[HN Gopher] How does the Gmail unsubscribe button work?
___________________________________________________________________
How does the Gmail unsubscribe button work?
Author : jivings
Score : 290 points
Date : 2020-05-29 15:14 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.leavemealone.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.leavemealone.app)
| somurzakov wrote:
| is there a way to unsubscribe from junk mail in my physical
| mailbox owned by USPS ?
| phantom784 wrote:
| 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.
| 0x0 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > _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.
| judge2020 wrote:
| No, a reputable bulk mailing service can still send from
| their customers' principal domains with spf/dkim set up to
| include that service's info.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _No, a reputable bulk mailing service can still send from
| their customers ' principal domains with spf/dkim set up to
| include that service's info._
|
| Tell that to the links in the email that go to the
| reputable service's click aggregation service.
| BGZq7 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > _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.
| [deleted]
| pm90 wrote:
| 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!
| gws wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| nikeee wrote:
| In the few cases that got a GDPR request, I actually talked
| to humans. Also, a human has to read my mail in the first
| place.
|
| Note that I'm also doing this because I'm interested in the
| data, so its much less waste of time.
| psadauskas wrote:
| I have these rules:
|
| * Message body contains "unsubscribe" -> Skip inbox, archive
|
| * Message body contains "webinar" -> Skip inbox, mark as spam
| pvarangot wrote:
| I try to do that, but a lot of legitimate services send me
| mails because someone else trying to sign up with my email and
| they don't do verification right. Part of the problem is having
| a very simple Gmail address, but also another part of the
| problem is that companies think that since someone tried to
| validate my email as theirs now they can spam it.
| gws wrote:
| Yeah, it drives me insane, once someone used my email to
| sign-up on eBay and started buying sex toys. Can't believe
| eBay didn't do email verification. I was at work and started
| getting emails like congratulations, your dildo is on its
| way, with pictures.
| dweekly wrote:
| http://help.mail-list.com/m/59114/l/558254-rfc-2369-list-uns...
|
| There's and RFC for List-Unsubscribe headers.
| meritt wrote:
| 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.
| numakerg wrote:
| 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.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| 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.
| tregsthedev wrote:
| Nice Post.
| boltzmannbrain wrote:
| It doesn't.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Anyone know how the macOS / iOS unsubscribe button works?
| jivings wrote:
| It's probably very much the same!
| [deleted]
| seph-reed wrote:
| So what's wrong with hitting spam?
| [deleted]
| gumby wrote:
| When you ark it as spam it helps train google's spam fighting
| that mail like that is spam.
|
| Now if it's unsolicited stuff -- SPAM -- no problem. But if
| it's a list you once signed up for and now no longer want,
| you're telling google -- for everyone -- that mail like that is
| spam. Even people who signed up for it (like you did) and still
| want it. That's unfair to the company and unfair to all those
| other people too.
|
| But someone randomly blasting you with crap as is the usual
| case (and I includes that company you once did business with
| and who signed you up without your permission): that's what the
| spam button is for.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| It clutters up spam
| macspoofing wrote:
| Especially since in many instances, you don't actually want a
| dialogue with the spammer. I don't want to 'unsubscribe' myself
| given that I didn't 'subscribe' myself in the first place.
| Also, why would I let the spammer know that I read the email
| and my email is active?
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| In this case, you're doing the right thing: you didn't ask
| for it, it's spam. Presumably, you classifying it as spam
| helps the spam filter learn and apply that knowledge to
| others' inboxes, too.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| They still come to me when I hit spam, and the unsubscribe
| button doesn't always work either. I still find myself using
| the distributors unsubscribe button most of the time.
| guptaneil wrote:
| For the mailing list owner, it's bad because then their emails
| are more likely to end up in the spam folder for other
| subscribers too.
| MereInterest wrote:
| For the mailing list owner, that's a risk that comes with
| sending out spam. If I have no prior relationship with a
| company, then I have no reason not to mark an email as spam.
| If I have a prior relationship with a company, but they are
| sending out unrequested emails, then I should mark it as
| spam. For example, if an email address is provided for
| package delivery updates, but is then used for unrequested
| periodic advertisements, that is spam.
| guptaneil wrote:
| What if it's a mailing list you signed up for but lost
| interest in?
