I think requiring a log-in is actually against the CAN-SPAM regulations.
FTC.gov's web site states:
"an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender"
It is definitely illegal to require a login. CAN-SPAM has many (many) faults, but it is extremely explicit about there being no funny business in the unsubscribe process.
Current FTC rules say that your unsubscribe link must either immediately unsubscribe the user or lead to a page that (at most) asks for only your email address and does not try to confuse or dissuade you.
Mark as spam in a big system (GMail, Hotmail, DCC, whatever). Seriously, it doesn't take that many pissed GMail users to cause GMail to drop all of your mail. This is one reason why outfits like MailChimp will kick you off if you get "marked as spam" too often.
(You could argue that such mail isn't "real" spam; nonetheless, "mark as spam" is realistic.)
IANAL. Unfortunately I don't think it's possible to file a civil suit on your own as with, say, junk faxes (though someone please correct me if that's wrong).
So I guess your best bet is to file a complaint with the FTC, which does occasionally sanction companies, or with your state attorney general, who also has the power to force action.
They didn't say it was unsolicited or unwanted. They just said if they could not unsubscribe in one or two clicks they'd mark it as spam, regardless if it was spam.
By clicking 'unsubscribe', the implied intent is that the email is unwanted. So I can either mark an email as 'unwanted' by clicking 'unsubscribe' or by clicking 'report spam'. I'll always give the sender the benefit of the doubt and try to unsubscribe, but if any action is required on my part other than clicking the link, I take the path of least resistance and simply click 'report spam'. Either way, I'll stop getting those emails.
Doesn't the fact that they immediately want to unsubscribe make it quite obvious that the email is unsolicited?
I have been getting spam from companies who obviously got my email address from someone who sold it to them, for quite a while now. Even though their messages have clear unsubscribe links, list real mailing addresses, and use reputable email marketing companies, that doesn't make it any less spammy.
> They just said if they could not unsubscribe in one or two clicks they'd mark it as spam, regardless if it was spam.
While I'm not limiting spam to this definition, spam is any email that cannot be unsubscribed to in one or two reasonable clicks. If I discover email I was getting is spam, I will mark it as spam.
That argument is pedantic and does not contribute positively to the discussion. Do you believe that the person talking about unsubscribe really means email from his mother-in-law?
Let's use our common sense, shall we? Do you think he marks as spam emails from his coworkers because they don't include unsubscribe links thar onl require one click?
If you don't think he meant that, let's not discuss it regardless of how one might twist his words out of context.
The person specifically said "any email that does not have a one-click unsubscribe". Two of the three categories I mentioned were not "emails from gramma" but that's the example you choose to focus on?
I really do think he means that he marks as spam messages that are not spam. And the biggest problem with spam prevention is the false marking as spam. It's much worse to miss a legit email than to receive spam.
> I really do think he means that he marks as spam messages that are not spam.
You honestly think I mark as spam receipts, emails I ask for, and email from friends? Did I really need to put the disclaimer in? I thought "While I'm not limiting spam to this definition," was enough.
Here, I'll help you.
Just to be clear, I also don't mark as spam email from my half-sisters, half-brothers, brother, sisters-in-law, brother-in-law, mother-in-law, father-in-law, step-mother, step-father, and my wife. Oh wait, forgot to mention all my cousins, and the rest of the family! Clearly, I must mark them as spam.
Because, no matter whether or not it's technically spam, people will stop sending such messages if they get "marked as spam" often enough. Either that, or GMail will start silently dropping their mail - either way, my inbox is clean. Making such a policy public can only help.
[Note that I don't mark such e-mail as spam, if only because there's no convenient way to do so over IMAP.]
I feel like the only reasonable response, then, is to start madking all email sent from people who believe this as spam, so they can get a sense of what this feels like.
Seriously, though: people who abuse the system like that,--whether they are giving products bad ratings for reasons unrelated to the product, using the PayPal dispute system as a threat (or seriously on everything they purchase from everyone online as it let's them get stuff for free), or downvoting comments on HN out of retaliation for a lost argument--need some kind of meta-moderation to keep their data from affecting the system.
I don't think that I was boasting. However, if it being seen as boasting leads to more companies allowing one-click unsubscribes, then I see it as a good thing.
