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Comment by pricci | Hacker News Reader

I'm always fearful of clicking unsubscribe. It's a way of telling the spammer "hey, this email is really used by a real human, spam the hell out of me"

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Unsubscribe isn’t for spam. It’s for when your stupid bank sends stupid marketing emails to you, but they’re your bank and you can’t just block them, so you politely ask them to stop. There’s laws (the CAN-SPAM act) that say they have to honor your unsubscribe request and stop sending you non-transactional emails (with a few other exceptions.) Ditto the dealership you bought your car from, that online shop you used that one time, etc.

I typically report companies that violate this (Chase, I’m looking at you with your “transactional” emails that are just thinly veiled ads) to the FCC (there’s an online report form) but I don’t know how much it helps.

You use unsubscribe for anyone with which you have some sort of prior relationship. Anything else is spam, report it and move on.

I have been subscribed to so many marketing "newsletters" without my express consent, either by a deliberately confusing registration processes that successfully tried to sidecar the newsletter upon registration using some combination of checkboxes, or straight up silently added out of nowhere just because we had a business transaction once. This is spam as far as I'm concerned since it's unsolicited marketing, but often still honors List-Unsubscribe standards.

Sometimes it's understandable that someone wants to simply filter these mails as spam than go through whatever convoluted process they have in mind for unsubscribe. It's easier and discourages the practice of signing people up to random newsletters.

Any remotely legitimate mailing list will respect unsubscribe requests, lest they run afoul of the CAN-SPAM act and/or start getting blacklisted.

Years ago I worked at a large email service provider for bulk mailings on behalf of large customers and we took unsubscribes very seriously.

And for the really truly spam/scam emails, the unsub link is the least of your concerns since delivery and tracking pixels confirm the address is real and being used. The true spam usually doesn't even have an unsub link. In those cases mark as spam and hope that your email provider starts flagging them as spam before it ever makes it to your inbox in the future.

I'm an aggressive unsubscriber and 99% of the time it works. Very little junk flows into my inbox these days.

> since delivery and tracking pixels confirm the address is real and being used

Does it work in Gmail? Since it doesn't load images until I athorize: https://i.imgur.com/RZ93VIU.png

Unless you use an iPhone, then there is no way to shut off images in gmail. Seems a bit strange that they'd not have that feature, when gmail was the first big provider to disable images by default.

That is inaccurate. I have disabled image loading in Gmail and this is reflected in the web interface, the Gmail Android app, the Apple Mail app, and very likely in all other mail clients. Just to be clear, you do not need an iPhone to shut off images in gmail.

I mean in the gmail app for iphone. Gmail images are off when I use a desktop, they're off when I use the andriod app, but I was surprised to see images in email when using the gmail iphone app.

Last time I went searching, I found google documentation that said there are no image options for the iphone app.

This used to be the case but was fixed earlier this year. You can now disable images in the Gmail iOS app: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919?co=GENIE.Platf...

The feature is present for some time now on both major platforms, both in the Gmail app and the built-in Mail app, on (some) 3rd party mail clients, and in the web interface.

No, in that case the email client shouldn't be making any remote requests.

Although note that IIUC the gmail default is now loading remote content. (Although they do load it via a proxy so that your IP isn't shared).

> delivery and tracking pixels confirm the address is real and being used

I use Thunderbird, which doesn't load that stuff.

This is why I usually hit the Report Spam button. Sometimes I'll receive a legit looking email that I plausibly signed up for but don't remember - I could follow the unsubscribe link/hit unsubscribe and be a good citizen, but at that point the safer thing to do is to not interact with the mail and let Gmail know I don't want this anymore.

I'd rather receive the mail and let Gmail put it into a blackhole than try to solve the problem upstream myself and have the small possibility that I either miss a newsletter and get spam anyway, or tip off some system that my email address is "real".

I’ve been smashing that unsubscribe button in my email for years. I’ve never had a problem in that arena. I’m usually at inbox zero.

I have a feeling that the successful delivery of the email to your inbox has already accomplished this.

Once you open the email, a tracking pixel will fire (usually an <img> tag), which is far more useful to the email marketer.

Unsubscribe is your best bet as honoring opt-outs are protected by the CAN-SPAM act.

Gmail doesn't load images until I athorize:

https://i.imgur.com/RZ93VIU.png

Thunderbird doesn't either.

I'm fairly sure that spammers are sending legitimate-lookingailing list type spam to do exactly this. Appear like misdirected mail to catch email addresses.

On gmail there's always the 'report spam' button. I usually avoid that though as it's not very nice to the sender.

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