Remove requirement to enter email address on unsubscribe

[mattwire]

Overview

I find it very annoying when I have to do additional work to actually unsubscribe from a mailing list - especially when doing so via a device without a keyboard! Most list unsubscribe forms don't require you to enter any details these days and usually just ask you to confirm.

Following discussion this PR is now updated to remove the requirement to enter email address instead of adding a setting

You are not asked to re-enter your email address on unsubscribe.

Before

You must enter your email address correctly in the text box:

After

You just need to read the form and click "Unsubscribe":

Technical Details

Comments

[civibot]

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[seamuslee001]

This makes sense to me but maybe we need to just circulate in the dev digest first @eileenmcnaughton. Concept seems fine to me but it does hypothetically risk increase of accidental unsubscribe but that is probably a small risk

[mattwire]

@seamuslee001 @eileenmcnaughton Agree with putting this to dev-digest first. I've been getting more and more annoyed with sites that seem to make it "difficult" to unsubscribe and then I realised that CiviCRM is one of them so decided I'd better fix!

[eileenmcnaughton]

I've added a note to include this in the dev-digest. I see adding a test as a pretty important requirement for adding a new setting so it might be worth you confirming you are happy to write one before I write it up for the digest @mattwire

[mlutfy]

Personally I would just remove the old behaviour completely.

[mattwire]

Personally I would just remove the old behaviour completely.

@mlutfy I'd do the same but wasn't sure if that would be acceptable!

[highfalutin]

I'm all for this.

[mlutfy]

@colemanw You had indicated a thumbs-up on the initial PR. Would you be comfortable with removing the behaviour completely?

ping @agh1 @artfulrobot @MegaphoneJon (pinging folks with more complex mailing experience)

[agh1]

Pinging @KarinG because I remember her building this feature in the first place. I looked back and found that this feature was introduced in CRM-11302 so you can see a little bit of discussion there.

Personally, I agree it's annoying to type in your address and would be happy to be rid of it.

I also wonder: what's the concern about displaying the full email address on the form? I can imagine someone might forward their email to a friend, who then forwards to another friend. It's likely that the forwards have the original recipient's email on it already. If not, the email address isn't particularly sensitive information, and this friend-of-a-friend could probably do a lot more damage by clicking the unsubscribe button than by knowing the email address.

Finally, opt out is a separate form and anything that changes on the unsubscribe form should change over there, too.

[MegaphoneJon]

I'm a +1 for removing this altogether. I checked CRM-11302 and IMO we'd be satisfying the original intent without requiring you type the email.

[KarinG]

Hi! Back then I had no opinion on anything :-) I only implemented the masking/verification input because Dave Greenberg told me to do it! Happy to see it go if people feel that's better.

[eileenmcnaughton]

I don't have an opinion on this - but I think it has good engagement from all the people who I think should be engaged - so I'm happy with whatever you agree

[agileware-justin]

Would be really happy if the feature was completely removed. No need for a setting.

[eileenmcnaughton]

@mlutfy I'm going to unsubscribe on this & leave it to you to decide what is agreed :-)

[artfulrobot]

+1 for removing having to enter your email, it's a PITA and is likely to annoy people who have already decided they don't like you, which can't be good manners.

I don't think we should display the email address verbatim. Just a feeling.

Not that this has been suggested, but: we definitely still need the button press to confirm the unsubscribe (to avoid link scanners unsubscribing people).

[mlutfy]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. It's one of those small changes to UX, that I suspected folks might have strong feelings about, and I wanted to make sure we don't break any workflows by doing this change (even if adding the setting is technically "safer", it's more work, more code, and I doubt anyone would use it).

To summarize discussion & my opinion:

• no need for a setting, remove the email verification completely
• still display the email address, but keep it masked (m*@example.org). I think it's still useful info to display (for folks with multiple emails), and while it's a bit odd to mask it, I don't think it does much harm. Also keep the button that needs to be clicked to complete the operation.
• adopt the same behaviour on the opt-out form.

Besides the code removal, the 3rd point above would require a bit more work.

@mattwire What do you think? Could you update your PR?

[mattwire]

@mlutfy That's great and was also my preferred solution. I will update the PR in the next day or so.

[agileware-justin]

Awesome thanks @mattwire

Do we really need to mask the email address? Either show it entirely or don't, masking it is nothing more than "security theatre". It's more confusing than useful.

My preference is not to show the email address at all.

[artfulrobot]

nothing more than "security theatre".

I disagree. As someone who has multiple email addresses, it's very useful to me to see which is affected by an unsubscribe.

As for displaying the whole thing, I suppose it's just the uneducated user this protects. e.g. Fred receives an email and likes it. They click the web view and share that link on social media. Everyone on social media now has their email and Fred might not even notice/know.

[agileware-justin]

@artfulrobot if our job is to now try and protect what people share on social media, then I'm definitely tapping out! 😄

[mlutfy]

I'd rather keep the email masking as a separate issue. I don't think we will get an easy consensus on that one.

[mattwire]

@mlutfy PR now updated to remove the requirement for email verification altogether. Now you just have to read and click.

Note that I ended up cleaning up the form code a bit so it looks like a bigger change than it actually is!

[mattwire]

Also please see #21350 for opt-out form.

[wmortada]

+1 for removing the requirement to confirm your email address.

I imagine that this was put in place to prevent people from inadvertently unsubscribing someone else if the original subscriber had forwarded the mailing to them. However, as others have said it's a poor user experience. Displaying the partial email address should be enough to prevent this from happening.

[mlutfy]

I did some tests and the requirement is indeed gone. Thank you @mattwire & reviewers!

[mlutfy]

For more discussion on the topic, see:
https://lab.civicrm.org/dev/user-interface/-/issues/42

[artfulrobot]

Thanks everyone! This is a good ux improvement.