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Comment by CoastalCoder | Hacker News Reader

I always assumed that the unsubscribe link in email/SMS spam was part of the scam.

I.e., they didn't know if the spam ever reached an actual inbox until you followed the unsubscribe link.

This is less true than it used to be. Email inbox providers return a hard bounce if the email does not exist. Most load images by default, which returns a positive signal.

Same thing with SMS: if the number can’t receive SMS, the system returns an error.

If you’re not sure, using the client-provided unsubscribe link (usually up near the “from” address or subject line) is better than the one in the footer. Inbox providers like Gmail, Microsoft, Yahoo etc log these clicks and use them to adjust their filters.

first thing i do on any email setup is turn off autoloading images to kill that positive signal. just doing this has cut down spam considerably.

The format of "unsubscribe" links has gotten more elaborate over the years. I used to write shell scripts using wget to unsubscribe vast numbers of randomly generated "email addresses". That's typically not reasonable to do these days because either the unsubscribe links are obviously broken or the format of the GET or POST is not clear.

> I used to write shell scripts using wget to unsubscribe vast numbers of randomly generated "email addresses".

...why?

To see if I could overload some dickhead spammer's system. To send a message. To make a bad person's day worse. To inject crap into the CSV the spammer would inevitably try to sell to other spammers. Oh, lots of reasons.

They'll know if you opened the email even if you don't click unsubscribe, because emails often contain remote content. It's stupid that that's allowed, but that's the way it is.

Yes. Once you hit unsubscribe you signal you care about that mailbox. At that point they start autosubscribing a lot of garbage to you.

FWIW I use unsubscribe all the time and it’s quite effective, i don’t get the sort of garbage you describe. The only unwanted emails I get are after signing up for a new service and they start sending me marketing emails (which I almost certainly didn’t consent to so I’d say that’s spam, but at least I know where it’s from and these are the ones I unsubscribe from)

Edit: maybe it’s just that gmail spam filters work well?

Using "unsubscribe" on real businesses is perfectly fine, even if they added you to their mailing list using some sort of dark pattern. It almost always works and rarely has negative effects.

Using it on "enlarge your penis now" type spam isn't, to say nothing of outright phishing of course.

Makes sense. I don’t get those spams, so probably I have Gmail’s filters to thanks!

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an unsubscribe link on an actual spam message.

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