| MereInterest wrote:
| In that case, I do have an obligation to unsubscribe
| rather than reporting the email as spam. I view the
| "report spam" button as a form of punishment, meant to
| disincentivize bad behavior. Misuse of email addresses
| should come with the risk of having all emails marked as
| spam. Losing interest in a mailing list that previously
| interested me is an expected result over time, and would
| not be appropriate to report as spam.
| hundchenkatze wrote:
| Yes, but GP was asking about consequences of clicking the
| spam button vs just unsubscribing. Sure if you start
| getting unsolicited emails, by all means click that Spam
| button. However, if you're just tired of getting delivery
| updates just unsubscribe.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| This is why I'm glad I use an email service with a
| personalized spam filter. Gmail's spam filter too heavily
| assumes one person's spam is everyone's spam.
|
| Whereas mine is pretty reliably never sending false positives
| to my spam folder. Fastmail wins again.
| notyourwork wrote:
| Spam is spam. The sad state of things is that people are
| bombarded with garbage, exponentially worse than the physical
| mail system used to be.
|
| The engagement and conversion rate on email is so low that
| the volume continually increases to convert further.
| guptaneil wrote:
| What about a mailing list you signed up for and enjoyed at
| first, but lost interest after one year? Was that email
| always spam? Is it spam now?
|
| Not all messages that get put into the spam folder are
| actually spam. There's a wide variety of emails that aren't
| spam, but also aren't necessarily wanted anymore either.
| Those are the ones this article is focusing on. Make it
| easy for your readers to unsubscribe so they don't call you
| spam.
| antsar wrote:
| > exponentially worse than the physical mail system used to
| be
|
| Really? Ignoring the "Spam" folder (which I never check), I
| get _way_ less junk email than snail mail. And the snail
| mail is reliably 95% unsolicited garbage.
|
| To be fair, Fastmail lets you set rules to route stuff to
| Junk, whereas USPS actively facilitates routing garbage to
| your mailbox [0].
|
| [0] https://www.usps.com/business/advertise-with-mail.htm
| JshWright wrote:
| I generally click "unsubscribe" in the email, then if I have
| to do more than click a big, obvious confirmation button on
| that page I close the tab and flag it as spam.
| eli wrote:
| Fun fact: at least in the US, the CAN-SPAM law is actually
| pretty specific about how unsubscribe pages work. If it
| requires more than typing your email address and clicking a
| button then it is probably not compliant.
| choward wrote:
| Why are they even allowed to make you type your email
| address? I used different email addresses for everything
| I sign up for so I have to go back to the email to see
| what I used. Very inconvenient.
| eli wrote:
| It's not a great law and it was passed almost two decades
| ago. This is actually one of the parts they got mostly
| right.
| jivings wrote:
| Personal preference, but I feel like unsubscribing or hitting
| spam is you sending your sentiment back to the sender in two
| different ways.
|
| If you unsubscribe you're saying that you're no longer
| interested in the list, you see the merit but don't want to
| receive it any more for whatever reason.
|
| If you hit spam you're saying this email should never have come
| to me, or I don't want to expend the effort to stop it from
| coming to me.
|
| If the sender makes unsubscribing as easy as hitting spam (by
| making sure the Gmail unsub button works for example) then they
| make it more likely for their recipients to send the
| appropriate feedback - ie not hit the spam button.
| eli wrote:
| Github notifications that you signed up for but now don't want
| any more aren't spam.
|
| Marking them as spam messes with Github's deliverability to all
| GMail users and may prevent you from getting notifications in
| your inbox in the future if you decide to sign up again.
| joombaga wrote:
| Should I be concerned with how Google treats my signal
| globally? Honest question. If I were Google I'd recognize
| that how the email is stopped before getting to a user's
| inbox probably won't matter to them and factor that into how
| the unsubscribe and mark as spam buttons work. As a user I
| expect my treatment of "mark as spam" on a GitHub
| notification to be more heavily weighted in my personal spam
| algorithm than the global spam algorithm.
| eli wrote:
| I don't think anyone outside Google knows the exact
| details, but GMail clearly calculates a global reputation
| score for each sender that is influenced by what percentage
| of recipients mark its messages as spam. Then there's some
| additional weighting on top of that based on your personal
| actions.
|
| Additionally most reputable email senders have a "feedback
| loop" set up with Google, Hotmail, and Yahoo where clicking
| that Report Spam button actually passes your email address
| back to the sender's email system. For example if you click
| Report Spam on one of our email newsletters in GMail, we
| will flag your record in our database and not send you any
| more messages even if you specifically sign up for a
| newsletter in the future. (Please don't test this.)
