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Ask Laura: Should we confirm unsubscribes?

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Dear Laura,
We have some questions about best practices for unsubscribes. Our ESP uses the List-Unsubscribe header by default on every email. I’m not familiar with this, and I have some questions for you.
First, do you think this is a good idea? Should we always use it, or just for certain emails? Should we use the mailto:link or link to a web site to unsubscribe?
We were also asked about double opt-out and if we should do it. We’re thinking that if someone clicks on the unsubscribe link they would be directed to a site displaying a message such as “Sorry to see you go. We have sent an email out for you to fully unsubscribe from the mailing list”. They then have to open the email and click on the link. Do you recommend doing this? Are there anti-spam regulations that this might violate?
And then, once someone unsubscribes (either with double opt-out or not), should we send out some sort of email confirmation? We currently do not, but we’re thinking of sending something like “Sorry to see you go.  If you unsubscribed accidentally please click here to re-subscribe.” What do you think?
Thanks,
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

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October 2016: The Month in Email

We’ve returned from London, where I spoke at the Email Innovations Summit and enjoyed a bit of vacation. My wrap-up post also mentions an article I wrote for the Only Influencers site, which looks at questions I get asked frequently: “Why does spam make it to the inbox and our legitimate marketing email doesn’t? Should we just copy their tactics?”
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In industry news, Yahoo caught our attention for two surprising moves: disabling forwarding and — much more disturbing — creating software for intelligence agencies to search customer email.
Some legal updates this month: The Second Court of Appeals upheld an earlier ruling that companies are in fact liable for the activities of their affiliates, including spam and fraudulent claims. This is important, as we often see spammers and cybercriminals use affiliates to distance themselves from these activities. We also saw another fine assessed for a violation of CASL, and noted with appreciation the transparency and thoughtful process that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) demonstrates in explaining their actions.
Another excellent report is the one created by the Exploratorium to explain their recent experience with being phished. It’s a good piece to share with your organization, in that it reminds us that these cybercriminals are exploiting not just our technology but our trust-based connections to our friends and colleagues. It’s important to raise awareness about social engineering as a part of information security. And speaking of email security, we were delighted to note that André Leduc received the 2016 J.D. Falk award this month at M3AAWG for his excellent work on this topic. It’s a fitting legacy to our friend, J.D., who died five years ago this month. We miss him.
Finally, we’d be remiss in observing Halloween without a post about zombies. Feel free to read it aloud in your spookiest voice.

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Microsoft using the List-Unsubscribe header

An interesting observation from Brian Curry about how Microsoft is using the List Unsubscribe header in their interface. The short version is that Microsoft is only supporting mailto: links. They’re ignoring any List-Unsubscribe links that are a URL.
Here are some screenshots.  When the sender is using a List-Unsubscribe <http://> header, Microsoft states that there is no information on how to help the user unsubscribe, so the offer to block the sender instead. Like in these two messages.
When the List-Unsubscribe header uses a mailto: link, Microsoft uses completely different language in the popup and does let the user know any future mail will go to the junk folder.

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