How to Signoff from Any Mailing List

This page is part of the home page for the Help-Netmailing list (http://help-net.unl.edu).

You may get a text version of this page, by sending a message to LISTSERV@CRCVMS.UNL.EDU with the following line as the BODY of your message:
GET SIGNOFF.ANYLIST

I shall give here information on how to unsubscribe from any mailing list.
You should avoid posting such requests to the list itself.
This document does not refer to spamming lists (lists which you were
subscribed without your consent).
 

In General:

The welcome message that any new subscriber receives (from any
mailing list) has the information on how to signoff from that list.
It is important to read the welcome message upon receiving it, and to
keep it in a right folder so that it will be easy to locate it whenever you
wish to admin your subscription, or to get some info about the list.

If you don't have the welcome message, you can try to guess a few
methods for signing off, and try if one of them works.
I shall use in this message as an example a mailing list with the name
"somelist" and in which its address is: somelist@somehost.com the
instructions should be taken with name and address of the list replaced
with the ones of the list that you wish to signoff.

Notice that in order to signoff your account automatically via e-mail you
must use the same e-mail address that is subscribed to the list.
If you have/had some e-mail addresses and you are not sure which of them
is the one subscribed to the list, you may view one of the messages from
that list, choose to view it with full header (practically all modern e-mail
programs allow you to view the message with all header fields (examples
of header fields which are usually seen regularly is "To:", "Date:", "From:",
"Reply-To:". There are others which are seen only when you ask to see all
headers). In many cases some of the "Received:" header fields will contain
the subscribed e-mail address.
You may of-course just try all your e-mail addresses.
If you cannot set your e-mail program to send a message from the
subscribed address (in most cases you can and you just need to learn how
to do it with your e-mail program) you should contact the list owner. See
below.

Most of the mailing lists are running by a very few types of mailing
list programs (the technical term is: Mailing List Managers or MLM).

The most common ones are:
LISTSERV, Majordomo, Listproc, Smartlist, EZMLM, Lyris.

Remember, if you don't know which mailing list manager is running your
list, you may try to guess, a few signoff guesses, and one of them is
likely to work.
 

For Listserv:

The format of the signoff request:
a message to LISTSERV@somehost.com
with the following line as the BODY of your message:
SIGNOFF somelist
 

For Majordomo:

A message to majordomo@somehost.com with the following line as the BODY
of the message:
unsubscribe somelist
 

For ListProc:

A message to listproc@somehost.com with the following line as the BODY
of your message:
unsubscribe somelist
 

For SmartList:

A message to somelist-request@somehost.com
with the word "unsubscribe" as the SUBJECT of your message.
 

For EZMLM and for Lyris:

An empty message to somelist-unsubscribe@somehost.com
 

For mailing lists running on onelist, listbot, Topica, Egroups, or YahooGroups:

You can signoff the way you do it with EZMLM.
Onelist merged into Egroups which then merged into YahooGroups, and thus
a mailing list which you subscribed at Onelist or Egroups, is likely now to be hosted
by YahooGroups.

For mailing lists running on mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk:

send a message to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk with the following two lines:

leave somelist
stop

as the BODY of your message.
 

For mailing lists running on coollist.com:

send an empty message to unsubscribe@coollist.com and follow the
instructions that will be posted to you as a reply.
 

General for mailing lists:

If you know what software handling the mailing list, but it is not
listed above, you may consult: http://listes.cru.fr/sympa/robots.html .

If you don't know which software runs the mailing list you wish to
signoff, and you don't find the welcome message for that list,
you may try any of the following:

* If you know or can guess the location of a website for that mailing
  list, it is likely that the information can be found there.

* An empty message to listname-unsubscribe@somehost.com

* Guessing that it is one of the above lists, and following the
  instructions.

* A message to listname-request@somehost.com with the word:
  "unsubscribe" as both the BODY and the SUBJECT of the message.

* If you have problems you may wish to contact the list owner at the
  generic address somelist-request@somehost.com
  Please notice that if the Mailing list manager does not support commands
  to somelist-request-address, the list owner will receive this command,
  and probably will handle them.

* If you know the address of the list owner from the messages on the
  list, you may use this address to contact him/her.

* Please contact the list owner only after trying automatic methods.
  For this reason, it is also recommended to use the listname-request
  address after trying other methods, or when knowing that it is the
  right format.