| amelius wrote:
| Because Google trains its spam filters on user feedback.
|
| If people start unsubscribing by hitting spam, then those users
| who still want to receive the mailing may have to search for it
| in their spam boxes.
| silviogutierrez wrote:
| 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.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Sometimes "unsubscribe from all" is completely ignored.
| Which really angers me.
|
| I have a big problem with this and never know what to do.
|
| Person buys my course after following newsletters for a
| while. All good.
|
| I put them on a followup list that helps guide them through
| the course and keep them on track. All good.
|
| They get a newsletter they don't like and unsubscribe.
|
| Now they stop getting followup guidance emails for the
| course. This is a problem. Almost certain not what they
| wanted to happen either. But okay I honor it.
|
| A while later I make a huge update to the course or migrate
| to a new platform. I need to tell every buyer that their
| account is moving. But some have unsubscribed from all
| emails.
|
| Do I add them back or not?
| reaperducer wrote:
| When in doubt, they're opted out.
|
| Do you really want to open yourself up to being banned by
| your new platform, or facing a lawsuit over pennies in
| revenue?
| Swizec wrote:
| They purchased lifetime access to the content. Should I
| not give it to them just because they didn't like an
| email once?
|
| Imagine being grumpy at a Starbucks barista once and now
| you can't get Starbucks again ever anywhere.
|
| Or a better example: You opted out of email now you can't
| reset your password. Sorry can't email you the link.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Why would unsubscribing from your newsletter stop them
| from accessing the content? Is the content only delivered
| via the newsletter from which they unsubscribed?
| Swizec wrote:
| > A while later /../ migrate to a new platform. I need to
| tell every buyer that their account is moving. But some
| have unsubscribed from all emails.
|
| They unsub'd all meaning "no more emails ever" as you
| said. How do I tell them the stuff moved if they don't
| want to be contacted ever again ever?
| reaperducer wrote:
| You don't have to. When they can't find you, assuming
| they miss your content, they'll use this miracle tool
| called a "search engine" to find you.
| wastedhours wrote:
| > Now they stop getting followup guidance emails for the
| course.
|
| This might be the ex-marketer coming out in me, but surely
| the course guidance emails could be considered
| transactional to the service and be honoured by a different
| opt-in/out policy to the newsletter?
|
| > I need to tell every buyer that their account is moving
|
| Again, this use case isn't marketing, and should very much
| be allowed as a requirement to keep people informed about
| the use of their data. In the same way a "change password"
| email is allowed to be sent.
| Swizec wrote:
| But my email platform doesn't do that. When you hit
| "unsub all" you _unsub all_
|
| That's the tricky part that most "ew email is spam" folk
| forget. The definition of "all" can be super nuanced and
| most people don't think about it.
| antsar wrote:
| From the sidelines, I'd think the answer is that your
| email platform should have that feature, or you should
| consider using entirely separate flows/tools for
| transactional emails and marketing emails. Not a lawyer,
| but AFAIK transactional emails are not subject to Spam
| rules & don't even need to have an "Unsubscribe" link.
| Mixing the two is just causing yourself needless pain.
| Swizec wrote:
| > From the sidelines, I'd think the answer is that your
| email platform should have that feature
|
| It does. But the user clicked "No I want to unsubscribe
| all"
| antsar wrote:
| Can you rephrase the choices?
|
| - Unsub from this marketing topic.
|
| - Unsub from all marketing mails. You will continue to
| receive paid course content; to terminate see [account
| deletion request page].
|
| On the account deletion page, make it clear that they'll
| lose out on further paid content, don't come back crying,
| blah blah.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _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'm the same way. Except for two: Staples and eBay.
|
| Staples will send me three e-mails asking me to review a
| product that I ordered, but that Staples hasn't even shipped
| to me yet. Spam.
|
| Recently I purchased one item from eBay using the Guest
| Checkout feature because I don't have an eBay account, and
| don't want one. Now eBay sends me e-mails all the time. In
| order to unsubscribe, I'm instructed to sign in to an account
| I don't have. Spam.
| rlpb wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I do consider it spam, unless the email is actually _about_ a
| previous transaction. I don 't equate doing a transaction
| with a business with permission for them to bother me about
| something unrelated.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Was this part of that feature happening on Facebook where
| people can create "campaigns" or just an ad hoc request
| to donate?
