Person wants his email address removed from my list

But refuses to give me his email address

[dickbaker]

I have a site that's politically-oriented. People can click on a button and add their email address to our alert list. The alert list contains thousands of email addresses.

One person has been a real pain in the posterior. He has 15 different email addresses. He's asked me to remove his email address from our alert list, and I've deleted every address that I believe to be one of his.

There's still one left, though, and I cannot find it. I've asked him to provide me with all of his email addresses so that I can find that one address and delete it. He refuses to do so, and says that it's my responsibility. Further, he's threatening to take legal action.

This person was once a volunteer for our organization, but left because of disagreements with the way our group was doing things. I mention that only because he obviously voluntarily gave me his email addresses when he was a member of the group.

I have no way of finding that last email address. Is there any way to do so? Also, does this guy have any legal standing, when he refuses to give me the addresses I need to locate his?

Thanks much for any replies.

[jdMorgan]

> Also, does this guy have any legal standing, when he refuses to give me the addresses I need to locate his?

Ask a lawyer, but I doubt it -- as long as you mean "give me the address I need" (singular).

Tell him if he wants his e-mail address removed, then it is perfectly reasonable that he must tell you which address he wants removed, and that you can take no further action until he makes that address known to you.

If the problem is that he's receiving unwanted mailings from you, then he should certainly know which address they're being sent to, and should tell you -- Why should you have to research a list of addresses?

Having done that, you've demonstrably tried to cooperate. If he won't tell you the address he wants removed, send him a final acknowledgment of his decision to be uncooperative, archive all correspondence, and then put him on permanent 'ignore'.

He's just trying to hassle and worry you, obviously.

[King_Fisher]

Out of all the threats to sue, probably 99.9/10 take no action!

Even if he did the judge would probaly throw it out as being unreasonable.

Don't sweat it, move on...KF

[jomaxx]

If he looks at the email headers from a mailing you send him (and has some clue what he's doing), he can see where the email was sent. Without this, I agree: if he doesn't provide the address then there's no practical way you can do what he asks.

[piatkow]

I suspect that most of us have had the "guess my details and remove me" type of message at some time or other.

It could be that the mailbox you are sending to us auto forwarding. That can be a real pain when the recipient doesn't understand how his email works.

[jecasc]

If I were you I'd do it the other way round. I'd write him a last email, prefarably a registered letter if I knew his real address and set him a ten days deadline to provide the email address and threaten to sue him for harresement if he does not provide the address and continues to molest.

[henry0]

I do not get it, if as you mentioned you have thousands of registered users
then there is DB and you could find the relationship in between username and email
if he was a member of your org then someone probably knows his username.

[rocker]

Do you provide an unsubscribe link in your newsletter? If so, tell him to use it. If you don't provide one, it is probably a good idea to add one.

[dickbaker]

When we started this group in 2001, we didn't have the money for a mailing list database.

Instead, I've been manually adding emails to groups within Outlook Express, with no more than 50 email addresses per group. If someone replies and asks to have his email address removed, I look at the group name the email was sent to and the person's email address. It's easy enough then to go into that group, find the email address and delete it.

What this guy has been doing, though, is replying using a different email address than the one the alert was sent to. So, I can't find that address.

Since this guy was a volunteer years ago, I checked my list of volunteers and found another email address for him. That must have been the problem address, and I deleted it.

I also sent him a very formal email stating that he has to cooperate with me by providing the email address in question if I'm going to delete it. I also made a vague reference to legal action.

When someone in our group has the time to manually copy all of the addresses into the mailing list program we're now subscribing to, I'll be able to have an "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of the alerts.

Thanks for the replies.

[piatkow]

I ask people to explicitly reply to the newsletter with the unsubscribe message. It is still a problem when messages have been forwarded.

Like you I an running a list for a not for profit organisation and the only budget is an occasional payout from Amazon or Adsense from the links on our site which barely covers the costs of hosting and domain name.

I did try using a "donotreply" address for the mailouts but too many people replied to it with important content!

[Marcia]

"People" are not on email lists, email addresses are on email lists. If the person wants their email address removed from the list, they have to tell what the email address is that they want removed. Remove "ME" says nothing; it is not a valid email format.

Remove "ME" without telling what the email address is that the person wants removed is nothing more than maliciously harassing you with mind games. And that is abusive, if it's repeated - enough to report them to their ISP with an abuse complaint.

[piatkow]

Rocker: IIRC an unsubscribe link can actually trigger spam filters. Instructions yes, but not a link.

[g1smd]

Umm. Your system has a flaw.

You say that if I ask you to remove an email address, you will do it. How do you verify that I am authorised to ask you to remove the email address?

You should require that people contact you from the email address that they want removed in order that you remove it.

You say you have removed a bunch of addresses already. Did you send a confirmation email to each one saying that it was being removed, and explaining what to do if that was in error? If not, then some random user may have been unscribed without their knowledge on the behest of someone else.

This is tricky ground.