
How does the Gmail unsubscribe button work? - jivings
https://blog.leavemealone.app/how-does-the-gmail-unsubscribe-button-work/
======
slim
I want a button that says "ghost this mailing list" when I click it, their
mail server gets a standard message like "user no longer exists at this
address", or "user reached quota", whatever makes me get pruned from their
database instead of having my email address validated and the "last_seen"
column updated.

~~~
neuronflux
It unfortunately would probably only do the opposite as this validation occurs
during the SMTP transaction when the message is delivered to the server.

Going back after and saying you don't exist is like answering the phone and
going "nobody is home".

Edit: I suppose this ghost setting could be used for future delivery attempts
though. Perhaps this is what you meant originally.

~~~
sethammons
I work for an email service provider. While we usually get a response from the
inbox provider that an inbox does not exist, we totally get async bounces all
the time. Some providers accept the mail and realize later that they cannot
deliver it.

~~~
massaman_yams
Can confirm. Async bounces make up somewhere around a few percent of overall
bounces for most senders.

------
adrianmonk
I love the idea of the Gmail unsubscribe button, but unfortunately I can't
bring myself to use it.

The issue is that there are good-faith and bad-faith unsubscribe links.
Clicking the unsubscribe button can thus either have a good outcome (less junk
mail) or a bad outcome I ardently want to avoid (letting a spammer know my
address is active).

I'm sure Google knows this and does some verification and detection to try to
prevent that bad outcome, but as an end user, I don't have much visibility
into how well that works. It's a hard problem, but Google is smart, so it's
_possible_ they've solved it, but I don't really know whether they _actually_
have.

So in practice, I always read over the email in question carefully to try to
judge for myself whether it's safe to click the unsubscribe link at the
bottom. It's annoying, but the effort seems worth it.

~~~
crdrost
PSA that there was a sort of "email 2.0" spec called "Internet Mail 2000"
(which gives you an idea of how long ago this was, heh) by djb, that would
have partly eliminated all this crap. The idea is that you can pay the cost of
read receipts (which are kind of a superset of what you are concerned about)
to structurally disadvantage spamming so much (by forcing it to tether itself
to DNS) that it ceases to be a viable marketing model; spam that is big enough
to generate revenue is also either big enough to be caught or spread out
enough among new domain registrations that the cost easily swallows the
revenue. The struggle is that nobody likes read receipts, so one is stuck
trying to define some sort of "halfway between" system to try and invalidate
the read receipts, "sometimes you have to store the message until the person
wants to read it, but sometimes Gmail will download it before the person reads
it, so this signal is unreliable for whether it was actually read."

~~~
calcifer
> there was a sort of "email 2.0" spec called "Internet Mail 2000" by djb,
> that would have partly eliminated all this crap

Sounds like they were advocating a solution to spam [1]. I wonder why it
didn't work...

[1]
[https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt](https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt)

~~~
crdrost
I mean in his defense, DJB has some serious chops that others have lacked,
including writing what was at one point the most popular DNS server for anyone
who cared about security as well as the first MTA which cared about security
while transmitting email, and now two of the more popular stream ciphers, one
of which underlies the current fastest secure hash function.

IM2000 probably would have succeeded if it had gotten the attention from him
to go past a random idea into a well-specified protocol with a canonical
implementation. Standards work is hard!

------
gws
I follow these rules:

1) if I never signed up goes immediately to SPAM

2) if I did signed up I make the effort of going through their unsubscribe
procedure

3) if I still get emails after (2) goes to SPAM

~~~
nikeee
I follow a similar procedure, with one more step:

1) If I never signed up goes immediately to SPAM.

2) If I did signed up I make the effort of going through their unsubscribe
procedure.

3.1) If I still get e-mails after (2), I file a request for my personal data
under the GDPR (EU citizen here).

3.2) Once I got that, I use the GDPR to delete all of the data associated with
my account / e-mail address.

4) If I still get e-mails after (3), it goes to SPAM.

With step 3, I hope that I can make them notice their bad behaviour. My goal
is to drive up the costs of that behaviour (so they get incentivised to change
it). Also, I'm generally interested in the personal data that a service has
associated with me.