| ryanianian wrote:
| She requested it on facebook via one of those things, but
| I donated directly on their website since..facebook.
| dvtrn wrote:
| I experienced this after donating money and volunteering
| a few days to support a local public defense charity for
| people who can't afford legal representation, but then I
| started getting emails from _other_ charities. I once
| decided to let this ride and see how far that email
| address would go (signed up using a gmail account with a
| "+charity_name").
|
| In the span of two years the following happened:
|
| * Original Charity I actually donated money to started
| emailing me
|
| * then a second local charity I did NOT donate money to
|
| * then I began getting messages from a local political
| candidate who was friendly with first charity
|
| * soon after that Another local political candidate
|
| * Then a statewide political action committee.
|
| At no point in that original donation flow was I ever
| even asked "can we email you other communications?" I
| presume the "we will share your email with anyone we damn
| well please" was baked into whatever boilerplate privacy
| policy existed in the background of the site they used to
| collect and process donation payments. Which is a whole
| other problem.
|
| Is "getting out of hand" a hyperbolic reaction to how
| cavalier the use of mailing lists and newsletters have
| become when people sign up just to use a personal finance
| app or donate to causes?
| frandroid wrote:
| Because people like the GP and the GGP click "Spam"
| instead of the unsubscribe link/process for these
| services. (I do the same if I can't unsubscribe easily.)
| Any service that requires me to login to unsubscribe,
| rather than provide a tokenized unsubscribe link in the
| email, can suck it.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _GP and the GGP click "Spam" instead of the unsubscribe
| link/process for these services._
|
| If the unsubscribe link goes to a third party site, it's
| literally indistinguishable from a phishing attempt.
| corobo wrote:
| you worried they might get the email address they just
| emailed you on out of you?
| [deleted]
| munificent wrote:
| _> Other notorious example: business A founder also founds
| (unrelated) business B. _
|
| The worst for me is if you donate to one political campaign,
| once, you will be on every mailing list for every single
| candidate in that party for every single election; in every
| single country, state, county, province, parish, district, or
| city; forever.
|
| I know that's how politics works today, but, Jesus, the #1
| thing making me not want to participate in one of the major
| parties is this.
| ryanianian wrote:
| People abusing their existing platforms is a huge problem;
| the incentives are all wrong.
|
| This is an extremely common annoyance of mine with
| Kickstarter campaigns. I back a lot of projects, and it's
| insane how many creators abuse the "project updates" system
| to promote other projects, often totally unrelated and from
| totally different creators. They're clearly getting paid for
| these promotions. I can't just "unsubscribe" from the updates
| because I do need to be aware of "real" updates that may
| require my input/action.
|
| And many apps that rely on push-notifications for their core
| functionality are polluting these streams with ads. Uber
| basically admits this: they send ride updates by sms because
| they know people turn off their ad-filled push notifications.
|
| My town is also using its covid-emergency-updates sms system
| to advertise local composting.
|
| This is becoming an acceptable practice, and it seems
| impossible to filter the cruft.
| _jal wrote:
| I take a very hands on approach with these people.
|
| They get a mail saying one more spam from them and I will
| ensure I never buy anything they make again, add them to
| blacklists and tell other people they are spammers.
|
| They tend to go the attack/whine route about being a
| struggling entrepreneur, and I try to educate. Of the ones
| who actually engage, about 1/3 seem to come around, which I
| consider a pretty good rate. (I follow through with the
| rest. They're just shithead spammers.)
| cosmodisk wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| I'm not complaining- it was merely an observation.
| humaniania wrote:
| The tiny font link at the very bottom that's light grey on a
| white background?
| TLightful wrote:
| TL/DR: It doesn't.
| ndesaulniers wrote:
| 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.)
| einpoklum wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The bit at the bottom about the unsubscribe button appearing or
| not might be based on sender reputation?
| jivings wrote:
| Nice! Do you have a source for that?
| jeffbee wrote:
| No, so I reworded it as more of a question.
| Sephr wrote:
| Source: https://gmail.googleblog.com/2009/07/unsubscribing-
| made-easy...
| Giorgi wrote:
| Quick tip: it does not.
| factorialboy wrote:
| Unsubscribe is a confirmation to spammers that your email is
| indeed real.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Doesnt a lack of a bounce already confirm it's real?
