
Ask HN: What is your favourite way of unsubscribe from emails and why? - niksmac
Hey, I used to get a minimum of 10 unwanted&#x2F;promotional emails a day, even if I set up the username+RAND@gmail.com method in my email.<p>My way of cancelling my subscription is by pressing the &quot;Report Spam&quot; button in the Gmail web client.<p>Why? Because i read somewhere that they have been recording the unsubscription email accounts and marking it as &quot;Active&quot; and using it for other activities. However i used to unsubscribe if the link leads somewhere like  http:&#x2F;&#x2F;<i>.us</i>.list-manage.com for obvious reasons.<p>What are your methods of unsubscribing? Is there any other tools to issue a Bounce response, based on some filters?
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saaaaaam
If there is a vey obvious link that immediately unsubscribes me then I will
use it. By immediately I mean "when I click this link I am removed from all
future mailings without having to do anything else and without a delay".

If it asks me to confirm my email address or asks any other action or uses
deliberately confusing double negatives ("confirm which email lists you don't
want to stop receiving") or asks me anything else before confirming my opt out
then I will immediately return to gmail and click "report spam".

I run a fully opted in newsletter and very occasionally see "reported as spam"
in my dashboard which I assume means this action still has some very minor
negative action for the sender if they are using a third party provider
(mailchimp etc) to manage their campaigns.

"unsubscribe" should mean unsubscribe not "present me a number of options to
try and confuse people into staying".

I notice that with some campaigns when you hit "report spam" in gmail it asks
if you would like to unsubscribe. I'm happy to do that if it's presented as an
option - though I haven't seen it for a while.

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niksmac
I appreciate your thoughts on "unsubscribe" should mean unsubscribe not
"present me a number of options to try and confuse people into staying". Makes
a lot of sense, yet nobody seems to follow.

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afarrell
I recently did an email cleanup and appreciate that it seems like
ConstantContact did that.

I wish mailman would. Does anyone know if the maintainer would be willing to
accept a patch?

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sciencerobot
I have a gmail filter that sends all emails with the word 'unsubscribe' to a
special folder. I check the unsubscribe folder about once a week to make sure
I didn't miss anything important. It doesn't completely solve the problem of
spammy emails but it causes them to not be a distraction when I'm trying to
process emails written by actual humans.

~~~
shinamee
Wow, basically extra work for you weekly?

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sciencerobot
How is it extra work if you have to do it anyway? If anything, it's slightly
less work to go through it all at once.

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scraft
I use some of the unsubscribe options when the sender seems reputable, in
other cases I am worried to use it, as perhaps they are just sending out
emails to get a confirmation that the account is valid so they can then spam
it all the more.

Our emails go via a host which provides a CPANEL interface, and from there I
have a rule for all inboxes which I add to (for deleting spam), on average,
once a week. There are probably a few hundred entries on the rule, but
overtime it has worked very well. It normally takes me a few moments to add a
new entry to the rule list, just because I try to be very careful to ensure I
won't delete any important emails.

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lecarore
In gmail i have 200+ filters that archive content based on senders. Twitter,
facebook and linkeding are all going directly to archived. I use the
email+junk@gmail.com trick when on dodgy websites. Sometimes they refuse this
kind of email though. I rarely bother to unsub with the link, making a filter
is faster. As a web app dev, I did implement a one click usub, but some noob
users clicked it by mistake. Because emailing is essential in my app (it's the
entry point to the shop), I did a slightly more complicated unsub workflow to
avoid mistakes.

~~~
sharmi
I am very curious to know what is the "email+junk" trick? I tried googling but
it yielded no helpful result.

~~~
rosswilson
A lot of email providers support aliases using the + symbol. If your email
address was foo@example.com, then foo+bar@example.com would also work and be
delivered to your inbox.

This is a good way of finding out what company sold your email address too.

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wingerlang
I just press unsubscribe and I have never seen anyone doing something
nefarious. I rarely get subscription emails from things I haven't signed up to
to begin with.

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chmaynard
Instead of trying to unsubscribe to unsolicited marketing emails, I simply
mark them as Junk mail. I can do this with a single keystroke in my email
reader (I'm using the Mail app on a Mac). All subsequent email from the same
address goes into my Junk folder automatically.

~~~
niksmac
Well, even if I mark it as junk from my iPhone, it again appears in my inbox
which is irritating for me.

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forgottenpass
After I left a public facing role I had to deal with stopping a lot of spam.
Apparently everyone with something to sell thinks the fact my email address
was published on the website meant I was actively trying to subscribe to their
nonsense.

I found that a polite email to customer service and/or abuse contacts at the
technically-this-side-of-legal spamhouses (constant contact, mailchimp, etc)
is usually enough to get yourself on a sitewide blacklist.

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jszymborski
I have a (couple of) catchall domain, and so give every form a randomly
generated email that I store in my KeePass database along with the randomly
generated password.

Then I just set-up a blackhole for the email once they begin getting spammy.
It also helps me avoid phishing attempts, as an email from MyBank(TM) would
only be addressed to a random email that only MyBank(TM) has any right
knowing.

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dozzie
> What are your methods of unsubscribing?

My favourite is not to subscribe in the first place. My second favourite is to
add a position to sieve filter.

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niksmac
I am hearing sieve filter for the first time. Language semantics looks
interesting and straight forward. Disappointed about the client support.
Mostly I am on Apple/iOS Mail or web Gmail.

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richardknop
Radical way is to get a completely new email address and start using it as
your primary email from now on (on all your devices).

And this time be more careful and don't sign up for random websites. Keep your
original email address as a backup but you can disable any notifications from
it.

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likespandas
I'll click unsubscribe for some of my users (I manage about 6-10 mailboxes) if
I feel that the sender isn't honoring my request or requires I sign in to
complete the request then I black list the domain.

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patatino
I always click the unsubscribe link. I get maybe one or two unwanted emails
every week.

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egberts1
Single mouse click, enough said.

