However we also have a few customers running their own mailing lists who also generate some complaints. There's nothing wrong with sending mail-outs to a list of legitimately-garnished email addresses. However, we've noticed some rather poor practices in terms of managing "opt-outs", or dealing with people who want to unsubscribe from these lists.

We operate Majordomo mailing list engines on both linux servers. Both server's control panels allow you to add and remove list members manually. Majordomo also has an integrated automatic "unsubscribe" feature and the ability to confirm (un)subscriptions by sending confirmation codes to the relevant email address. These codes need to be returned in order for the requested action - whether to subscribe or unsubscribe - to be carried out.

If you're using ANY other type of mailing list manager at the moment on our servers (specifically CGI-based ones) then please contact us as soon as possible with regards to moving your lists onto a more sensible platform. This also applies if you host a web site with us and have a mailing list that you send out by some other means (e.g. software). We have some tips and tricks we can give you as well as a template configuration file for your list and some web-based forms and scripts you can use. We'll be adding these to the support section when we get a chance.

In the meantime all list owners should have a read through these guidelines and think about how they are being or can be applied to their lists:

http://www.mail-abuse.org/manage.html