| [deleted]
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| Yup, I just send straight to spam. Haven't missed an important
| email in 8 years yet
| adrianmonk wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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."
| wyldfire wrote:
| Isn't that similar to the idea behind hashcash [1]? I don't
| know -- was hashcash used anywhere? Or were the ideas there
| leveraged in stuff like DKIM/SPF?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash
| crdrost wrote:
| Hashcash is a different idea with the same goal of making
| certain email behaviors financially infeasible by tying
| emails to a more limited resource. The limited resource in
| IM2000 is -- well, that's complicated, I would say internet
| domains but someone else might say something like network
| availability. But in Hashcash it is clearly processor
| cycles.
|
| Hashcash is "used anywhere" in the sense that it's the idea
| behind bitcoin. There's a duality here where the very
| introduction of limited scalable resources which makes a
| cryptocurrency possible, also can be used in a different
| way to make spam impossible.
|
| In that duality it is actually kind of interesting to think
| about IM2000. One would imagine a cryptocurrency based on
| something like "proof of network bandwidth shared" or
| something, which would be really hard to theoretically
| formalize. But if you could get a secure definition then
| that fundamental idea becomes rather explosive. Like I
| imagine a sort of viral peer-to-peer filesharing network
| kind of like BitTorrent which would end up as a sort of
| alternative to the World Wide Web; whereas there are huge
| clusters of bitcoin miners right now trying to chug out
| more proofs-of-work, in that situation you would have large
| numbers of proxy hosts trying to mirror more and more files
| online.
|
| Right now it would be possible to do some really nasty
| things to bitcoin by designing software which stores
| arbitrary files in the spare bits in the ledger. If that
| software becomes really widespread then inevitably someone
| uses it to upload MP3s or, worse, illegal pornography and
| those things get ossified into the Bitcoin ledger and you
| cannot remove public access to that content without taking
| down the entire blockchain; probably what happens in
| practice is that the sharing software itself gets demonized
| as "only pirates/perverts use that sharing software." But
| one is immediately confronted with concerns about "hey if I
| download the blockchain am I technically performing an
| illegal action" to which the legal answer is probably "yes"
| at that point. The law doesn't usually care about whether
| you need sophisticated software to decode that crap.
|
| If you had a cryptocurrency that was based on "I hosted and
| transmitted data, but I don't know what that data was" then
| I think you would have a sort of robustness to the network,
| maybe, where the offending data is not in the ledger. With
| that said, probably it gets a similar stigma as "only
| pirates/perverts use that, all the rest of us use the web."
| mrlala wrote:
| >or a bad outcome I ardently want to avoid (letting a spammer
| know my address is active).
|
| Honest question- why does this really matter? Or at least
| matter to any degree where you would rather have more junk mail
| than potentially stop spam/undesired emails.
|
| If a spammer sends out 1000 emails and gets 100 bouncebacks..
| then they keep on sending to the other 900. You are one of
| those 900 and you click unsubscribe.. sure, they can detect
| that your email is active. But are they really going to stop
| sending to otherwise? It's not like people are constantly
| changing email addresses these days.. if I were a spammer and I
| had a valid list, I would basically assume that's a valid email
| if I don't get a bounceback.
|
| So I just don't get how detecting that someone attempted to
| unusbscribe is that much of a 'tell'.
| eitland wrote:
| A number of years ago there was even a story about someone
| going undercover at a spamming operation and one key takeaway
| was that - at least at that place - the boss was very clear
| internally about actually removing people who tried to
| unsubscribe.
|
| I cannot vouch for the story but it looked as legit as the
| average HN story back then so it might be true (or not).
| mrlala wrote:
| I can believe that- otherwise why would you try to continue
| to scam/spam someone over email who is clearly trying to
| unsubscribe.. meaning they realize it's spam/scam.
|
| The goal is to find people who don't know any better..
| ipython wrote:
| Same reason phone spammers robocall numbers to see who picks
| up... if you "engage" then you are a way more valuable target
| mrlala wrote:
| Eh I wouldn't say clicking an unsubscribe is engaging in
| the same way at all.
|
| Wouldn't someone who is like "this is spam, get me off the
| list" be way LESS likely to be a good scam target?
