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Comment by the__alchemist | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally:

A: I get more spam than ever. What is especially annoying is that the majority of reputable companies do this. Order something? Sign up for an account? Set up an LLC? File a trademark? Boom: Spam emails UFN.

B: It's easier to unsubscribe than ever: Often one-click at the bottom of the email, or let Gmail/Fastmail etc do it for you. Generally effective.

One annoyance I find is the Our terms have been altered. Pray I don't alter them further loophole, where you will still get emails after unsubbing.

There's only one company I tolerate marketing emails from (Pitviper sunglasses), and it's because the emails are funny.

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I've stopped unsubscribing to emails I didn't sign up for and just send to spam. It hurts their "reputation" score and wastes their money (however small amount). I encourage people to stop unsubscribing and just send it to spam.

I'm almost as severe. I look for an unsubscribe button in the email. I click it. If I am not immediately unsubscribed from everything, I mark the email as spam.

I won't do business with companies that spam me.

Here I am, already giving you money, and you want to spam me?! Even after I clicked unsubscribe?

The worst are the BS claims of "account status emails", which are just spam.

I moved my entire portfolio to another bank, filed a complaint, then filed complaints as I closed each account/card. The goal to have plenty of record as to why.

Screw that.

This is admirable and I agree in principle. Based on what I've seen, I'm surprised there are any companies you find suitable to do business online with. I would like to follow your path, but have been unable to without making significant compromises.

Ugh my student loans went to a new servicer who I swear to god is paid by the email sent to me. I get an email letting me know when the payment is coming out (hint: it's the same numeric day as last month, plus or minus a day to account for non-banking weekend days) and the amount (hint: it's the same amount it always is, because that's how payments work) and then I get an email from them after my payment completes and then I get an email from them every time someone changes a punctuation mark in the roughly 400 pages of horseshit that I signed when I was 18 years old to get an education, and of course the fucking MESSAGES.

"There's an important message in your inbox, please log in to check"

And then you go look and it's like "the white house wants to alleviate student debt, if you don't want your debt discharged fill out this form" And it's like...

a) who in their right mind wouldn't want that

b) there's no way in hell I'm getting my debt discharged, I make WAY too much fucking money

c) this is a matter of public policy and developing news, why the fuck was this sent as a secure message

This is what gets me. Are you going to take out another student loan, because of engagement? EG, spam, and their name on your mind.

Of course not!

Yet there's a marketing (eg, engagement) department thinking up this junk.

With respect to the first part of your comment, I'd much prefer overcommunication of financial transactions about to happen and acknowledgement that they did rather than the other way about. And some communication about changes in Ts&Cs is often required. Those often come by physical mail. A lot of people here probably prefer more notifications about things like credit card transactions. I don't personally but many do even if it means a lot more routine email.

This is all well and good, if it can be turned off if set.

People used to find out about financial transactions monthly with their bill in the mail. It's fine to have more info, but that doesn't mean it must be forced upon us.

And the transactions described are not really out of the blue financial transactions. The first message is about transactions that happen every. single. month. There's no need to say "we're going to do what you want us to do". That's silly. An agreement was already signed to that effect. The person knows it's going to happen. It's just 100% wasted, useless info.

And while I know you're responding to the 'first part' of the post, the communication I'm describing in my (GP) post, is about just random emails with no actual value.

> I won't do business with companies that spam me.

I just wouldn't be able to do business.

I get spam newsletters that I never signed up for from my alma mater, the GaTech ChE school. The tiny unsubscribe button 404s! Into the spam bucket it goes.

If I get more emails after unsubscribing I file a complaint with the FTC, then forward the response I get from the FTC to support@<spammer.com>. So far that has a 100% success rate.

I have different reasons for not doing it: unsubscribing usually requires opening a website riddled with tracking, thus running potentially dangerous code on your device. Secondly, it confirms that your address is active and that SPAM message was read. Unsubscribing from one garbage can result in being added on several other garbage spam lists.

Yes, I go a little further. If I get more emails than I consider acceptable (even if I signed up originally), I mark it as spam. call me mean, but this is my email address and if you're gonna send me endless spam emails which obviously no one actually wants, then you're spam.

Same - I've given up unsubscribing and sending it straight to spam. Especially if I never signed up for it in the first place.

If I did sign up for it, I do the polite thing and unsubscribe if they make it easy.

But yeah - spam is getting aggravating. I am getting spam text messages now....

Me too. I don't care if it's a "legit" business. Unsolicited bulk email is spam, period. If I wanted to receive junk mail, I would have signed up for that explicitly, which I most assuredly did not, no matter how many other products or services I might have purchased from that sender in the past.

