Subject: Re: [dispatch] Please dispatch draft-levine-herkula-oneclick-02

From: Sri Somanchi <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 05:30:16 -0700

Hi Everyone,

This is Sri Harsha Somanchi, Product Manager - Gmail spam filter.

List-Unsubscribes URIs that lack clear markers to indicate whether they are
one-click or not, present a major issue to large mailbox providers
(including Gmail) that provide assisted unsubscribes in the MUA.

The solution proposed via
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-levine-herkula-oneclick-03 solves this
problem by proposing a standard method for senders to distinctly designate
one-click unsubscribe URIs; while also providing receivers with guidance on
how to follow such links in a way that senders can (reasonably) trust the
unsubscribes to be genuine (ie. not caused by random follows that lack user
consent).

The approach taken by the above draft is acceptable to Gmail and we plan to
implement the same over the next few months.

Background:

If a qualifying message contains the List-Unsubscribe header, Gmail will
surface an option in the MUA to enable the user to take an unsubscribe
action from within the client. While this system works well enough with the
'mailto:' type (where the receiver silently sends an unsubscription email
to the sender in the background), it its more complicated for the URI type.

In URI based List-Unsubscribes, it is not readily apparent to the receiver
whether the link is one-click or not — due to which the unsubscription
option cannot be surfaced as a one-click action*** to the end user in the
MUA . Surfacing the URI as-is to the end user to click is less desirable,
given the context switch from the MUA to the browser (and back).

Thus Gmail has been actively pushing for standardization of one-click URIs
in the List-Unsubscribe header, so that senders can explicitly designate
such links, and receivers only use those URIs in assisted unsubscribes.

*** whereby the receiver silently follows the URI in the background, to
generate an unsubscribe request to the sender - on the user's behalf.

Thanks.