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| So they just hit you with the wrong message and have to
| try something else.
| pricci wrote:
| 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"
| bfdm wrote:
| I'm fairly sure that spammers are sending legitimate-
| lookingailing list type spam to do exactly this. Appear like
| misdirected mail to catch email addresses.
| bentcorner wrote:
| This is why I usually hit the Report Spam button. Sometimes
| I'll receive a legit looking email that I plausibly signed up
| for but don't remember - I could follow the unsubscribe
| link/hit unsubscribe and be a good citizen, but at that point
| the safer thing to do is to not interact with the mail and let
| Gmail know I don't want this anymore.
|
| I'd rather receive the mail and let Gmail put it into a
| blackhole than try to solve the problem upstream myself and
| have the small possibility that I either miss a newsletter and
| get spam anyway, or tip off some system that my email address
| is "real".
| hart_russell wrote:
| I've been smashing that unsubscribe button in my email for
| years. I've never had a problem in that arena. I'm usually at
| inbox zero.
| mattbeckman wrote:
| Once you open the email, a tracking pixel will fire (usually an
| <img> tag), which is far more useful to the email marketer.
|
| Unsubscribe is your best bet as honoring opt-outs are protected
| by the CAN-SPAM act.
| hu3 wrote:
| Gmail doesn't load images until I athorize:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/RZ93VIU.png
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Thunderbird doesn't either.
| RussianCow wrote:
| I have a feeling that the successful delivery of the email to
| your inbox has already accomplished this.
| ptmcc wrote:
| 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.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| > delivery and tracking pixels confirm the address is real
| and being used
|
| I use Thunderbird, which doesn't load that stuff.
| hu3 wrote:
| > 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
| finnthehuman wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
| [deleted]
| close04 wrote:
| The feature is present for some time now on both major
| platforms, both in the Gmail app and the built-in Mail
| app, on (some) 3rd party mail clients, and in the web
| interface.
| kevincox wrote:
| No, in that case the email client shouldn't be making any
| remote requests.
|
| Although note that IIUC the gmail default is now loading
| remote content. (Although they do load it via a proxy so
| that your IP isn't shared).
| FirstLvR wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| gmail filters allow various actions, including delete, archive,
| mark as read, forward, etc...
|
| is that not what you meant?
| JamesCoyne wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Fixed. Thanks!
| sowbug wrote:
| 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.
| tartrate wrote:
| If that happens, it _is_ spam.
| mattbeckman wrote:
| Annoying for sure, but one benefit of this approach is due to
| forwarding. For the moment, let's assume you have a newsletter
| you enjoy. If you forward an instance of that newsletter to
| your friend, and they aren't expecting it, they might hit
| unsubscribe. With one click, they'll prevent you from receiving
| future newsletters.
|
| I think the better approach is simply showing the "Intended for
| johndoe@example.com" next to Unsubscribe, but I could see why
| they ask for your email.
| joegahona wrote:
| I believe one-click unsubscribe is a law.
| irrational wrote:
| Under what jurisdiction?
| heleninboodler wrote:
| It's definitely a rule in my house. I'm raising my kids
| right.
| boomlinde wrote:
| Just respect "unsubscribe" as the subject of a mail as a
| request to unsubscribe. Add a List-Unsubscribe header with a
| mailto link, like List-Unsubscribe:
| <mailto:list@host.com?subject=unsubscribe>
|
| as per RFC-2369 and use the same mailto link inside the mail
| body. This is convenient, conventional and solves the problem
| you describe, while also allowing users to add feedback as
| they see fit in the body.
|
| I don't see why you have to involve the web at all, but I can
| tell you that if I have to go through a bunch of bullshit
| when I want to unsubscribe I'll just mark it as spam instead.
| However appreciated and anticipated your newsletter is, you
| have to consider that most newsletter subscriptions are
| probably either accidental (failed to uncheck some box when
| signing up for something entirely different) or straight up
| unsolicited, and people like me will basically purge all
| their subscriptions without discrimination regularly as the
| crap builds up.
| johnbrodie wrote:
| FWIW, this solution isn't as easy to implement as you'd
| think. I've seen unsubscribe pages harvested for email
| addresses when they show the full address and used
| urls/tokens that weren't sufficiently secure. In the case I'm
| thinking of, the home-rolled algo that generated the unique
| links was bugged enough that you could reverse it, and I was
| surprised that someone actually took the time to do so.
| enumjorge wrote:
| 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.