~~~
londons_explore
Nearly any business that gets more than a handful of GDPR requests has fully
automated it.

It costs them nothing to process your request - you're wasting far more of
your time crafting the request than of theirs.

~~~
alexriddle
You might be surprised. I worked for an organisation that got ~1000 requests a
year up until recently, each request involved going into every system
manually, taking screenshots, tagging files etc. Quite often a good few hours
per request and on a few memorable occasions, several days work for a single
request. It definitely does cost many larger companies, but to varying
degrees.

------
0x0
If I get spam mails on lists I never signed up for, I either hunt down the
X-Abuse header and report there (if they use a reputable bulk mailing
service), otherwise I just paste the entire email on members.spamcop.net

~~~
inetknght
> _if they use a reputable bulk mailing service_

If they use a reputable bulk mailing service instead of using their first-
party domain then they are indistinguishable from a phishing attack.

~~~
BGZq7
> If they use a reputable bulk mailing service instead of using their first-
> party domain then they are indistinguishable from a phishing attack.

With most bulk mailing services, the message will come from the "first-party
domain". They will have configured that service as a legitimate sender for the
domain via SPF/DKIM DNS records.

~~~
inetknght
> _With most bulk mailing services, the message will come from the "first-
> party domain". They will have configured that service as a legitimate sender
> for the domain via SPF/DKIM DNS records._

It's not just the from:marketing@firstparty.com that I'm talking about. If the
unsubscribe link does not _also_ go to firstparty.com, then it's still
indistinguishable from phishing.

------
pm90
It’s really amusing to me that the top comments on this posts seem to be HN
users complaining about spam and if this button is useful or not.

I had to dive into this a bit for something and work and it’s just fascinating
how much effort has been spent in trying to combat spam, build a reputation
based system for emails etc. And this article does an amazing job of
explaining list-unsubscribe...although the RFC is pretty easy to read too!

------
numakerg
My naive suggestion. "Hard" unsubscribe button that tosses all future emails
from this list in the trash and mails the sender a note that the address has
unsubscribed from this list and all future emails will be ignored.

Gmail has over a billion active users. Mailing lists will probably adapt to
whatever crumbs Google leaves on the doorstep.

~~~
zbentley
Isn't that exactly the "mark as spam" button?

~~~
numakerg
Mark as spam doesn't notify the sender

------
sowbug
Pet peeve: unsubscribe links that take me to a page asking for my personal
information (usually my email address). I'll usually close those pages and
report the email as spam.

If you know my email address, then put a token in the unsubscribe link so you
can retrieve my address on your end, rather than making me retype it. If you
don't know my email address -- maybe you are sending to a list, not to me --
then I consider you spam because you don't actually have the direct ability to
remove me.

~~~
enumjorge
I’ll add another pet peeve to the list: unsubscribe links that remove you from
only 1 of N number of lists they have. You click unsubscribe but a few days
later you’re still getting mail because you got removed from “news” emails but
this one is a “promotional” email.

~~~
mimimi31
I recently unsubscribed from all but one (the account tips) of the Firefox
newsletters, because they were sending too much stuff I wasn't really
interested in. The next day I get a new Email from them.

Subject: "Was it something we said? _crying emoji_ ". Body: "If you want to
go... we won't stop you. [...]" Footer: "You're receiving this email because
[...] subscribed to Firefox Account Tips.

Yeah, thanks for the ~~tip~~ spam.

Felt like going through one of those dark pattern flows that Spotify or Amazon
have when you try to unsubscribe from their paid plans, trying to guilt you
into reconsidering.

~~~
drngdds
That's pretty ironic coming from a company whose main value proposition is "we
aren't assholes like other tech companies are." That and the annoying crap you
have to disable when you install Firefox to get a blank new tab page.

(Still better than Google, though.)

~~~
wolco
How can you get a blank page? What do I need to delete?

~~~
kbrosnan
The simplest way is to click the gear on the new tab page and uncheck items
you don't want. If you uncheck everything you will still have the gear icon
present. If you want to hide that then your are in userChrome.css territory.

~~~
account42
I just have Options -> Home -> New tabs set to "Blank Page" and that works
just fine without any icons.