I generally don't just mark messages as spam because I don't want them in my inbox - that's what archiving mail is for (things which I don't need to see but might want to look at in the future). Spam is for when I don't want to receive messages and I can't find a way to get myself taken off of the mailing list after reading through one of the messages.
I also mark any mail where unsubscribe is more difficult than a couple of clicks as spam, though I don't have the instant hate for "webinar" mails that you do (I've never even noticed that as a thing, so I have no opinion one way or another).
This reply is pretty much a public +1 (I also upvoted the post). If points were visible I wouldn't have bothered with the reply and would have just gone with the upvote, but I'm trying to make sure any email marketing folks out there who may be reading this realize you aren't the only one who does this and they are ultimately hurting themselves by making it more difficult to unsubscribe than it needs to be.
Fine if you arrange one but spam emails suggesting you might want to join one are the penis enlargement of business, I get a lot of them for stuff I have no interest in buying.
Opting out of something you asked to receive is the courteous thing to do. If your interests have changed and what you signed up for is no longer relevant to you, it's the best thing all around. The company doesn't have to keep trying to send you emails that you don't want which might be getting rejected by your mail server using cryptic messages (for example, major ISPs use some variant of a 4NN response such as Yahoo's 451 message deferred) making your mail server waste resources rejecting messages you don't want. The sending mail server also keeps retrying until it either gives up as undeliverable or until it eventually gets into your mailbox. If it makes it to your inbox then you waste your time marking it as spam again. Or maybe it goes into your spam folder where you waste your time reviewing the messages to ensure there were no false positives. It also penalizes other users who actually do want to receive the email since that email has a higher likelihood of getting delayed or undelivered because of your actions.
By all means mark as spam stuff you didn't opt in to receive. But marking stuff you did opt in to receive is the digital equivalent of hanging up on your best friend when he calls to see if you'd like to go for your usual weekly coffee. He keeps calling back thinking there was a phone problem and you keep hanging up on him. Wouldn't it be better if you just said "Hey dude, I know we agreed to go for coffee every Monday but I actually stopped drinking coffee a few weeks ago."
"Or maybe it goes into your spam folder where you waste your time reviewing the messages to ensure there were no false positives. It also penalizes other users who actually do want to receive the email since that email has a higher likelihood of getting delayed or undelivered because of your actions."
I don't check my spam folder, if it's really important and by some fluke chance their email gets marked as spam, they can call me, my number is just as readily available as my email address to those who need to know it. I use Gmail, and haven't had to check my spam folder in years.
Further, I'd argue it's the company sending the emails who is penalizing the legitimate users by not providing an unsubscribe link (or equivalent) in the email. My process is simple: if I receive a newsletter that was opted in to that I don't want to receive anymore I look for an unsubscribe link and if I can't find one I email the admin explaining why I think they should have one and requesting that they remove me manually (intended to be a penalty for not providing a sufficiently automated mechanism). If the emails persist, I will mark them as spam and if I'm feeling particularly resentful, I'll set up a filter to forward them all back at the admin.
If they're providing an easy way to opt out, marking it as spam is overkill. However, having to login in order to opt out is inappropriate and potentially illegal.
"...marking stuff [as spam that] you did opt in to receive is the digital equivalent of hanging up on your best friend when he calls to see if you'd like to go for your usual weekly coffee."
I call shenanigans.
Bad analogy, a better one would go like this;
Your friend calls you asking if you want to go out for coffee, and you say no. 5 minutes later, he calls back asking again if you want to go out for coffee, and you say 'no, stop calling me'. Again 5 minutes later he calls you back, so you block his number.
You've tried to tell them you don't want them to contact you anymore, yet they persist. That my friend is spam, and I will mark it appropriately.
Marking emails as spam willy-nilly can hurt legit companies. I generally only do it if I didn't opt-in, or if they don't provide a one-click unsubscribe or ignore the unsubscribe request. It's good karma to not be a dick.
Part of the definition of spam is that it's unsolicited, in the sense of spam filtering. The more casual and loose definition includes anything unwanted and that's fine but we shouldn't extend that definition to spam filtering. If you signed up for it then unsubscribe if you don't want it.
"If you signed up for it then unsubscribe if you don't want it."
In virtually all cases where this occurs I have signed up for the mailing implicitly (by buying something from a company and thus establishing a 'relationship') or accidentally (didn't notice they had conveniently pre-checked a 'spam me please' option in an installer or on a website).