| mthoms wrote:
| Indeed. And locating the page where you _can_ unsubscribe to
| all these lists is usually made intentionally difficult with
| various dark patterns.
| shavingspiders wrote:
| You might find
| https://twitter.com/Joe8Bit/status/1156312965265707013 an
| interesting read, in how the delayed removal of you from
| lists could be down to someone having to manually remove you
| & needless bureaucracy.
| mimimi31 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| How can you get a blank page? What do I need to delete?
| kbrosnan wrote:
| 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.
| hart_russell wrote:
| 100%. It's pure laziness or technical ignorance on their part.
| maybeiambatman wrote:
| My Pet Peeve: Google doesn't let you unsubscribe to YouTube TV
| emails via their "Unsubsribe" button.
|
| https://twitter.com/mohd_irteza/status/1227772431605149696?s...
| naggie wrote:
| I just got an email from redhat, for which the unsubscribe
| mechanism asks for contact information and a survey. Pic:
| https://twitter.com/callanbryant/status/1266400315940786178
| geofft wrote:
| If you forward someone else something from a mailing list,
| should they have the ability to unsubscribe you from that list
| without your consent?
| goguy wrote:
| Nothing stopping them doing that the other way either.
| geofft wrote:
| I think I don't follow, what's "the other way"?
|
| I run a newsletter where both subscribe and unsubscribe do
| double-opt-in (i.e., both subscribing and unsubscribing
| send you an email with a confirmation URL with a token -
| each newsletter has an unsubscribe link but that link
| doesn't include the token). Maybe this is a mistake? Is the
| norm that anyone can unsubscribe anyone else from
| newsletters?
| mrob wrote:
| The term "double-opt-in" is spammer propaganda. It
| falsely implies that getting your email added to a
| spammer's mailing list, regardless of how it happened, is
| "opting in".
| geofft wrote:
| OK, fine, maybe I shouldn't use the term. Pretend I said,
| "I run a mailing list where I want to make absolutely
| sure that nobody is receiving mail without their active
| and informed consent and that nobody is unsubscribed
| without their active consent either." I think my question
| still stands?
| realityking wrote:
| Then it is a remarkably good piece of propaganda as it
| has the blessing of, at least, German courts.
|
| https://www.telemedicus.info/urteile/Wettbewerbsrecht/Wer
| bun...
| r1ch wrote:
| My favorite one is where the unsubscribe link is behind a
| Cloudflare country IP block. Subscribed in the US but can't
| unsubscribe after moving.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| My favorite is when the unsubscribe gateway isnt https.
| wolco wrote:
| Worried that your isp knows you unsubscribed?
| komali2 wrote:
| I don't think https prevents ISPs from knowing what
| domains you try to resolve - that would be where a VPN
| would come into play surely?
| chipperyman573 wrote:
| The domain would only be relevant if the domain was a
| specific opt-out domain. If it was just
| https://company.com/unsubscribe, DNS would only reveal
| company.com. The path (/unsubscribe) will be encrypted.
| robotnikman wrote:
| Correct. DoH is also useful for preventing ISP's from
| snooping on that too IIRC.
| benjaminl wrote:
| Yeah I find it really annoying also. But surprisingly, they
| don't do that just to add friction to unsubscribe. There is a
| real problem that it solves.
|
| Legitimate mailing lists have problems with people forwarding
| emails, when the recipients of the forwarded emails click the
| unsubscribe button, they will unsubscribe the original
| recipient who didn't want to be unsubscribed.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| So why do they forward those emails to someone in the first
| place? Especially to those who don't want them? You're pretty
| much suggesting that "helping others spamming people isn't
| spamming"
| fossuser wrote:
| This is the worst one I've ever seen:
|
| https://twitter.com/zachalberico/status/1247951473876422656?...
|
| It's basically impossible to know if you've done the right
| thing.
| ipython wrote:
| Wow. I'm actually more confused after reading their
| "explanation"
|
| > Sorry for any confusion. Select the box next to each
| desired communication option or deselect to stop
| communications.
|
| So... if I _uncheck_ the "unsubscribe" button that stops
| communications?!?
| fossuser wrote:
| I believe that's the correct answer (since the boxes were
| checked when I first opened the page).
|
| Yeah - very confusing though.