------
ndesaulniers
Multiple times the gmail unsubscribe button has removed me as moderator from
mailing lists I moderate!

I tend to use the checkboxes to mark groups of emails as spam, then also
chosen "unsubscribe me" without checking where they came from (since I don't
want to open them).

When it happens to be spam sent to a mailing list, this feature unsubscribes
you from the mailing list. When it's a Google group you moderate, good bye
moderator status! Oops! (Filed a bug internally about this, no status updates
so far.)

~~~
RandomBacon
I don't think that's a bug. It sounds like you are asking to be unsubscribed
from a mailing list, and they're honoring that request. It's on you to make
sure you're doing that for the proper emails.

> without checking where they came from

------
pricci
I'm always fearful of clicking unsubscribe. It's a way of telling the spammer
"hey, this email is really used by a real human, spam the hell out of me"

~~~
ptmcc
Any remotely legitimate mailing list will respect unsubscribe requests, lest
they run afoul of the CAN-SPAM act and/or start getting blacklisted.

Years ago I worked at a large email service provider for bulk mailings on
behalf of large customers and we took unsubscribes very seriously.

And for the really truly spam/scam emails, the unsub link is the least of your
concerns since delivery and tracking pixels confirm the address is real and
being used. The true spam usually doesn't even have an unsub link. In those
cases mark as spam and hope that your email provider starts flagging them as
spam before it ever makes it to your inbox in the future.

I'm an aggressive unsubscriber and 99% of the time it works. Very little junk
flows into my inbox these days.

~~~
hu3
> since delivery and tracking pixels confirm the address is real and being
> used

Does it work in Gmail? Since it doesn't load images until I athorize:
[https://i.imgur.com/RZ93VIU.png](https://i.imgur.com/RZ93VIU.png)

~~~
finnthehuman
Unless you use an iPhone, then there is no way to shut off images in gmail.
Seems a bit strange that they'd not have that feature, when gmail was the
first big provider to disable images by default.

~~~
close04
That is inaccurate. I have disabled image loading in Gmail and this is
reflected in the web interface, the Gmail Android app, the Apple Mail app, and
very likely in all other mail clients. Just to be clear, you _do not_ need an
iPhone to shut off images in gmail.

~~~
finnthehuman
I mean in the gmail app for iphone. Gmail images are off when I use a desktop,
they're off when I use the andriod app, but I was surprised to see images in
email when using the gmail iphone app.

Last time I went searching, I found google documentation that said there are
no image options for the iphone app.

~~~
fortenforge
This used to be the case but was fixed earlier this year. You can now disable
images in the Gmail iOS app:
[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919?co=GENIE.Platf...](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919?co=GENIE.Platform%3DiOS&hl=en)

------
t-writescode
Friendly reminder that the CAN-SPAM Act is a thing in the United States.

[https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
center/guidance/can...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business)

------
jeffbee
The bit at the bottom about the unsubscribe button appearing or not might be
based on sender reputation?

~~~
jivings
Nice! Do you have a source for that?

~~~
Sephr
Source: [https://gmail.googleblog.com/2009/07/unsubscribing-made-
easy...](https://gmail.googleblog.com/2009/07/unsubscribing-made-easy.html)

------
zaat
I don't know about Gmail, but I once accidentally hit unsubscribe on a Yandex
mail account I use solely for getting mails from mailing lists and it
unsubscribed me immediately, no questions asked, and without any way to undo.
I tried removing the sender from the unsubscribed mailing lists, removing and
adding the subscription on the mailing list side half a dozen times, but
nothing worked.

------
factorialboy
Unsubscribe is a confirmation to spammers that your email is indeed real.

~~~
koheripbal
Doesnt a lack of a bounce already confirm it's real?

~~~
factorialboy
Maybe, but you actively unsubscribing confirms it's an active email account.

------
dweekly
[http://help.mail-list.com/m/59114/l/558254-rfc-2369-list-
uns...](http://help.mail-list.com/m/59114/l/558254-rfc-2369-list-unsubscribe-
headers)

There's and RFC for List-Unsubscribe headers.

------
zitterbewegung
Anyone know how the macOS / iOS unsubscribe button works?

