I Want To Unsubscribe, Not "Manage My Preferences" | Hacker News Reader

I Want To Unsubscribe, Not "Manage My Preferences"

georgesaines.com

259 pointsgsaines116 comments

I think requiring a log-in is actually against the CAN-SPAM regulations.

FTC.gov's web site states: "an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender"

http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-complia...

It is definitely illegal to require a login. CAN-SPAM has many (many) faults, but it is extremely explicit about there being no funny business in the unsubscribe process.

Current FTC rules say that your unsubscribe link must either immediately unsubscribe the user or lead to a page that (at most) asks for only your email address and does not try to confuse or dissuade you.

If you're fluent in legalese, it's in the set of rules known as "CAN-SPAM 2008" http://www.ftc.gov/os/2008/05/R411008frn.pdf

What realistic recourse does anyone have when a sender violates this requirement?

IANAL. Unfortunately I don't think it's possible to file a civil suit on your own as with, say, junk faxes (though someone please correct me if that's wrong).

So I guess your best bet is to file a complaint with the FTC, which does occasionally sanction companies, or with your state attorney general, who also has the power to force action.

Mark as spam in a big system (GMail, Hotmail, DCC, whatever). Seriously, it doesn't take that many pissed GMail users to cause GMail to drop all of your mail. This is one reason why outfits like MailChimp will kick you off if you get "marked as spam" too often.

(You could argue that such mail isn't "real" spam; nonetheless, "mark as spam" is realistic.)

But I suspect most of the time you see "manage preferences" is on transactional emails (such as those the OP lists).

When an email tries to be sneaky with the old "Manage my Preferences" trick, I flag it as spam. They should know better.

BONUS: if anywhere in the email they mention the word "webinar", they're gone.

What's the problem with webinars?

Fine if you arrange one but spam emails suggesting you might want to join one are the penis enlargement of business, I get a lot of them for stuff I have no interest in buying.

Seconded. If I can't unsubscribe from an email with one click (at the very most two), then I mark it as spam.

Why do people mark non-spam as spam? Why do they boast about it?

In what sense is an unsolicited and unwanted marketing email not spam?

They didn't say it was unsolicited or unwanted. They just said if they could not unsubscribe in one or two clicks they'd mark it as spam, regardless if it was spam.

Why the down vote?

Doesn't the fact that they immediately want to unsubscribe make it quite obvious that the email is unsolicited?

I have been getting spam from companies who obviously got my email address from someone who sold it to them, for quite a while now. Even though their messages have clear unsubscribe links, list real mailing addresses, and use reputable email marketing companies, that doesn't make it any less spammy.

> Doesn't the fact that they immediately want to unsubscribe make it quite obvious that the email is unsolicited?

No, not at all. Spam is typically defined as bulk and indiscriminate.

By clicking 'unsubscribe', the implied intent is that the email is unwanted. So I can either mark an email as 'unwanted' by clicking 'unsubscribe' or by clicking 'report spam'. I'll always give the sender the benefit of the doubt and try to unsubscribe, but if any action is required on my part other than clicking the link, I take the path of least resistance and simply click 'report spam'. Either way, I'll stop getting those emails.

But what if it's transactional or something you signed up for? Something merely unwanted is not by definition spam.

"Why the down vote?"

Downvotes are used nowadays as a way to disagree with your standpoint or reasoning.

I can understand if the reasoning is in bad faith but downvoting merely for disagreement seems like abuse.

Right, and there once was a time when voting was used that way, but that time has been gone for quite a while now.

> They just said if they could not unsubscribe in one or two clicks they'd mark it as spam, regardless if it was spam.

While I'm not limiting spam to this definition, spam is any email that cannot be unsubscribed to in one or two reasonable clicks. If I discover email I was getting is spam, I will mark it as spam.

Does "any email" include transactional messages? Emails you requested? Emails from friends and coworkers?

Not all email must include unsubscribe capabilities.

That argument is pedantic and does not contribute positively to the discussion. Do you believe that the person talking about unsubscribe really means email from his mother-in-law?

Let's use our common sense, shall we? Do you think he marks as spam emails from his coworkers because they don't include unsubscribe links thar onl require one click?

If you don't think he meant that, let's not discuss it regardless of how one might twist his words out of context.

You're downvoting because of that?

