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Comment by InGoodFaith | Hacker News Reader

Nowadays when signing up for valid services, some don't let you opt-out of the marketing emails until much later in the flow; the worst offenders ignore your opting out options by including a new category of marketing-type emails every couple of months that you have to go in and untick.

Wouldn't that be classified as spammy ads from a valid message (when done using dark patterns with no one-click unsubscribe option)?

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Honestly, I'd classify those as spam, without any additional qualifications. Giving my email address to a service is permission to send emails related to that service. It is not permission to send advertisements for other services, nor is it permission for affiliates to send advertisements.

Recently, I gave my email address when having my car serviced. The next day, I received an email from Sirius XM, because the shop has a partnership trial deal with Sirius. I marked that email as spam, because it was entirely unrelated to any legitimate use for which I had provided the email address. That it was being sent by a legitimate company doesn't change the fact that it was spam.

I've actually had decent experiences in the last few years. The vast majority of services have a clear opt-out link, and pretty much everything else has an unsubscribe link in the emails that works. I think legit senders are terrified of getting spam blacklisted, so they have to offer than option.

The only exception I found was the democratic party mailing list. No idea how I even ended up on that as I don't live in the US, but NEVER give them your real/main email address. The spam is relentless and impossible to block because they are continually setting up new domain names.

Some "legit" senders only have a "snipe"-unsubscribe: you can only unsubscribe from a given "list", which often has just one message.

When a new ad campaign occurs, they create a new "list" and mail everyone again.

This is spam.

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