And FWIW even for mails I don't want, I do try their unsubscribe link first and use that if it is just a few clicks to get me off the list. If their unsubscribe method is unreasonably complex (any more than two clicks is unreasonably complex, removing me from their database should be just as simple as adding me was), yes, I'll mark them as spam, and I believe they fully deserve it.
> I’m not sure how this works but I use Mail’s filter for my aggressive filtering and I also use Gmail’s filter for general purpose pre-filtering. It seems to me like I’m free to do whatever I want with my own filter, but maybe I’m marking mail also for Google as spam if I move it to the respective folder? I wouldn’t want to do that.
Oh, in Mail it might be different if Apple doesn't use that data to train it's default filter. Which seems unlikely.
I guess I don't know if Google does, I just assume they do because they're data junkies.
A simple solution I think would be to change the "Spam" button to instead read "I didn't sign up for this". That would be much less open to interpretation based on the user's own personl definition of "spam".
It is an abuse of a system designed to stop unsolicited email. You're basically ruining that system every time you do that. Someone who wants to get that email may now miss out on it. If you signed up for it, unsubscribe from it. Hitting spam is very selfish.
I think the problem here is one of scope. Your definition of spam is much wider, encompassing the world at large -- some of whom may want said email. My definition of spam is much narrower, I'm concerned only with what I do and do not want.
If I subscribe to a newsletter, that's not spam. If I try to unsubscribe and can do so with one click or with one click and entering my email address, that's not spam. If I try to unsubscribe and am forced to login (which is illegal in the states, need I remind you) or cannot figure out how to unsubscribe, I categorize that as spam. It is not wanted by me.
Even if it is a newsletter, if you don't let me unsubscribe, that's still spam. You don't get to avoid being labeled as spam just because at some point in the distant past I subscribed and now can't unsubscribe.
Call it selfish if you like, but who else is going to look out for my inbox? Certainly not the groups sending the emails, that's for sure.
Yes, but remember you benefit from combined spam filter heuristics based on the aggregate of all user's marking email as spam. So if you falsely mark legitimate email as spam you're pissing in the well for everyone else.
Absolutely agree. We (AnyLeaf) send a weekly email newsletter to our users, with one-click unsubscribe. Companies that make unsubscribing difficult are ruining it for everyone. Even though we are very clear about the fact that we'll be sending email and make it simple to unsubscribe, we still get users flagging our messages as spam. This seems to be largely because unsubscribing from email newsletters has become so annoying that a significant fraction of users will just mark a message as spam rather than figure it out, even if the message is not truly spam.
It's hard to blame them, especially when huge senders like Target make it so difficult to unsubscribe that the author of this blog post couldn't figure it out:
A large number of (non-technical) users associate "Mark as spam" with "I don't want to receive this anymore." In some cases, bad experiences with unsubscribe links may have nothing to do with it.
You could properly solve that problem by letting them sign up for the email in the first place and rather than say "we will send you and you will have to unsubscribe".
I really wish Google or one of the big email providers would add an unsubscribe button. It would try to do the right thing in the unsubscribe flow, and apply a personal filter, but not penalize the sender.
If I didn't opt-in and they send me a message that I have to log in to opt-out, I mark it as spam. Sometimes I'll also log in and remove myself, but not always. Depends on the company.
On the other hand, if there's a simple 1-click link, I will usually click it and merely archive or delete the mail.
Webmasters: It's in your best interest to make it easy to unsubscribe. It only makes people mad. It doesn't make them stay as customers.
http://www.otherinbox.com/ comes handy for part of this problem. One of the default folders that OtherInBox creates in your Gmail account is an OIB/Unsubscribe folder/label. Then you can label messages from meetup.com as OIB/Unsubscribe, then all future messages from meetup.com will go there.
Unsubscribing from Meetup groups isn't an option if you want to subscribe to their Google Calendar. And you might want to get some messages from Meetup but not others (maybe you just want reminders for meetups), so labeling as spam is not an option.
After reading this I realized how many Meetup.com emails I receive. I've previously tried to navigate meetup's account preferences to unsubscribe without success. I was so annoyed I took the time to write them to tell them to put a one-click unsub button in their emails.
I got a polite "thanks, but not doing that" response. I find it really annoying that they can't or won't make it easy for their users to one-click opt out of group emails. I'd rather drop the service than take the time to figure out how to stop getting emails. Deleted my account just now.