The person specifically said "any email that does not have a one-click unsubscribe". Two of the three categories I mentioned were not "emails from gramma" but that's the example you choose to focus on?

I really do think he means that he marks as spam messages that are not spam. And the biggest problem with spam prevention is the false marking as spam. It's much worse to miss a legit email than to receive spam.

> I really do think he means that he marks as spam messages that are not spam.

You honestly think I mark as spam receipts, emails I ask for, and email from friends? Did I really need to put the disclaimer in? I thought "While I'm not limiting spam to this definition," was enough.

Here, I'll help you.

Just to be clear, I also don't mark as spam email from my half-sisters, half-brothers, brother, sisters-in-law, brother-in-law, mother-in-law, father-in-law, step-mother, step-father, and my wife. Oh wait, forgot to mention all my cousins, and the rest of the family! Clearly, I must mark them as spam.

I don't think that I was boasting. However, if it being seen as boasting leads to more companies allowing one-click unsubscribes, then I see it as a good thing.

I generally don't just mark messages as spam because I don't want them in my inbox - that's what archiving mail is for (things which I don't need to see but might want to look at in the future). Spam is for when I don't want to receive messages and I can't find a way to get myself taken off of the mailing list after reading through one of the messages.

Because, no matter whether or not it's technically spam, people will stop sending such messages if they get "marked as spam" often enough. Either that, or GMail will start silently dropping their mail - either way, my inbox is clean. Making such a policy public can only help.

[Note that I don't mark such e-mail as spam, if only because there's no convenient way to do so over IMAP.]

I feel like the only reasonable response, then, is to start madking all email sent from people who believe this as spam, so they can get a sense of what this feels like.

Seriously, though: people who abuse the system like that,--whether they are giving products bad ratings for reasons unrelated to the product, using the PayPal dispute system as a threat (or seriously on everything they purchase from everyone online as it let's them get stuff for free), or downvoting comments on HN out of retaliation for a lost argument--need some kind of meta-moderation to keep their data from affecting the system.

In what way is unsolicited and unwanted email not spam?

I also mark any mail where unsubscribe is more difficult than a couple of clicks as spam, though I don't have the instant hate for "webinar" mails that you do (I've never even noticed that as a thing, so I have no opinion one way or another).

This reply is pretty much a public +1 (I also upvoted the post). If points were visible I wouldn't have bothered with the reply and would have just gone with the upvote, but I'm trying to make sure any email marketing folks out there who may be reading this realize you aren't the only one who does this and they are ultimately hurting themselves by making it more difficult to unsubscribe than it needs to be.

Yep, I honestly think it's the best way to deal with it, offer me a one-click unsubscribe or get your emails marked as spam.

First, I think 2 clicks is ok. Second, I don't think it's admirable to mark non-spam as spam.

if it's illegal (e.g. manage prefs thing) and you don't want it, then it counts as spam.

2 click is fine tho.

They didn't say it was illegal or that they didn't want it. That's my point.

Why the down vote?

If I didn't sign-up for it then I'm marking it as spam thank you very much.

I've noticed that if I flag something like this in gmail as spam it still gets through, repeatedly.

Same with Yahoo Mail. So annoying. You'd think that after two times, the service would realize that I don't want to receive e-mail from them.

Absolutely agree. We (AnyLeaf) send a weekly email newsletter to our users, with one-click unsubscribe. Companies that make unsubscribing difficult are ruining it for everyone. Even though we are very clear about the fact that we'll be sending email and make it simple to unsubscribe, we still get users flagging our messages as spam. This seems to be largely because unsubscribing from email newsletters has become so annoying that a significant fraction of users will just mark a message as spam rather than figure it out, even if the message is not truly spam.

It's hard to blame them, especially when huge senders like Target make it so difficult to unsubscribe that the author of this blog post couldn't figure it out:

http://bigfatmarketingblog.com/2011/01/17/adventures-in-emai...

It's a shame that RFC 2369, which provides a standard for unsubscribing from mailing lists, has never been widely adopted.

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2369.txt

A large number of (non-technical) users associate "Mark as spam" with "I don't want to receive this anymore." In some cases, bad experiences with unsubscribe links may have nothing to do with it.

You could properly solve that problem by letting them sign up for the email in the first place and rather than say "we will send you and you will have to unsubscribe".

I really wish Google or one of the big email providers would add an unsubscribe button. It would try to do the right thing in the unsubscribe flow, and apply a personal filter, but not penalize the sender.

Gmail has a prototype feature to unsubscribe you from e-mails:

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/unsubscribing-made-eas...

I report them to the FTC and tell them that I did if require anything more than a click or two and send them this link:

http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-complia...

File a complaint here: https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

If I didn't opt-in and they send me a message that I have to log in to opt-out, I mark it as spam. Sometimes I'll also log in and remove myself, but not always. Depends on the company.

On the other hand, if there's a simple 1-click link, I will usually click it and merely archive or delete the mail.

Webmasters: It's in your best interest to make it easy to unsubscribe. It only makes people mad. It doesn't make them stay as customers.

I agree, I am very liberal with the "mark as spam" button.

Even if I opt out and they say, "might take two weeks to propagate changes."

That's weird; it only took you two minutes to propagate changes enough to start sending mail.

If I am unable to opt out without logging in, or if I opt out and more come I just mark it spam.

http://www.otherinbox.com/ comes handy for part of this problem. One of the default folders that OtherInBox creates in your Gmail account is an OIB/Unsubscribe folder/label. Then you can label messages from meetup.com as OIB/Unsubscribe, then all future messages from meetup.com will go there.

Unsubscribing from Meetup groups isn't an option if you want to subscribe to their Google Calendar. And you might want to get some messages from Meetup but not others (maybe you just want reminders for meetups), so labeling as spam is not an option.

That's a good suggestion gasull, thanks for providing it. I actually just left a really promising meetup group because I was so tired of getting their spam. Maybe with this I can sign up again!

After reading this I realized how many Meetup.com emails I receive. I've previously tried to navigate meetup's account preferences to unsubscribe without success. I was so annoyed I took the time to write them to tell them to put a one-click unsub button in their emails.

I got a polite "thanks, but not doing that" response. I find it really annoying that they can't or won't make it easy for their users to one-click opt out of group emails. I'd rather drop the service than take the time to figure out how to stop getting emails. Deleted my account just now.

The response I got from Meetup.com is below. The key bit is "You'll want to 'Edit email settings' for each Meetup group that you've joined."

I'm in like 20+ groups; it makes unsubscribing a huge pain.

9/12/2010 I have a suggestion. I get many emails from meetup. I don't want to get them anymore. I also don't want to have to go login, then go to a manage notifications page and try to figure out how to stop getting email (which, btw I have tried to do unsuccessfully).

Why don't you guys put one link at the bottom that says "Don't want to get this type of notification in the future? click here to unsubscribe."

Boom, one click and I'm done. It make is much easier on your users.

-Blake

I'm sorry for the inconvenience! Currently there's no way to completely eliminate the emails you get from your Meetup groups or your Organizers. However, I took a look at the email you'd forwarded in, and that was an Automated Meetup Reminder, which you can opt out of by going to your Email Setting page for that group, here:

http://www.awdg.org/settings/

In general, if you're only interested in hearing from your Meetup group's Organizer and about the Meetups on the calendar, turning off the email discussion with your entire group will help reduce the amount of messages you're receiving. To change your email settings within each group, go to:

http://www.meetup.com/account/comm/

You'll want to 'Edit email settings' for each Meetup group that you've joined.

Having more control over the emails you receive from your Meetup Group Organizers is a great suggestion. We really appreciate your thoughts on this, and your patience while we make changes and improvements around here. :)

If you've got any other questions, please let us know.

Sincerely,

Tamara Garvey Meetup Community Team Specialist Meetup HQ

"Having more control over the emails you receive from your Meetup Group Organizers is a great suggestion. We really appreciate your thoughts on this, and your patience while we make changes and improvements around here. :) "

AKA we're going to ignore you and throw a useless smilie face in a feeble attempt to placate you.

At least there is some (complicated) method to unsubscribe.

I try to unsubscribe from Amazon's affiliate spam newsletter for years now, but it just doesn't work. I can toggle the "subscribe" box on the website as many times as I want - no matter what the website displays, the mails just continue to arrive in my inbox.

I've contacted the support numerous times now, but they either tell me that "after unsubscribing it takes some time until you stop to receive the mails" or that "we've unsubscribed you now manually". Of course this never worked.

