts 1=$display_name 2=$email} %1 (%2){/ts}<br/>
          {ts}Sorry, you are not on the mailing list. You are probably already unsubscribed.{/ts}<br/>
        </div>
      {/if}
    </form>
</div>
{/if}
<script type='text/javascript'>
{literal}
var iToldYouOnce = false ;
function validateOptout() {
  var inputEntry = $('#optout-entry') ;
  var checkEntry = $('#optout-check') ;
  if ( inputEntry.val().toLowerCase() != checkEntry.val().toLowerCase() ) {
    if ( !iToldYouOnce ) {
      $(inputEntry).after('<br><br><span style="color:red;font-weight:900">' +
        'It appears that the email address you typed in is not the one to which this ' +
        'email was originally sent.<\/span>');
      iToldYouOnce = true ;
    }
    return false ;
  }
}
{/literal}
</script>


@xavier: i agree - that's why the form says, in short:

"you are subscribed as xavier@example.org. to unsubscribe, type 'xavier@example.org' in this box first. thanks!"

worst case scenario, it displays the email of the person who started the FWD chain which the final recipient has tried to hit unsubscribe on.

civicrm/templates/CRM/Mailing/Page/Unsubscribe.tpl I believe. (From memory!)