Deactivate account

[Makoto]

I have a suggestion related to some recent problems I've had with Hotmail, as well as some users contacting me personally to request having their accounts deactivated/deleted.

This has become a frequent issue for me over the past few months.

My entire subnet is currently blacklisted from Hotmail. I'm not on any major spam lists, but due to the fact that, according to Hotmail, users have repeatedly flagged messages from my IP.Board site as unwanted, I have been placed on a block.

I've been recommended to enroll in Microsoft's Junk Email Reporting Program..

[font=Tahoma][size=2]Monitor user complaints. Windows Live Hotmail also has a sender complaint feedback loop program called the Junk Email Reporting Program (JMRP). Enrollment in this free program will benefit you as a sender as it will keep your email lists updated and populated with interested Windows Live Hotmail customers. This program will help you to remove those Windows Live Hotmail customers who do not want to receive emails from your company.

This seems like a fair solution. I get notified when people complain, then since they're too incompetent to figure out how to edit their notification settings after signing up for the site and verifying membership confused as to how to unsubscribe from automated e-mails, this will allow me to simply deactivate the accounts of the complainers.

This is really both a question and, if the answer to my question is no, a suggestion.

Question: Can banned members still receive e-mails?

Automated or not. I don't like deleting entire user accounts. This is permanent, there's no way for these users to recover their accounts if they later wish to get them back. Second, it causes all of their posts to appear as posts from guests, which simply isn't very pretty and confusing to other members.

It would be nice if I could simply "deactivate" user accounts. What would this mean? Maybe this could work with the ban system, with a few tweaks. What do you think?

1. [*]When the user tries to log into the site, they get a message stating their account has been deactivated with instructions on how to request reactivation if they so wish. They cannot otherwise use the site in any way. Similar to banned members, but it will

not state that they are banned. Since they have not been banned for violating any board guidelines, their account has simply been deactivated by users request or, in my scenario, also by any abuse complaints from Hotmail. [*]Deactivating a users account makes it where they will never receive any e-mails from the site. Bulk or automated. An exception might be made for the reactivation process. [*]Other site members will not be able to view deactivated users profile or send them private messages. They will get a message stating the users account has been deactivated when trying to access their profile. [*]A settings tab could be added for deactivating. It will offer a full explanation on what account deactivation means, how they can reactivate later if they wish, and so on and so forth. This is basically similar to the standard deactivation process most social networks now offer.

[Rhett]

I like the idea, but in reality it has nothing to do with microsoft and their recent changes in policy and going overboard with blocking legit IP's, it's a common issue and something most people are in the same situation with. I spent about three weeks getting a couple of my servers off the block list with them. It's to the point to where I block any registrations using @msn @hotmail @live. The largest issue I have with it is they will not tell you the reason... and rather give you a list of 10 hoops to jump through, in the end I was able to get them cleared, however the process in which they have chosen is not a favorable one imo as a provider.

My personal solution on my sites is I don't delete accounts, if the user doesn't want to use it, I tell them not to login. There are a couple sites that I will rename the display name to "Disabled Account" and remove the email, this retains all post and keeps the information in tact.

[Rimi]

I heavily use my @live email, but it looks like it's time to switch. The whole hotmail layout has been completely destroyed and now stuff like this is going on.

[Makoto]

My personal solution on my sites is I don't delete accounts, if the user doesn't want to use it, I tell them not to login. There are a couple sites that I will rename the display name to "Disabled Account" and remove the email, this retains all post and keeps the information in tact.

That's exactly what I do. I tell them there's no reason to have their account deleted, if they don't want to use the site anymore, simply stop visiting. If the users have only made a small amount of posts, I may make an exception.

Otherwise, I'll just move these users to a "deactivated" group, which never opts in to bulk e-mails.

[rbiss]

I rarely send out newsletters anymore, and on the rare occasion that I do it's for something fairly significant. Even then I'm sure 98% of those I send them to think they're a PITA. I know I do when I receive them from other sites.

Problem is, many old members are going to send it to junk mail rather than go through the process of signing in just to opt out of newsletters. Especially those who don't remember their log in details and don't want to play the reset password email game. I wish there was a simple solution for people to opt out. Then there would be less newsletters assigned to junk mail.

[Makoto]

I rarely send out newsletters anymore, and on the rare occasion that I do it's for something fairly significant. Even then I'm sure 98% of those I send them to think they're a PITA. I know I do when I receive them from other sites.