So if anyone from Amazon is reading this: This concerns the German "Amazon PartnerNet" affiliate program and the message category that I can't unsubscribe is "Feedback zum Partnerprogramm". I'd happily send you my account information if there's any chance of fixing this annoying bug.

With amazon, it's possible to have multiple accounts registered to the same email (with different passwords). You might have unsubscribed on one account, but not on another.

That may be, but Amazon has ridiculous options for turning off emails. For example, if you're a member of Amazon Student or Amazon Moms (which includes a limited version of Prime), you can't opt-out of emails about Student or Moms without actually dropping the service.

"If you would like to stop receiving e-mail offers from Amazon Student, you may cancel your Amazon Student membership here:<link>" : UNBELIEVABLE!

Unfortunately that's not the case.

The footer of the mail lists the associate ID which is identical to the ID for which I've turned of the mails.

I use Mailchimp for http://dlewis.net/nik and all the emails I send have both "unsubscribe from this list" and "update subscription preferences" on every email. Clicking the former will unsubscribe you -- no log-in required. (Comically, I once forwarded a copy to someone who clicked it, to see what would happen, and blammo, I was unsubscribed from my own list.)

The second is used for changing your email address or your name. That's it.

As a publisher, I actually prefer it this way. If you do not want to get my emails, I don't want you getting them. I'm not writing for people who don't want to read.

This word "spam", I do not think it means what you think it means. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(electronic)

"Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately"

It seems as though a lot of people on HN think that any email message they didn't want to get at that moment is spam. Reminds me of the misunderstanding of the work "hacker".

That's why the article tells us the problem today is _not_ spam, but opt-in email. Where do you see 'spam' being misused in it?

From all the people saying they mark spam if there is not a one click unsubscribe.

It sounds like most of the mail being complained about was not solicited and was likely sent to many people. That makes it spam by your definition.

But it wasn't sent indiscriminately.

Yes it is. The services collect email addresses and then send their spam to all of them.

I wrote up some ideas on best practices for unsubscription recently, after trawling through my inbox to clear the clutter. http://softwareas.com/best-practices-for-mailing-list-unsubs...

If you're doing one-click unsubscribe, a smart practice is showing a message with other ways to stay engaged, e.g. Twitter ... and providing a one-click undo (ie re-subscribe).

Whenever I sign up with a service, I try to use the "+" trick.

  foobar+linkedin@gmail.com

That way, if worse comes to worst, you can just block the whole destination email address.

Sometimes this doesn't work, though, which is annoying.

I tried doing this for a while, but it doesn't work in 90% of the cases (why is everybody re-inventing email validation!!).

I actually learned about that one recently as well, but haven't had much luck actually using it to filter. I think my problem stems from not having an accurate record of what services I've used that technique with and which I haven't. :)

Sadly, most developers use some sort of ridiculous email validation that doesn't allow the plus sign.

Worse than that, I've encountered several sites and newsletters that allow the plus sign when you sign up, but their unsubscribe URL breaks (presumably due to some escaping/encoding mismatch), preventing you from unsubscribing.

I have seen sites like meetup.com that disallow the "+" sign for spam reason. Instead of having proper spam detection and filtering they just added arbitrary rules like that.

jcpenney.com does this. It's incredibly infuriating.

That's a good step, but it has drawbacks (like some websites refusing them). I just got my own domain and enabled catch-all, so now I just put [website-name]@[mydomain.com], which is never refused.

Also, if they happen to sell to spammers, I'll know exactly who it was, whereas with that scheme they can simply remove the \+.* part.

I have my own domain... How would I set up my MX record to configure it like yours? Can I forward it to my gmail somehow?

If you use Google Apps for Domains, it's in the management panel. There's probably something similar for most hosting accounts. It's basically just a "forward all uncaught email for example.com to admin@example.com" rule in the postfix/exim/etc setup.

I'd imagine any spammer worth their salt removes the +whatever from Gmail accounts.

LinkedIn are terrible. I have tried half-a-dozen times to stop getting their stupid "Top Headlines in Computer Software" emails (which I never subscribed to), but I can't find the "don't send me any more emails" option anywhere in my preferences.

The best solution I have found is just to use Gmail filters (if you are using Gmail). I have about 20 emails a day that get labeled "useless" and are immediately archived or deleted...

