David Andrews wrote:

I run mailman with about 175 lists, and 6000 users, many of whom belong to multiple lists. I have personalized e-mail set to yes, and the following in the footer which produces a personal options link for the user in each message:

To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for %(real_name)s: %(user_optionsurl)s

Several times a week I get mail from a user saying they got an unsubscribe confirmation message and hadn't done anything to trigger it. I believe them because I have gotten some too. This behavior seems to have started when I started adding personalized footers. Is it somehow caused by the long string of personalized links left in messages when people reply and don't trim off bottom. Some of these message chains can get pretty long.

It is almost certainly this.

Or, is there something else that causes the generation of seemingly random unsubscribe confirmation messages?

Or maybe the member forwarding an "interesting" list post to someone else who thinks the forward came from a list and wants to unsubscribe.

In any case, it is caused by a third party receiving a message with the member's unsubscribe link and following the link. Members can avoid this by always removing the footer from any list post they reply to or forward, or if they can't be bothered to do that, they can just ignore the unsubscribe confirmations they will inevitably receive.

-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan