
No one-click unsubscribe? It's spam. - cpursley
Your marking emails might not have a one-click unsubscribe link but Gmail certainly has a one click spam button.<p>Two ways you can keep me as a subscriber:<p>1. Remind me what the hell it is your company does/sells in the first sentence. Between my signup and now, chances are about 95% that I forgot what I even signed up for.<p>2. Make it easy to unsubscribe. That means a very visible one-click link. Unsubscribing doesn't mean I'm no longer interested in your product. But making it difficult to unsubscribe says a lot about how I will be treated as your customer.<p>&#60;extra&#62; Go easy on the HTML / CSS / Images. &#60;/credit&#62;
======
spenvo
Linked-In has the spammiest email protocol out of any service I have ever
used. _Even after signing-in_ there is no one-click-to-unsubscribe button
(they split it into about 12 scattered categories), and they create new
categories periodically and opt you in to them. This is downright deceitful.
_Pro tip_ : change your email to one that you never use. It literally came
down to doing this or deleting my Linked-in account--unfathomable to me. Also:
no more f@#$!ng emails at 4 in the morning. This seems like a jackpot CAN-SPAM
class action suit.

@easternmonk: _That's the thing_ \-- I did mark them as spam in GMail. I
assumed it would block future emails from Linked-in but not the case. ...
Somehow they continued to come in.

@sehugg: That too! I complained about their this on Facebook and I had friends
( _yes, plural_ ) who had deleted their account because of the spam and yet
were still receiving it. Unbelievable

~~~
sehugg
Not only that, but they send you emails even after you have deleted your
account.

~~~
iloveponies
They repeatedly send you emails even if you don't have an account.

------
lt
It's in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act

    
    
        You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request.
    

[http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-
complia...](http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-
guide-business)

~~~
xur17
So, that means I shouldn't have to login to my account to unsubscribe,
correct? I find this annoying as I tend to click on the unsubscribe link from
my phone, and not have the login details with me. I've seen several prominent
companies that do this, including Mint earlier today.

~~~
joonix
Yes that is not permitted - they need to use encoded links in the email to
identify you automatically upon click.

~~~
eli
The links do not need to be encoded -- they are allowed to ask for your email
address -- but they can't ask for much else. And definitely not a
username/password.

------
massarog
Companies that make me sign in to unsubscribe, stop doing this.

~~~
rocky1138
If I click an unsubscribe link and the company wants me to sign in, I mark it
as spam in gmail.

~~~
jrockway
If I didn't explicitly opt in (checking an unchecked checkbox, emailing
someone and saying "please subscribe me to your ads", etc.), I mark it as
spam.

------
Ironlink
As a developer, I like to follow the rule of thumb that requests that have a
persistent effect (such as changing your subscription options) should be HTTP
POST rather than HTTP GET. This is in order to avoid mistakes generated by
automated tools or systems which pre-fetch/cache/scan/analyze content. As
such, my unsubscribe links lead to a page containing a one sentence summary of
what you are about to do, and a form submit button.

This does not apply to the link passed in the SMTP header List-Unsubscribe,
which needs to take direct action.

~~~
46Bit
It's slightly less fast, but I don't mind this. Provided you don't make me
remember which email address you're sending to and just autofill it, I'll
happily click all the one-button forms you like.

------
fleitz
Having run a mailing list I can pretty much tell you that despite your best
efforts to put the right headers in so Google can do their own unsub links,
unsub at top and bottom, etc, that despite all this and being fully CAN-SPAM
complaint that people will still write emails to your ISP claiming that your
sending SPAM.

I'm not sure why but usually it's academics who send these. Maybe people sign
them up for mailing lists b/c they are jerks or something. They all seem to be
sure that they've never ever signed up for a mailing list.

ISP sends me email about the compliance issue, I put the email address into a
form that blocks it from ever being associated with any of the lists on that
server, and it spits back an email detailing when they signed up, confirmed,
etc, that they've been blacklisted, and then attaches a jpeg image of the
headers / footers with unsub links circled in red so the ISP can close the
case.

~~~
graue
> Maybe people sign them up for mailing lists b/c they are jerks or something

Not possible if you have a confirm step. And you should have a confirm step.

~~~
polyfractal
You would be surprised. I've run several mailing lists for both technical and
non-technical people.

Always, without fail, you will get someone that signs up, confirms and then
mashes the spam button two emails later while sending you irate "HOW DID YOU
GET MY EMAIL ADDRESS UNSUBSCRIBE ME OHGODWHATHAVEYOUDONE?!" emails.