Plus: you can define pretty specific filters (incl. keyword based if you just want to remove certain emails from a certain address/domain, for example containing "upgrade", "marketing", "try", etc)

I really do hate it when you have to 'manage your preferences' when you want to stop receiving email more-often-than-not that you don't remember signing up for.

What's more is, if you can somehow manage to remember your account details and navigate the labyrinth of menus to get to where you want to be, you then have to unsubscribe and believe it or not, some websites have even told me it could take up to a week for the changes to take affect.

Ridiculous is the word the springs to mind.

Most recently though, I have started to mark emails which don't offer me a one-click-unsubscribe as spam, that'll teach them.

I use a challenge-response system called Active Spam Killer.

http://a-s-k.sourceforge.net/

When some dastardly spammer adds me to their list, despite the challenge message explicitly telling them not to, I then add them to my "blacklist" and never hear from them again.

Note that you do have to be running your own mail server to get this system working; and you have to edit the lists from the command line. Those challenges aside, this software has eliminated vast quantities of spam and unwanted list mailings for me.

Otherwise you can use Gmail filters to archive/delete emails from ex "*@convore.com" (every friggin day)...

What happens when you buy something from a site and they send your receipt (and possibly a software key) by email?

Where I work we get enough mail bounces from customers whose mailboxes are over quota, or who spelled their address wrong, and so on that challenges from the few using C/R systems are lost in the noise. No one has time to go through all of these, find the challenges, and jump through whatever hoops they want to get the message through.

I use a gmail address for edge cases such as you mentioned. I also pre-emptively add people to my "whitelist" so they don't have to confirm.

Challenge responses are silly and unnecessary.

At the time I implemented the system I use, I was receiving 600 spam messages per day. The challenge-response system was an excellent and necessary solution.

That couldn't have been through Gmail?

No, I installed this system before Gmail existed.

Those of you who proactively whitelist, thank you for using your brain. This comment is not directed at you.

As a former tech/cust support worker, I hate challenge-response systems. The usual scene is this: (1) support@company.com gets an email (2) I respond via my address, djeikyb@company.com (3) I get a challenge-response email and have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get permission to email the bastard who initiated the exchange.

And perhaps some people think that whitelisting support@company.com is enough, when really they should whitelist the entire domain. It's common that email to a general address is parceled out to individuals.

I despise it when I try to unsubscribe and this comes up for me.

My simple response: click "spam" button in my email, thus decreasing their deliverability.

If you send out newsletters or whatnot, be sure to make unsubscribe obvious and single-click, otherwise you will face the ultimate in email marketing payback... no one seeing your messages.

As someone who used to be heavy in email marketing, deliverability is the holy grail, and it doesn't take too many times as marked as spam before you are lost forever.

Seconded: may I hereby propose a new standard for email, the "bite me" button? Something to throw the entire company in question down the memory hole.

That certainly would be satisfying. A few days ago I got a survey request from a company I had recently ordered from and they were using the same old "manage your preferences" link. I wished there was something I could do to let them know how frustrated I was about getting that email and the fact they made me work for 5 minutes to unsubscribe!

I never unsubscribe from lists. Any time I get an email from some new list I've apparently been subscribed to, I add a new filter to automatically delete any mail coming from that domain. I don't think my email is physically able to receive any mail at all from facebook, google, yahoo, and most of the other big domains out there, and I don't miss it at all.

Great idea. Going to do the same.

I can't remember the site off the top of my head, but something recently wanted me to go through an entire sequence of 'exit interview' forms in order to unsubscribe.

My response in the 'feedback' field was quite satisfying to write, but I doubt it'll ever actually be looked at.

I setup a mail filter to forward the email back to wherever it's sent, multiple times, and delete that email from my inbox. I've generated email threads from LoveFilm where they've had an entire conversation with themselves, great stuff.

The whole "unsubscribe" thing when you haven't subscribed to anything is a lie.

This is why I love gmail filters. Opt-in spam is terribly easy to filter out.

Does anyone use a service like mailinator or spamgourmet?

Yes, but only for one time signups that I don't expect to come back. Mailinator isn't exactly private.

I use spamgourmet for almost all my accounts: sitename.username@xoxy.net or asdf.net

I get 5 emails by default and I can add more if needed, and if i deem them worthy I would add the site to the allowed senders list, the best thing is I can track who sold my email address pretty easily.

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