Confirmed Subscriptions

ListManager can send a "confirmation request" when a person asks to subscribe to a mailing list. The confirmation request message is sent to the email address that was subscribed. The person must receive this confirmation request message, and reply to it, in order for the membership to be activated. With a confirmed subscription, ListManager has proven that the email address given to it is indeed the email address of the person who requested the subscription.

Confirmed subscriptions prevent two problems:

1. People sometimes join a mailing list under a fake email address, in order to post harassing or otherwise inappropriate messages to the mailing list. With a confirmed subscription, people must use an email address that they can receive email at, which provides a "paper trail" that points back to a real person.

2. In order to harass other people, some malicious people will subscribe the other person to mailing lists that the person never asked to be signed up to. If enough mailing lists are involved, the person may receive a huge amount of email and this can be a real inconvenience to them. This is especially a problem when a web form is used to subscribe people, as it is very easy to enter someone else's email address in that form. Confirmed subscription solve this problem, because the person being abused gets the confirmation request, and does not confirm, so that they membership is never activated.

You may configure subscription confirmations in Utilities: List Settings: New Subscriber Policy: Confirmation.