It's remarkable, really.

~~~
graue
Well yes, forgetting that you signed up is still possible if there's a confirm
step. Being signed up (maliciously or accidentally) by someone else, however,
is the situation I was referring to and confirm steps exist specifically to
prevent that.

------
dbz
Tangentially related: you can create a filter to search for emails with the
word "unsubscribe" in them. Generally speaking I don't want to read anything
with "unsubscribe" in it, and when I do, I have a nice folder for it.

------
greggman
My pet peeve, companies that don't unsubscribe immediately. Apple for example
says they'll unsubscribe you in 10 days. Given all the other things a
company's systems can do immediately this one strikes me as spammy

~~~
eli
Many companies say 10 days as a legal CYA (10 days is the limit imposed by
CAN-SPAM Act). In practice, despite what they say, it's usually instant.

------
el_cuadrado
FYI: most SPAM feedback systems reduce your account weight ('trust score') if
you tag your non-SPAM emails as SPAM.

Although I agree with one-click-unsubscribe sentiment, clicking SPAM on an
e-mail you subscribed for is not very productive.

------
natmaster
I have one-click no-login unsubscribe button at the bottom of all my emails.
To even get an email you have to explicitly subscribe to something. (This is
not a mailing list but notification system.) Yet I still get about 1 spam
report a day.

I am tempted to just deactivate anyone's account that reports as spam. Is
there something else I'm missing?

~~~
DanBC
I'd be interested in what the current best practice is for sending emails.

For your case, do the emails start with an idiot proof line such as "This is
the notification that you signed up for at example.com" ?

~~~
natmaster
From is the username they subscribed to. Subject has the website url along
with the the exact type of notification it is.

Content is very short and sweet.

------
jordoh
Even if you make it easy to unsubscribe (one click, no sign-in, prominent
link), sending an email to any large number of people will still result in
"mark as spam" being used on a surprisingly large percent of messages.

Where I work, we send mail through Amazon SES, so we get digests of all the
messages that have been marked as spam (stripped of identifying email
headers). We see it used on (marketing) newsletters of course, but also on
welcome messages; transactional messages (both the "action required to receive
money" and "you owe us money" type, though the latter get marked as spam much
more frequently); password reset messages; and pretty much anything else we've
sent out more than some middling-to-large number of times.

To help deal with this, we include a token in each message and process the
digests so marking a message as spam will unsubscribe you (or disable the
notification). It's not ideal from our point of view - because we are
presumably getting dinged by the mail provider when someone marks a message as
spam - but hopefully it helps in the long run since we don't send more
messages that will likely just get marked as spam.

When I mark something as spam, I'm doing it to penalize the sender. Whether
they made it hard for me to unsubscribe, bought my email from someone else to
spam me (hooray for "+blah" gmail aliases), or whatever else - I see it as a
different action than unsubscribing. I'm not sure, however, that this
difference is commonly perceived. It seems like there are a lot of people out
there that use it much less judiciously.

Occasionally I will mark a message as spam in Gmail and get a dialog asking if
I want to unsubscribe instead of mark as spam; though I only recall this
happening with messages from Google properties. It would be nice (though
possibly ripe for abuse) if there was some way to let Gmail know where the
unsubscribe link is in the message, so third parties could take advantage of
this feature. That way the user could be a little clearer about whether they
are punishing the sender, or just want the message to go away.

~~~
polyfractal
Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure you are correct. Most people don't realize that
mashing the spam button not only moves the message to the Spam label, but also
alerts the ISP and ESP which causes negative repercussions for everyone.

I'm fine with people hitting spam because something is legitimately spam. But
hitting it because you are too lazy to click the Unsubscribe link is crappy.
Or, more likely, because everyone thinks it's the same as the unsubscribe
link.

I'll only spam something if A) there is no unsubscribe link or B) I keep
getting emails after I unsubscribe.

------
binarymax
This happened to me with TripIt. A colleague invited me and they started
sending me spam without any action from myself, and it was to my corporate
account without an easy spam button like yahoo mail or gmail. I couldn't
unsubscribe without creating an account first. I ended up emailing their
corporate address notifying them they were violating CAN-SPAM and they
manually removed me, and a PR contact apologised. I advised them they should
give non-users a way to unsubscribe. I'm not sure if they ended up following
my advice. My colleagues are loyal users, but just because your users love you
doesn't mean your non-users want your email.