The response I got from Meetup.com is below. The key bit is "You'll want to 'Edit email settings' for each Meetup group that you've joined."
I'm in like 20+ groups; it makes unsubscribing a huge pain.
9/12/2010
I have a suggestion. I get many emails from meetup. I don't want to get
them anymore. I also don't want to have to go login, then go to a manage
notifications page and try to figure out how to stop getting email
(which, btw I have tried to do unsuccessfully).
Why don't you guys put one link at the bottom that says "Don't want to
get this type of notification in the future? click here to unsubscribe."
Boom, one click and I'm done. It make is much easier on your users.
-Blake
I'm sorry for the inconvenience! Currently there's no way to completely
eliminate the emails you get from your Meetup groups or your Organizers.
However, I took a look at the email you'd forwarded in, and that was an
Automated Meetup Reminder, which you can opt out of by going to your
Email Setting page for that group, here:
In general, if you're only interested in hearing from your Meetup
group's Organizer and about the Meetups on the calendar, turning off the
email discussion with your entire group will help reduce the amount of
messages you're receiving. To change your email settings within each
group, go to:
You'll want to 'Edit email settings' for each Meetup group that you've
joined.
Having more control over the emails you receive from your Meetup Group
Organizers is a great suggestion. We really appreciate your thoughts on
this, and your patience while we make changes and improvements around
here. :)
If you've got any other questions, please let us know.
Sincerely,
Tamara Garvey
Meetup Community Team Specialist
Meetup HQ
"Having more control over the emails you receive from your Meetup Group Organizers is a great suggestion. We really appreciate your thoughts on this, and your patience while we make changes and improvements around here. :) "
AKA we're going to ignore you and throw a useless smilie face in a feeble attempt to placate you.
That's a good suggestion gasull, thanks for providing it. I actually just left a really promising meetup group because I was so tired of getting their spam. Maybe with this I can sign up again!
At least there is some (complicated) method to unsubscribe.
I try to unsubscribe from Amazon's affiliate spam newsletter for years now, but it just doesn't work. I can toggle the "subscribe" box on the website as many times as I want - no matter what the website displays, the mails just continue to arrive in my inbox.
I've contacted the support numerous times now, but they either tell me that "after unsubscribing it takes some time until you stop to receive the mails" or that "we've unsubscribed you now manually". Of course this never worked.
So if anyone from Amazon is reading this: This concerns the German "Amazon PartnerNet" affiliate program and the message category that I can't unsubscribe is "Feedback zum Partnerprogramm". I'd happily send you my account information if there's any chance of fixing this annoying bug.
With amazon, it's possible to have multiple accounts registered to the same email (with different passwords). You might have unsubscribed on one account, but not on another.
That may be, but Amazon has ridiculous options for turning off emails. For example, if you're a member of Amazon Student or Amazon Moms (which includes a limited version of Prime), you can't opt-out of emails about Student or Moms without actually dropping the service.
I use Mailchimp for http://dlewis.net/nik and all the emails I send have both "unsubscribe from this list" and "update subscription preferences" on every email. Clicking the former will unsubscribe you -- no log-in required. (Comically, I once forwarded a copy to someone who clicked it, to see what would happen, and blammo, I was unsubscribed from my own list.)
The second is used for changing your email address or your name. That's it.
As a publisher, I actually prefer it this way. If you do not want to get my emails, I don't want you getting them. I'm not writing for people who don't want to read.
"Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately"
It seems as though a lot of people on HN think that any email message they didn't want to get at that moment is spam. Reminds me of the misunderstanding of the work "hacker".
If you're doing one-click unsubscribe, a smart practice is showing a message with other ways to stay engaged, e.g. Twitter ... and providing a one-click undo (ie re-subscribe).
That's a good step, but it has drawbacks (like some websites refusing them). I just got my own domain and enabled catch-all, so now I just put [website-name]@[mydomain.com], which is never refused.
Also, if they happen to sell to spammers, I'll know exactly who it was, whereas with that scheme they can simply remove the \+.* part.
If you use Google Apps for Domains, it's in the management panel. There's probably something similar for most hosting accounts. It's basically just a "forward all uncaught email for example.com to admin@example.com" rule in the postfix/exim/etc setup.
Sadly, most developers use some sort of ridiculous email validation that doesn't allow the plus sign.
