Users changing their email address on unsubscribe page

[Malik_Zafar2]

Hello - we recently changed our unsubscribe process from a single-opt out to a preference center where users can check what type of content they are receiving. On this new page, there is a textbox that populates the users email address. We are finding that a good chunk of people are modifying their email addresses here, which is causing the system to create new users with only email addresses.

How can we prevent this from happening/what is best practice? Does it make sense to block the email field so that it's read-only?

[Amy_Goldfine]

A less technical option is to let them be created, then run a smart list subscription monthly to send you a list of those people, and you go in and manually delete them. Thats what we're doing right now.

[Jay_Jiang · Accepted solution]

if what you're annoyed with is new leads (technically duplicates) being created and not the fact that email addresses are being updated, use a proxy field.

If you don't want email addresses being changed, print the token as rich text and not part of the form. You don't need the email address field in a form for it to submit as the currently cookied known visitor.

On my preference page, I gate it with dynamic content so that if anyone isn't known, the form is destroyed and they get a message saying they didn't access the page from an email and then get redirected to our homepage.