~~~
jivings
It's probably very much the same!

------
einpoklum
> If you use Gmail or frequently send mailing list emails

Now that's your problem right there. _Don't_ use Gmail. You're not just giving
up your own privacy, you're hurting the privacy of everyone who corresponds
with you. There are plenty of non-US free email providers, and many/most of
them are at the very least much better than Google in this respect.

Also _use a mail client_, not your browser. Thunderbird, KMail, evolution -
even (ugh) Outlook.

~~~
jdm2212
This comment isn't constructive or substantively related to the article it's
on. But on the subject of privacy:

I'd rather have my data in the hands of Google -- a company with strong
compliance and the world's best non-government infosec outfit -- than in the
hands of any of the other companies listed.

~~~
einpoklum
"Strong compliance" \- to what? It strongly complies with the government's
expectation of access to all of your data.

"best non-government infosec outfit" \- but that outfit is not securing your
information _from_ Google, the US government or Google's business parties; it
secures it from other individuals and unaffiliated organizations.

~~~
jdm2212
I'd rather have my data in Google's hands, where I basically know who can
access it and when (US government with a warrant or NSL, Google employee with
a specific business need, no foreign governments, no hackers) than in the
hands of some company that for all I know exposes their production DB to the
public internet with default username and password enabled.

I guess there's always E2E encryption, but I'd like to be able to recover my
emails if I lose my password.

------
mattbeckman
We've had "Add List-Unsubscribe Header" on Trello for a long time, but for
some reason I had it in my mind that there was a ~60 character limit.

I appreciate the post because after revisiting it, I think that info was
gathered from a few-years-old blog discussing a specific limit in (maybe?)
Gmail, but it sounds like it can be broken down into multiple lines.

~~~
crdrost
I don't think there are "multiple lines", just that you can have quite large
HTTP headers and this one happens to contain a comma followed by a space,
which the text view is using to word-wrap.

See e.g.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180605011201/https://www.list-...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180605011201/https://www.list-
unsubscribe.com/technical/) for a better example.

------
meritt
I just mark as spam. Too many unsubscribe links want me to type in my email
address, ain't nobody got time for that.

If it's a newsletter I actually signed up for, I respect that and will
unsubscribe, but the majority is unsolicited spam where a company feels is OK
because I happened to have bought a product they can now email me 8 times a
day.

------
PatrolX
Most of the time where this shows up I never subscribed in the first place.

Gmail needs to handle that in a much better way to ensure they end up in spam
for everyone else.

I'm not hitting unsubscribe if I didn't subscribe in the first place because
it sends a signal to the sender that I don't want them to get.

~~~
boomlinde
I thought gmail "mark as spam" could have a global effect if enough people
used it for the same address.

------
throwawaysea
The worst are emails that require a login or other input information on their
unsubscribe page, or ones where the mobile unsubscribe page does not work. I
report these as spam just so they are punished for the dark pattern, but I
think these might also be violations of the CAN SPAM act.

------
seph-reed
So what's wrong with hitting spam?

~~~
silviogutierrez
I try to be reasonable here. If it's something from a business I transacted
with in the past or recognize the name, I will unsubscribe. I don't consider
it spam. And I don't want to hurt their reputation.

I do keep track of if I already unsubscribed from a related list. Sometimes
"unsubscribe from all" is completely ignored. Which really angers me.

If it's a random, clearly bought newsletter list from a related list, it
depends on my mood. Likely spam.

Other notorious example: business A founder also founds (unrelated) business
B. They just email their entire A client base with zero association to A. Big
peeve of mine.

\-- Edits (some more ramblings) --

My personal favorite: the "I want to receive marketing email" checkbox that
rechecks if you have an unrelated issue with your transaction. Say, invalid CC
details.

Still, even with these boxes, I think my standard is just: "I did business
with them, I will get at least 1 marketing email. I'm ok with that. I will
unsubscribe and not hear from them again." Anything past that is unacceptable.

To be clear: that's not how I think it should be. It's just how businesses,
even small, genuine mom and pop shops, have been taught to operate. It's
cultural. It reminds me a lot of tipping in the US. I'm vehemently anti-
tipping "culture" because a standard 20% is the opposite of rewarding for
performance. But I still tip at a baseline of 18%+.