Worse than that, I've encountered several sites and newsletters that allow the plus sign when you sign up, but their unsubscribe URL breaks (presumably due to some escaping/encoding mismatch), preventing you from unsubscribing.
I have seen sites like meetup.com that disallow the "+" sign for spam reason. Instead of having proper spam detection and filtering they just added arbitrary rules like that.
I actually learned about that one recently as well, but haven't had much luck actually using it to filter. I think my problem stems from not having an accurate record of what services I've used that technique with and which I haven't. :)
LinkedIn are terrible. I have tried half-a-dozen times to stop getting their stupid "Top Headlines in Computer Software" emails (which I never subscribed to), but I can't find the "don't send me any more emails" option anywhere in my preferences.
The best solution I have found is just to use Gmail filters (if you are using Gmail). I have about 20 emails a day that get labeled "useless" and are immediately archived or deleted...
Plus: you can define pretty specific filters (incl. keyword based if you just want to remove certain emails from a certain address/domain, for example containing "upgrade", "marketing", "try", etc)
I really do hate it when you have to 'manage your preferences' when you want to stop receiving email more-often-than-not that you don't remember signing up for.
What's more is, if you can somehow manage to remember your account details and navigate the labyrinth of menus to get to where you want to be, you then have to unsubscribe and believe it or not, some websites have even told me it could take up to a week for the changes to take affect.
Ridiculous is the word the springs to mind.
Most recently though, I have started to mark emails which don't offer me a one-click-unsubscribe as spam, that'll teach them.
When some dastardly spammer adds me to their list, despite the challenge message explicitly telling them not to, I then add them to my "blacklist" and never hear from them again.
Note that you do have to be running your own mail server to get this system working; and you have to edit the lists from the command line. Those challenges aside, this software has eliminated vast quantities of spam and unwanted list mailings for me.
What happens when you buy something from a site and they send your receipt (and possibly a software key) by email?
Where I work we get enough mail bounces from customers whose mailboxes are over quota, or who spelled their address wrong, and so on that challenges from the few using C/R systems are lost in the noise. No one has time to go through all of these, find the challenges, and jump through whatever hoops they want to get the message through.
Those of you who proactively whitelist, thank you for using your brain. This comment is not directed at you.
As a former tech/cust support worker, I hate challenge-response systems. The usual scene is this: (1) support@company.com gets an email (2) I respond via my address, djeikyb@company.com (3) I get a challenge-response email and have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get permission to email the bastard who initiated the exchange.
And perhaps some people think that whitelisting support@company.com is enough, when really they should whitelist the entire domain. It's common that email to a general address is parceled out to individuals.
At the time I implemented the system I use, I was receiving 600 spam messages per day. The challenge-response system was an excellent and necessary solution.
I despise it when I try to unsubscribe and this comes up for me.
My simple response: click "spam" button in my email, thus decreasing their deliverability.
If you send out newsletters or whatnot, be sure to make unsubscribe obvious and single-click, otherwise you will face the ultimate in email marketing payback... no one seeing your messages.
As someone who used to be heavy in email marketing, deliverability is the holy grail, and it doesn't take too many times as marked as spam before you are lost forever.
That certainly would be satisfying. A few days ago I got a survey request from a company I had recently ordered from and they were using the same old "manage your preferences" link. I wished there was something I could do to let them know how frustrated I was about getting that email and the fact they made me work for 5 minutes to unsubscribe!
I never unsubscribe from lists. Any time I get an email from some new list I've apparently been subscribed to, I add a new filter to automatically delete any mail coming from that domain. I don't think my email is physically able to receive any mail at all from facebook, google, yahoo, and most of the other big domains out there, and I don't miss it at all.
I can't remember the site off the top of my head, but something recently wanted me to go through an entire sequence of 'exit interview' forms in order to unsubscribe.
My response in the 'feedback' field was quite satisfying to write, but I doubt it'll ever actually be looked at.
I setup a mail filter to forward the email back to wherever it's sent, multiple times, and delete that email from my inbox. I've generated email threads from LoveFilm where they've had an entire conversation with themselves, great stuff.
I use spamgourmet for almost all my accounts:
sitename.username@xoxy.net or asdf.net
I get 5 emails by default and I can add more if needed, and if i deem them worthy I would add the site to the allowed senders list, the best thing is I can track who sold my email address pretty easily.
FTC.gov's web site states: "an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender"
http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-complia...