Some of my Unsubscribes show this: "This subscriber has been unsubscribed manually via the control panel."

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1

I did not unsubscribe these subscribers. Most of them have spammy looking names, so I’m assuming they are bad email subscribers.

My question is: what does it mean when they are tagged with “This subscriber has been unsubscribed manually via the control panel” since I did not unsubscribe them from the control panel?

And, yes, I DID change my password…

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Welcome to the community, Sandi!

A subscriber may be unsubscribed via the control panel for a wide variety of reasons. However, the exact reason is not specified. Besides being unsubscribed by the list owner, a subscriber can be unsubscribed by our system for the following reasons amongst others:

  • They marked a message as SPAM
  • They were added to multiple AWeber mailing lists in a short space of time. This triggers a security feature to put a temporary block on the email address as this behavior is common with spam.
  • They are utilizing a program that unsubscribes them from mailing lists
  • Their inbox became too full to receive future messages so they were blocked from our system due to an internal message by their email program.

If you’re frequently seeing subscribers with strange names show up on your list and get unsubscribed in this way, then this is a good sign to evaluate your sign up source to ensure that there aren’t unwanted submissions, such as bot sign ups coming through. Here are some steps that you can take to prevent bot signups from reaching your list:

  • If you’re not using an AWeber form, make sure your form has a CAPTCHA installed (AWeber sign up forms include a CAPTCHA by default).
  • Enabling confirmed opt in will help to ensure that quality subscribers with real email addresses are signing up to your list.
  • If you notice the suspicious subscribers are coming from the same location, you may be able to block access to your site from that location through your web host.
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You’re awesome, Justin.

Thanks for the welcome and the comprehensive answer. I’ll definitely make sure “enabling confirmed opt in” occurs moving forward (if not already done).

This is a very helpful answer!

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Echoing Justin’s sentiments, just enabling confirmed optin will go a LONG way in keeping your list clean.

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Justin,
your system needs to take into account when we are testing our system with our gmail accounts and using the “+” technique to test.

for example with a gmail account i.e. myname@gmail.com you can create a second user like myname+test@gmail.com and that creates a second record in aweber.

I need for this to work so that I can test my automations.

So, PLEASE don’t unsubscribe gmail accounts with the “+” feature.

thanks!

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Hi Christina,

Nothing in AWeber is systematically targeting and unsubscribing “+” address gmail accounts or anything else that supports plus addressing. I read over Justin’s reply and I don’t see anything there that should give you the impression we’re doing that.

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Hi Christina,

As long as you are using real email addresses and valid names for testing, you should not encounter this. It’s important to ensure that all the data you input is accurate and correctly formatted.

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Tom

So nice to see you again!

I opted into one of my opt in boxes to test it and the system unsubscribed me. I asked my VA and she said that AWeber automatically did that now.

So that’s why I posted here about it.

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Hi Christina,

We’ve done bot and abuse mitigation for many, many years. Correlation is not causation. I know with 100% certainty, that plus addresses will not cause that. Repeated subscribe attempts from the same IPs or other patterns that look abusive will and if you’re doing that sort of testing in a close period of time, that’ll do it.

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Tom
thanks so much for figuring it out!

Yes I was probably testing my opt in and opting in multiple times and got flagged.

I’m so happy you allow the “+” technique with gmail account.

You guys are awesome!

-Christina

p.s. for everyone else, we have owned our aweber account for over 15 years!!

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You should implement a 3rd party email cleaning service such Briteverify or ZeroBounce before entering your list. They have large databases of known spam traps, bots, and other types of low quality leads they identify and will remove for you before entering in your list. This helps add an additional layer of protection.

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Leon,

We see far more addresses than any third party verification service does on a daily basis across a much wider swath of the internet. Our data validation process is better because we see more than just the email, we see the entire subscribe process that a subscriber used to get on to a list. Using our subscribe forms already identifies and prevents bad addresses from getting in user lists. Third party services are unnecessary.

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Thanks for the insight—I completely understand where you’re coming from, and I appreciate the context around how Aweber’s internal systems are built to prevent bad addresses from slipping through. It’s clear that the visibility you have across the broader email ecosystem, especially during the actual opt-in process, gives you a strong advantage in maintaining list quality at the source.
It never hurts to take additional precautions and lean into best practices, especially when long-term deliverability and sender reputation are on the line. Even if third-party validation isn’t strictly necessary in every case, having a layered approach can offer peace of mind,