Problem is, many old members are going to send it to junk mail rather than go through the process of signing in just to opt out of newsletters. Especially those who don't remember their log in details and don't want to play the reset password email game. I wish there was a simple solution for people to opt out. Then there would be less newsletters assigned to junk mail.

The thing is, I haven't even sent out any bulk e-mails in months. They've always been rare for me as well. It seems that it's only the automated e-mails that have gotten me blocked.

[Rhett]

The thing is, I haven't even sent out any bulk e-mails in months. They've always been rare for me as well. It seems that it's only the automated e-mails that have gotten me blocked.

I have done much digging on this as I have clients that send nothing but registrations emails being blocked... and then I have some eCommerce clients that send out news letters each week... the one with registrations was blocked and the guy sending out news letters is fine... I believe their method of scanning and or reporting bad emails is flawed majorly. However my solution is to block any MS email... :)

[rbiss]

I don't use email validation anymore. Haven't for a couple of years and actually get less spam signups than before. This way I'm also not sending my own email address out to every spammer that signs up. I've noticed considerably less spam coming to my regular inbox than ever before now that I've been off email validation for about 2 years.

I just use a registration question for new registrants.

The thing is, I haven't even sent out any bulk e-mails in months. They've always been rare for me as well. It seems that it's only the automated e-mails that have gotten me blocked.

[Lavo]

Microsoft may not care much about who's sending the emails unless they are large like facebook, twitter etc..

But for the users they should, i stopped using the service since if microsoft marked the email as spam/junk it wouldn't even reach my junk box. Seriously? It just throws away the email instead of actually delivering to the user. I dont think they have heard of the term false positive.

[Makoto]

Microsoft may not care much about who's sending the emails unless they are large like facebook, twitter etc..

But for the users they should, i stopped using the service since if microsoft marked the email as spam/junk it wouldn't even reach my junk box. Seriously? It just throws away the email instead of actually delivering to the user. I dont think they have heard of the term false positive.

Even better, they won't even allow you to add people to an allow list. There's absolutely no way to override this, period.

[paw]

Seems like a very good idea and pretty well covered off by all, build a deactivated members group, set all pm rights etc to zero, add a message only to be seen by deactivated mebes on how to reactive ( the group would have no post rights or anything )

then if you get the email i want to be deactived, move them to that group, hit the notification preference and wipe it clean, change the user name to a pen name of choice and your done yes ?

email stays in tact they want to come back they can reactivate the account / old user name ?

yes / no ?

anyway a good idea

[Makoto]

I would really love to see an account deactivation feature added, but I also have another suggestion now.

I'm under the impression that most people are just plain and simply stupid and incompetent to the world wide web.

I got an abuse complaint from AOL recently regarding the first bulk message I sent in 4-5 months. It was a simple thank you to everyone for helping us reach over 250,000 posts. That's it.

Unsubscribe instructions were clearly listed in the e-mail.

So I'm wondering, do you think it would be possible (or even a good idea for that matter) to not require users to sign in to unsubscribe? Basically, a simple link at the bottom of each e-mail that will bring users to a confirmation screen, where they can unsubscribe from e-mails without having to sign it.

To really give people no excuse for being to lazy (or incompetent) to unsubscribe the proper way.

[Makoto]

I got my second report since the hotmail block was lifted, which was for a trial user that followed an entire forum and was getting e-mails for each new thread created.

I can see this being an obvious problem, even if the user did follow the forum him or herself and is too lazy to log in and unfollow it again.

I think offering "instant" notifications for entire forums in general may be a bad idea. I think for things like this, it might be best to default to weekly notifications and maybe only allow notifications daily.

Heck, maybe even be able to disallow members of a specific group to follow any forums/threads/etc., and have anything they are following removed upon being moved to that group.

An even further out there idea, stop sending notifications to users that haven't logged into the site in so many days, since this seems like it would mainly be a problem to the users that signed up for the site, followed a forum, then stopped visiting the site entirely since then and are getting tired of the constant notifications. Being the lazy bums they are, flagging a message as spam is more viable then taking the immense effort to log in and unfollow the thread/forum themselves.

Sadly this is more a problem of user incompetence than forum functionality, but it still seems like a potential problem for others as well.

But more than anything, I still strongly support adding a functionality allowing users to have their accounts deactivated entirely.