What do y’all do for spam emails or random emails from companies? I’ve been trying to click “unsubscribe” in the email. For some email it’s enough and does the job. However, for some companies, clicking unsub opens a webpage and asks me to enter email or check boxes and then click unsub on their website. Like WTH. This is a bit frustrating for me.
I’m thinking to start just blocking such email by clicking “block” in gmail.
Curious how do y’all handle this scenario?
PS: I’m talking about emails from companies that land in the inbox. Gmail (or other providers) do filter some of them out automatically.
I do something similar. I have a server side rule that immediately files any email containing the word ‘unsubscribe’ under the tag Review. This keeps all of them out of my Inbox. And then I unsubscribe the ones that I never want to see again, and mark them as Spam if I’m still receiving them after 60 days or so.
This rule and three others make sure only messages that I need to respond to each day land in my Inbox.
I file Emails containing the term Unsubscribe into a “tier 3” tag and this rule is one of my favourites, but occasionally it bites me with something I want to see immediately
I only look at Tier 3 tagged emails on a Friday morning.
My previous company did “Opt In” email marketing and we processed Unsubscribe requests promptly. But it takes a bit of time to update mailing lists, etc. especially if you are using a third party mailer. Doing both at the same time punishes legitimate companies. And if enough people do it a domain can get blacklisted and that can take months to resolve.
From time to time I get email about a new app or something from a company I’ve purchased from in the past but no longer use. I unsubscribe and only mark their emails as spam if they keep emailing me after they have had plenty of time to process my request.
I unsubscribe from legitimate mailing lists. Spammy ones I attempt to block. For instance I was getting 10-20 spam emails a day with the only commonality being an unsubscribing snail mail address. So I blocked that. Problem solved.
If it is a legitimate email, i.e. correspondence from a company you have done business with in the past. And you request they stop sending you email, but also mark it as spam (and don’t give them time to process your request). They can receive a kind of “black mark” on their reputation.
If enough people do this then the domain may be blacklisted meaning people who want email from that company will not be able to receive it.
It’s kind of like shooting first then yelling Halt
OTOH if it’s obvious junk mail, don’t unsubscribe, just mark it as Spam.
I should have been clearer. I unsubscribe and mark as junk emails I receive from legitimate businesses with whom I have never done business and don’t intend to. That said, I don’t want to penalize legitimate businesses and people who are simply trying to make a living. Going forward, I’ll unsubscribe first, and then only mark as junk if they continue to email me.
I flag as spam in SpamSieve everything I didn’t ask for or not on my contacts list. If I don’t want email from a company, I go to their site and unsubscribe. I feel the “Unsubscribe” buttons in email is like replying to unwanted texts in Messages – it merely tells the sending server that your address has a human behind it, and so might lead to other unsolicited emails. We’re just dealing with robots, after all.
This is what I do. Most serious businesses will honor the opt-out request. Clicking spam in a commercial email that was sent because you have done business (or you did not leave unclicked the “Send me commercial info” checkbox in some form) hurts their email delivery capability as they will be flagged as spammers by Google, Microsoft and other email providers.
To be honest, it will not happen due to a few individuals doing that, and it’s not something that will significantly hurt Coca Cola, BMW or Wells Fargo that much, but anyway it is the fair thing to do.
. I was trying to gracefully let them know to not send me more emails.