~~~
cpursley
TripIt is one of the offenders for certain. The network updates are obnoxious.

------
BrianEatWorld
I got stuck with marketing emails for my start-up and I take a bit of an issue
with point one.

How is it the sender's fault if you can't remember why you signed up for an
email?

As a matter of best practices, I do remind subscribers. However, it is also
quite irritating to be marked as spam, when it was the user who signed up for
my messages. By all means unsubscribe, but marking me as spam, especially
because I use the highly spam averse Mailchimp is a mean thing to do. Its
particularly mean if its just because you forgot what you signed up for.

~~~
delackner
Just because your boss asked you to do something that many people HATE,
doesn't make it better.

People handing over their email address in exchange for user registration or
to gain access to a trial version of your product are not interested in
receiving sporadic advertising for the next N years.

People are inundated by unwanted email every day, from companies that claim,
like Dracula, "but you said I could come inside." Some people don't mind, but
some of your target customers will already have very negative reactions to ANY
marketing email, so it is incredibly important that you go out of your way to
make it clear that you are trying to communicate something that will benefit
the recipient, not just a sales pitch you can justify legally sending them.

~~~
xenophonf
This. I'm so sick of receiving marketing emails from companies to whom I sent
a one-time informational query, not to mention the marketing emails sent to
addresses gleaned from public directories like Jigsaw (of which I am _not_ a
member).

------
slig
My Gmail won't block linkedin spam no mater how much I click on "report spam".

~~~
zecho
Create a filter for linkedin and send it to your spam folder.

~~~
georgemcbay
Better yet, create a filter for linkedin and have the filter first forward the
mail to abuse@linkedin.com with a header explaining why and then throw it in
the trash.

------
drx
I agree.

The other day I had to unsubscribe out of two Yahoo! Japan newsletters that
suddenly started to arrive (for two different accounts I've apparently made
years before).

To unsubscribe I had to login to both. And for one I didn't even remember the
password. Overall it took me half an hour to unsubscribe.

Also if I can't unsubscribe it goes to spam.

~~~
delackner
Japan tangent: I am amazed on a weekly basis by the mountain of spam
newsletters flooding my email inbox by some of Japan's leading internet
services. Total lack of respect for the customer. Physical mail today is
pretty much 99% spam and 1% bills, and it looks like it might take a miracle
to stop email ending up the same way.

------
zalzane
Ironically enough I have more issues with getting spam text messages on my
cell phone than spam email messages. It's a shame that either the CAN-SPAM act
isn't enforced or doesn't apply to text messages. I'm on the national do not
call list as well, and that has had seemingly no affect.

------
stephen_g
One other thing that massively annoys me - one of my email accounts is a gmail
account with a fairly generic username, and people are constantly using it to
sign up for things - and I'm getting some that have no way to unsubscribe
(like BestBuy trying to get me to activate the antivirus subscription I never
bought, or asking me to renew - I don't even live in the same country).

So, if you're sending emails, please, _please_ , put a 'I didn't sign up for
this account' so I don't have to try and go to the site and reset their
passwords and try to get the account deactivated.

Please just have a link to immediately disassociate my email (like Gmail
does).

~~~
learn
This happens to me all the time as well. As a "quick to anger" person this is
the WORST thing you can do (un)intentionally!

------
SIULHT
But aren't the mails which contain one-click unsubscribe links also spam
because they use it to identify which email accounts are active and sell that
information to other marketers?

------
mathewparet
1) No email address to be shared beyond a domain. (I can see that some sites
partner together and if I register for some newsletter on one site, another
site (domain) should not add me in their list, even if both the sites are run
by the same company. 2) Email address to which emails are subscribed 3) A
single click opt-out 4) Instant Opt-out (many sites say will opt out in XX
hours and finally I forget that I unsubscribe, and again I try to unsubscribe.

------
JacobAldridge
Also a good reason to test your emails in different systems - Gmail often
snips emails I receive, meaning the Unsubscribe link at the bottom is cut off.
I'll bet that leads to increased spam reports.

Aweber had an article last week suggesting you put an Unsub link at the top of
your emails as well. I haven't had the guts to do that for my template
(EveryDayDreamHoliday) but as a consumer I like the idea.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Gmail often snips emails I receive, meaning the Unsubscribe link at the
> bottom is cut off.

It also makes these emails 100% unreadable on a mobile device, because they
don't include the link to the full message on phones for some reason, even
though they do on their web interface.

