Security problems with Preferences Center

Anonymous · ‎05-21-2018

Hi guys,

Recently we implemented the preferences center, where you can enter and subscribe, edit your settings or unsubscribe. The problem here is that you can put any email for this without any validation, plus the use of cookies, if you fill a form (unsubscribe one) with other person email and go to the edit settings, it will recognize that email as yours and will bring your peresonal data.

So one step that I see here is to hide those options so you can only enter by link form email, plus this link will pre-populate the email in the edit setting form.

How do you guys manage your Preferences Center to avoid this kind of issues?

Regards,

Raúl

Message was edited by: Raul Ocaña

Grégoire_Miche2 · ‎05-21-2018

Welcome to the club ...

I have been keeping saying this to my customers for months and no one is listening

The way we handle it is making sure that the preference center can only be accessed from an email link. It's not 100% perfect because of the forwards (in which case it's your lead's problem, though), but it's a first level. The way we do this is with some JS that controls that there isa mkt_tok in the inbound URL and that it's not fake (it generates an email). If this is not the case, the page redirects with a simple, cookie-less identification LP with a form where one can enter his email are receive a new link to the preference center.

The second level of security is to make the email field read-only in the preference center. There are some additional buttons to access the identification LP. There is also another button to access a "change email" LP that is also controlled with a series of emails.

And the third level is to have the preferences validated with a last email.

-Greg

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