It's too ingrained. And I'm not going to protest by not tipping and try to
change it.

I think we've come too far unless changed by law or restaurant management.
Same goes for marketing emails.

~~~
inetknght
> _I try to be reasonable here._

I try to be a little more reasonable here. If it's a business that required me
to sign up to do business with them and didn't allow me to opt out of their
marketing emails then I have no problem whatsoever clicking the Spam button.
And, if their marketing emails go to a third party domain -- such as a bulk
emailer -- then it goes into the Phishing bucket _regardless_ of whether or
not I opted out of their marketing emails.

~~~
dvtrn
So much of my “spam” is from services I definitely signed up for because I
have a legit use for, Or product I’m glad to pay a fair price for, but they
never even asked if I wanted to get emails from them during signup/checkout-
the emails just start coming in.

What’s the deal with this?

~~~
frenchy
I suspect it's because it works for enough people that it pays off.

Every now and then I forget how annoying it was last time, and I think it
would be nice to donate money to some sort of charity, and then they proceed
to spam me for the following year. A couple years later I forget about he
experience, and the cycle begins again.

~~~
ryanianian
I donated $20 to doctors without borders four years ago (a friend wanted that
in lieu of bday presents). I've since gotten close to 50 letters from them and
other charities. That cost far outweighs the $20 I gave them.

~~~
dvtrn
Was this part of that feature happening on Facebook where people can create
“campaigns” or just an ad hoc request to donate?

~~~
ryanianian
She requested it on facebook via one of those things, but I donated directly
on their website since..facebook.

------
Jaruzel
Outlook has this functionality. I don't know if it's using the unsubscribe
link scrape method, or the List-Unsubscribe header method.

What it does is show an Unsubscribe button above the email, which loads the
unsubscribe URL into a small web panel below it.

------
homakov
Whenever I click "it's spam & unsubscribe" i often keep getting more emails.

Then I started clicking "block this address" from another drop-down - never
got any new mail. Much recommended approach.

------
somurzakov
is there a way to unsubscribe from junk mail in my physical mailbox owned by
USPS ?

~~~
phantom784
[https://dmachoice.thedma.org/](https://dmachoice.thedma.org/) but it costs a
few dollars.

You can also contact the company directly and ask to be removed from their
list.

------
JamesCoyne
Small editing issue:

I think the author missed adding a hyperlink in the summary at "You can check
the source of an email to do this - here's a guide on how to do that. "

~~~
jivings
Fixed. Thanks!

------
ddrt
Am I the only person on the internet who doesn’t get spam emails? Or just the
loneliest?

~~~
t-writescode
I work very hard to unsubscribe to everything I know about. In general, I have
very low spam volumes.

Occasionally, I'll sign up for something new, and get spam and then I have to
do it all over again.

------
istillwritecode
here's the deal. if I give you an email for a transaction, that doesn't mean I
want your future marketing. That is spam and that is how I mark it. If you
want to keep sending me marketing, then ask permission.

------
FirstLvR
this seems to be better designed on outlook, i would just create a rule to
instant delete, filter, this mails

we need Rules on gmail... filters do the labelin work but they dont actually
move the mails

~~~
Aardwolf
gmail filters allow various actions, including delete, archive, mark as read,
forward, etc...

is that not what you meant?

------
Giorgi
Quick tip: it does not.

------
boltzmannbrain
It doesn't.

------
TLightful
TL/DR: It doesn't.

------
cosmodisk
At work we have about 200K mailing list we target after some segmentation is
done,so it's about a few thousand people for any give campaign. We had some
settings wrong,which meant thst no reply wasn't enabled.People would rather
respond to an email and ask to unsubscribe or rant about it but rarely click
unsubscribe button.

~~~
saghm
> People would rather respond to an email and ask to unsubscribe or rant about
> it but rarely click unsubscribe button

It's a bit ironic to complain about getting unwanted emails from a bunch of
users when they're literally just replies to unwanted emails that you sent
them

~~~
cosmodisk
I'm not complaining- it was merely an observation.