------
darec1
Ah, if you can unsubscribe with one click, maybe even without logging in. What
stops evil Bert over there from unsubscribing you? Sure, there might be some
(session) token involved, but that could have been sniffed or brute-forced.

Actually mailing lists do it right, have the subscriber confirm his action by
clicking a link in a confirmation mail or such. I think that's called double
confirmation.

~~~
X-Istence
Generally when I unsubscribe from a newsletter they send me a message saying
they are sorry to see me go, with a 1 click link to subscribe again ...

------
tom314
The whole point is, if you make it harder to unsubscribe, people will mark you
as spam, think you're even more annoying than other not-wanted mailings and
even more unlikely to do business with. Compare it with a store attendee who
pulls you in and doesn't let you out anymore.. You will NEVER shop there
anymore even if they have stuff you like.

------
aroberge
Disqus has started spamming me. I signed up to it using my Google account.
When it spams, it says that I can turn off notifications ... But, guess what:
you can't sign in with your Google account credentials. So, I can't change the
notification, and there's no way to unsubscribe when getting email.

------
lucb1e
Anyone who doesn't offer a one-click-unsubscribe gets in my blocklist. This
means that to every newsletter you send, you get an automatic response that I
didn't care enough. I don't even see you sent the message at all.

It's too bad that they're usually sent from no-reply, yes, but it's more
satisfactory at least.

------
Matsta
I found it was actually easier to edit my profile then unsubscribe from SPAM
crap I get from Linked in. So I changed my profile to reflect this but I still
get spam everyday :(

<http://nz.linkedin.com/pub/matt-gascoigne/17/a25/9b6>

------
clay
Dropbox did this recently with an email titled "Never email big files again!
Share with a Dropbox link"

------
Cherian_Abraham
Udemy is one of the spammiest services I have ever come across. Despite,
hitting unsubscribe and going through the motions over 10 times, emailing them
half a dozen times and finally deleting my account - I still get spammed.

Udemy is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to Spam for me.

~~~
X-Istence
That's an issue i've been having with NaNoWriMo, I unsubscribed and yet I
continue to receive emails. Now I have simply marked them as spam.

------
hendry
I wrote a announce list manager over here [https://github.com/kaihendry/sg-
hackandtell/blob/master/list...](https://github.com/kaihendry/sg-
hackandtell/blob/master/list.cgi) that's inspired by this. Be great to get a
code review.

------
jonathanmarcus
Meetup.com and as a result the New York Tech Meetup are egregious offenders of
not providing 1-click unsubscribe. They take it another step further and make
it extremely difficult to unsubscribe on the website too.

~~~
michaelt
Meetup.com also send out "A waitlist is available for [event]" e-mails -
perhaps the most unhelpful e-mail possible, and as far as I can tell the only
way to turn them off is to turn off everything.

Makes me thankful for gmail's filtering.

------
leoh
Tell that to the New England Journal of Medicine, please. I have
unsuccessfully tried to unsubscribe from them several times and they do not
use this simple pattern.

~~~
ahelwer
The ACM is also really horrible. Subscription options are located in two or
three hard-to-find places on the website. They kept on sending me emails
somehow, and I eventually had to file a support ticket to get my account
deleted.

------
eof
posted 691 days ago: but i said two clicks:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2139617>

------
abrown28
How do you implement one-click when your customers forward your emails around
and anybody could click on unsubscribe?

------
readme
e-how's unsubscribe link doesn't work. i've been getting spam from them for a
while now, just because I wanted to post some backlinks on their articles :)

------
cpursley
Err. _marketing_ not marking.

3\. Check for spelling and grammar...

------
xpose2000
Bonus Points: If I haven't logged into your site in over 2 weeks and/or opened
an email, consider me unsubscribed and stop sending me emails.

~~~
eli
Two weeks is ridiculous. You might as well not send a newsletter. Depending on
your service, pretty much everyone on your list will, at one point or another,
go two weeks without a trackable interaction.

I've personally seen (opt-in) newsletter subscribers go many months without
loading images or clicking a link... but send them a notice that their
subscription is being turned off as a courtesy and sure enough a sizable
percentage click the "keep me subscribed" button.

------
drivebyacct2
I'd like to add:

3\. I shouldn't have to sign in to unsubscribe.

4\. Don't auto-subscribe me to new notification types. (We're ALL looking at
YOU LinkedIn.)

~~~
_delirium
Twitter has been doing #4 aggressively as well, which is a bit disappointing,
since somehow I assumed they were better about netiquette than LinkedIn is.

