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Comment by theamk | Hacker News Reader

I go one step further and for the lists which I don't remember subscribing to, I never click "Unsubscribe" - it's "Spam" right away.

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Works great except for the gas company, electric and water company, phone company, airlines, cloud provider, os provider, and everyone else that mixes the 5% of legit business that you can’t afford to ignore or miss with the 95% of marketing content that you want to get rid of.

Since it’s usually opaque how “mark as spam” and “block” actually works, and since the origin of the mailing lists can be reconfigured any time.. I still feel like I’m endlessly spammed by all the assholes I have to do business with, or else I’m going to miss a bill or a flight.

It does work, because the companies will realize that gmail no longer delivers their emails and that they need to change their behavior. Also for example AWS SES (Simple Email Service) will give you clear warnings if it detects that recipients mark their email as spam (it seems that for example gmail delivers this information somehow to SES).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abuse_Reporting_Format

Few companies are stupid enough to use the same sender or even domain for marketing and important transactional mail.

Utility companies are unfortunately exactly that kind of stupid though.

My utility doesn't seem to market to me. What the heck are they sending email to you for? "Use more electricity!" "Build a new house!" "Get a hot tub?"

I'm not sure if it would be called "marketing" but my power company would send "you're using more energy than your neighbors" (I worked from home) and "think about why you use the most energy at night" (in the winter) emails which were no better than spam.

Also ‘free energy audit!’, ‘sign up for our peak-load-and-we’ll shut off your AC program’, and ‘we’re good people, honest!’ promotions.

My gas company has the equivalent of a mileage program. You earn points per cubic meter of gas you consume, that can then be redeemed for expensive meals at restaurants and stuff.

Yes it's very stupid.

My telco does as well, and I got a free Nintendo Switch from them for just having fiber internet that I would need anyway (the telco just owns the fiber, the ISP then goes over that open fiber, so I pay two different companies, it's the former that has the point program despite being the definition of a dumb pipe)

This is the way. Often times clicking unsubscribe is just sending them a notice that your address is an active inbox. They can abuse that knowledge or resell it. Better to mark as spam.

Same for me. Spam or phishing, depending on how annoyed I am.

Some site I haven't used in 5 years reminding me to login and check out their deals? Sounds like a phishing trap to me.

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