It can also lead to emails that other people did want getting routed to their spam folder which they never look at.

I make extra-sure to do this to political fundraising.

The most persistent emails I’ve gotten are from being Mormon at some point in my life, and familysearch.com has some special Mormons only mailing list that you’ll get re added to no matter how many times you unsubscribe. It’s kind of hilarious in a way to speculate why (Mormon church actually has a pretty good IT team in my experience, my guess is some automated system syncs over emails from Mormon church roles to the familysearch website which I think is owned by the church) but also irritating. I finally had to mark it as spam.

Yes another reason the LDS church is a business and should be taxed as such

Keep in mind the LDS used to have an internal wiki page about "Locating people"...

My biggest issue is they no longer ask, or they do ask and don’t respect the user’s choice. I always uncheck the email/signup checkbox. Yet I still get the emails. Some simply sign the user up by default and then taking the position that the user can unsubscribe if they don’t want them.

If I notice a company doing this, I stop doing business with them. If they can’t respect my inbox and be trusted, then they shouldn’t get a dime of my money.

Spamming me is never a good way to create a positive brand image. When unsubscribing I always say it’s spam when there is a survey on why I’m unsubscribing. I hope it gets them banned from their email marketing service.

I got an email from CrowdStrike Communications by George Kurtz about the root cause analysis for the Channel File 291 incident on my personal email. I was sure it was some scam but it looks absolutely legit with the Gmail blue check. I don't remember ever signing up for any CrowdStrike communication or product. Are they just sending these to everyone in the world?

I got the same email. Never been a CrowdStrike customer or even (that I remember) had any contact with a sales rep. They must've blasted that to every list they had.

I get vastly less spam. Gmail just plain deletes most of it without even dumping it into the spam folder. It's down from thousands a month to dozens.

Companies do subscribe me to mailing lists pretty easily but I really don't mind if they honor the unsubscribe link. And most seem to. (The exception was the Red Cross who I eventually had to mark as spam.)

That's a temporary reprieve. Gmail started hard-requiring an x-unsubscribe header for anyone that sends more than a couple hundred emails to gmail. It isn't hard to put in, it's just that the lower effort mailers need to adjust and don't have visibility on their own spam rates.

This legislation is about making it easier to cancel subscription payment services, not emails.

But, in my experience, after Gmail forced unsubscribe headers earlier this year in marketing emails (1-click unsubscribe is now built into gmail), it's become infinitely easier to clean up my inbox.

So that problem is already solved IMO. Pretty much all the big inbox providers are now forcing 1-click unsubscribe into their inbox UI.

Safeway told me it takes 10 days to stop receiving marketing emails. WTF is that. Also it’s been more than 10 days. Blocked and reported spam. But I have a feeling Gmail is completely in bed with big advertisers so reporting through it does nothing to their scores.

It's funny you mention PitViper, because they are by far the worst offender in my inbox. I've unsubscribed multiple times, I've marked as spam multiple times, yet somehow I still get the occasional marketing message in my Gmail inbox.

> One annoyance I find is the Our terms have been altered. Pray I don't alter them further loophole, where you will still get emails after unsubbing.

I recently ordered pants from The Gap. I am reasonably sure that I didn't sign up for anything, but I started getting spam emails anyway. I unsubscribed immediately, and the unsubscribe page says it "takes up to 10 days to process". I received 1-2 emails from them per day for the next 5 days until I blocked the sender on the 5th day. I reported all the emails as spam but I don't know if that helps.

those one click to unsubscribe buttons are broken in most I try, because my ad-blockers won't let me go to the marketing page.. Why Can't I reply back to the email to unsubscribe? pretty much anyone that sends me marketing texts allows me to reply back STOP to unsubscribe.. why Do I have to use a different tool/channel for email?

B -> Yes, unless the unsubscribe link gets caught by your pi-hole or adguard blocklists :-(

It's because the CAN-SPAM act is rarely enforced. All of those promotional emails are illegal but the government and service providers don't anything about it.

I get like 10 Uber mails over the weekend. It's infuriating.

>> Don't you want to go to the airport again this weekend?

>> Do you remember that night out in Austin 3 weeks ago? The same driver is available again.

Sure how about he picks me up 1300 miles from Austin.

>> How about something to eat? You ordered 4 weeks ago from place XYZ.

I gave that place a 2 star rating.

Regular T&C spam? Mark it as spam. If enough people do this, that company will have problems getting e-mails through at all.

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