Send Free Download Link/Code emails disabled

[E-junkie_Guru]

We had to disable the email-sending function of our Send Free Download Link/Code feature, as spammers were abusing that to send masses of spam, which caused our recent outbound-email outage from the evening of Jan. 9 to the morning of Jan. 12.

However, you can still use that feature to generate a free link, then just copy the link URL generated when it's displayed there, and paste that into a personal message to the buyer. Note you can simply right-click on that link URL (or Control-click on a Mac) and select Copy Link, rather than having to drag-select the URL manually to copy it.

Any free links/codes you issue will also be stored in your Free Downloads Log as usual, where you can copy the issued link from the Transaction ID and/or copy the issued code from the Key column.

Our Devs hope to devise some way to re-enable generating emails for free links/codes in a way that can't be abused by spammers again.

If any buyers are not finding the original email with their link -- and assuming they didn't purchase during our recent email outage -- you can advise them to check their Spam/Junk Mail folder in case their message wound up there, and mark it as Not Spam/Junk if so.

You can also find any buyer's order in your E-junkie Transaction Log and click the Reactivate Links button, which will also offer an option to resend thank-you email(s) for that order, or just click the Copy Link button for their order and paste that into a personal reply to the buyer.

[sales4]

This has caused me to handle several complaints.
Could you not have emailed sellers to tell us this was happening, or show a message of some kind appear on screen when such a link was attempted?

As to your solution, while understandable, I question this:

'just copy the generated link you will see displayed there and paste that into a personal message to the recipient. Such free links will also be listed in your Free Downloads Log as usual, where you can also copy the link from the Transaction IDs there. '

in my experience, the Free Transaction Logs are not being updated.

[E-junkie_Guru]

We have asked our Devs to make it clearer on the Send Free Download Link/Code screen that no emails will be sent.

As for the problem with logs not being updated, that was due to a temporary glitch which we have now cleared up:

Paid transactions missing from download logs

[sales4]

I use Ejunkie extensively to send free download links to people who need replacement software.
If I have to keep copying the links and emailing myself, it's pointless maintaining an account.
Is this going to be fixed??

[E-junkie_Gremlin]

I believe we may have just answered your question via email, but to clarify for anyone else who might stumble across this thread, our Devs are still looking into the best way to re-enable generating emails for free links/codes.

We do not have an exact ETA as of the time of this post, so apologies on that front. Please understand that we take the security of our users very seriously and want to ensure something like this does not happen again before re-implementing the feature. Thank you for your continued patience and understanding.

[lottowiz]

Is this still disabled? It doesn't appear to be working as after 1 hour I'm not getting a copy of emails nor do I receive the email if I try to send the free download link to my personal email address.
If it is disabled why can I still use the function without some sort of notification about it being disabled?

[E-junkie_Guru]

Yes, emails are still disabled for sending free links/codes, but you can still use that feature to generate a free link, then just copy the link URL generated when it's displayed there, and paste that into a personal message to the buyer.

Any free links/codes you issue will also be stored in your Free Downloads Log as usual, where you can copy the issued link from the Transaction ID there and/or copy the issued code from the Key column.

We agree the interface could be clearer about the fact that no emails will be sent for free links, and have referred that suggestion to our Devs along with some more specific ideas for that improvement.

[mels]

Free download log gives a 403 error...

[E-junkie_Guru]

Sorry for the trouble; that 403 error would have been due to the issues our system was experiencing last night into early this morning and/or our engineers' attempts to resolve it -- see our followup report on that event here:

RESOLVED: E-junkie site unresponsive

[jeff1]

The last post on this thread seems to be Feb. 15. It is now Sept.3 and I still don't have free links available. Can we please get a status update on this situation? Is it or will it be fixed? Thanks

[E-junkie_Guru]

You can still use this feature to generate a free link, then just copy the link URL generated when it's displayed there, and paste that into a personal message to the recipient. Note you can simply right-click on that link URL (or Control-click on a Mac) and select Copy Link, rather than having to drag-select the URL manually to copy it.

Our Devs have not informed us if or when they will be able to devise a way to re-enable generating emails for free links in a way that can't be abused by spammers again. Most likely they'd have to implement a "prove you're a human" CAPTCHA, or else just limit it to sending our default Product Thank-you Email message without any option for customizing the message.

[sprudio]

So lets be clear, some spammers use your free download feature to abuse the system, those spammers must be logged in e-junkie and be paying customers. Why not disable them, ban them to be in e-junkie and give us our free downloads. Also you can put a cap on how many free downloads we can send daily lets say 20. How about that. And after that we can copy and paste.

[E-junkie_Guru]

The spammers were not paying subscribers. They were registering new accounts as single-use "throwaways" to abuse our free trial period for sending spam, then they'd abandon the account before the free trial expired and start over with a new account, then repeat this again and again.

They also seemed to be going through a "bot net" comprising multitudes of malware-infected computers worldwide to make every account registration and spam batch appear to come from a different IP address, making it impossible to cut off this activity by blocking any particular IPs.

I will refer your other suggestions to our Dev team for consideration.

[ayyashpublishing]

I think this can easily be solved. Just design the system in the way that WE CAN ONLY SEND FREE DOWNLOAD LINKS/EMAILS TO OUR BUYERS. You may put one more column like transaction id where we have to put that id in order to send email. OUR TRANSACTION ID HAS TO BE MATCHED AND WE CAN ONLY SEND TO OUR PAID BUYER ONLY - in that way you can avoid spammers.

In order to be able to send emails through your platform the person who will receive our emails at least needs to purchase a 1 dollar product. In that way no one can send emails to anyone and you will make sure only our buyers will get emails.

How does it sound?

[E-junkie_Guru]

Thanks for the suggestion; we'll refer that to our Devs for consideration.

Meanwhile, if you're only resending links to prior buyers, you can already do that from your E-junkie Transaction Log. Just find their order there and click the Reactivate Links button for that, which will give you an checkbox you can tick to Resend Thank-you Emails to the buyer along with their reactivated link.