When I recently added 'click to unsubscribe' functionality to my emails, the URL got wrote out into some logs. Those logs got written to a Slack channel and Slack loves to click any link it sees. Oh, and it doesn't respect robots.txt.
But all I saw was every member of my list clicking 'unsubscribe'. It took a good hour to figure out exactly what was going on.
Idempotence is not the problem here, by the way. That just means calling the method twice has the same effect. But GET should have no side-effect, in an ideal world. Of course, in the case of unsubscribe links, it needs to have a side-effect to comply with the law.
But all I saw was every member of my list clicking 'unsubscribe'. It took a good hour to figure out exactly what was going on.
Idempotence is not the problem here, by the way. That just means calling the method twice has the same effect. But GET should have no side-effect, in an ideal world. Of course, in the case of unsubscribe links, it needs to have a side-effect to comply with the law.