The digits do what the button does.
The button in the letter is the short way. This page is the way that survives a filter.
Some mail systems rewrite or remove the links inside a letter. When that happens the button in it is dead and the six digits printed under the button are not. They finish the same step.
Confirm by code
The address is the one you gave us. The code is the six digits from the letter.
What the code is
- Life
- Fourteen days from the letter that carried it.
- Tries
- Five. After the fifth the code stops working.
- The button
- It works whether or not the code did, and a spent code does not spend it.
- On failure
- One answer, the same for every reason.
Why the answer is the same
A wrong code, a code that has expired, a code whose tries are spent and an address we have never seen all get one line back, and it is the same line. Telling them apart would turn this page into a way of asking who is on the list, one address at a time. The list is not ours to hand out that way, so the page stays vague where it would otherwise be useful, and says so here instead.
If the digits do not work, the button in the letter still does. If the letter itself is gone, ask for a new one from the front page: a new letter carries a new button and new digits, and the old pair stops working the moment it is sent.