| lostlogin wrote:
| They clarified in a reply:
|
| Marriott Bonvoy Assist @MBonvoyAssist 9 Apr Replying to
| @zachalberico Sorry for any confusion. Select the box next to
| each desired communication option or deselect to stop
| communications
|
| Now I think I understand what they are saying, but it's not a
| great explanation either. A new sentence before the 'or'
| would have been helpful.
| redstripe wrote:
| This would certainly be convenient, however if your mailing
| lists contains a lot of old people then they forward your
| emails to their friends. Their friends who are annoyed by this
| then unsubscribe the original recipient without noticing that
| the email was forwarded by their friend.
|
| This is a real problem for us - not a made up scenario. So we
| remove the auto-filled email on the unsubscribe form.
| tcgv wrote:
| A way to mitigate this issue is to ask for a confirmation
| before marking the email address as unsubscribed, showing the
| retrieved email address in a large font as to prevent someone
| who received a forwarded email from mistakenly unsubscribing
| someone else.
| zaat wrote:
| 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.
| tregsthedev wrote:
| Really good Read!
| mattbeckman wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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-...
| for a better example.
| slim wrote:
| 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.
| slipheen wrote:
| For me, Step 1 is using their Unsubscribe option.
|
| If I get another message from them, Step 2 is to setup a mail
| rule to put everything from their company into the Junk folder.
| eropple wrote:
| Too much work, tbh. It's my mailbox, not theirs.
| inshadows wrote:
| Right. Unsolicited email is spam and marking it as such is
| proper way to deal with it.
| loeg wrote:
| I only do step 1 if I actually consented to subscribe to a
| list.
|
| If the sender just added me to their list without consent?
| Straight to spam.
| progval wrote:
| I have another step between 1 and 2: send a mail to the abuse
| contact of their AS. You can do it either manually, or with a
| tool like https://www.spamcop.net/ . Sometimes it works (but
| rarely).
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| With "suspicious" sources step 1 confirms the address to
| them, which allows them to see it.
|
| Delaying step two requires book keeping.
|
| Immediately blocking is low effort with effect.
|
| In few cases, where senders seem to be "proper" companies I
| do a GDPR request. Sometimes they provide valuable
| information about address brokers etc.
| mikaelmello wrote:
| Maybe @dhh could use this idea on hey
| perfectstorm wrote:
| This is pretty much what Apple did with Sign in with Apple. You
| can sign up with a private relay email and Apple will forward
| any communications from that company to your real personal
| email account. If you get annoying emails, you can simply
| dispose the private relay email and boom they can't communicate
| with you anymore.
| [deleted]
| neuronflux wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Can confirm. Async bounces make up somewhere around a few
| percent of overall bounces for most senders.
| contravariant wrote:
| I think they're talking about sending an error at the SMTP
| level. Not sure if that will break stuff though.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| While true, email accounts can and are deleted or closed.
| Transient addresses on your own domain are usually the best
| (so you can nuke them when polluted, hat tip to Apple for
| pushing blind emails into the mainstream with "Sign in with
| Apple"), but sending fake bounce backs by sender while
| binning anything incoming from them is a close second (Gmail
| and Fastmail both support filtering messages directly to
| Trash, but no fake bounce back messages; could probably do it
| with an SMTP proxy, again if you use your own domain).
| slim wrote:
| correct. it's for future deliveries
| livre wrote:
| What GP describes would work the next time they try to spam
| you, not for the current email you received.
| fossuser wrote:
| You can kind of do this with Fastmail and Aliases, but it's a
| more manual process.
|
| You can really easily create aliases for specific sites or just
| a general spam@ alias on your own domain. Then if it gets
| abused you can mark all mail directed to that alias to bounce.
|
| You could later re-enable it if you wanted to.
| developer2 wrote:
| I migrated from Gmail to Fastmail 2 years ago, and I agree
| with this. With Fastmail, I now have the wildcard address for
| a domain ([a-z0-9]{7}@example.com), whereby I create a new
| randomly generated email address for each
| company/site/contact. I set up rules to direct emails sent
| from expected addresses (sometimes by base domain regex
| rather than a single address) to whitelist emails to show up
| in my main Inbox folder. eg. My HackerNews email might be
| qvae82d@example.com, whitelisted to accept emails from
| *@ycombinator.com to my main Inbox.
|
| The thing is you don't want to completely blackhole/delete
| messages received at a valid randomly-generated address, but
| which were sent by an unexpected sender. For that, I have a
| separate "Suspicious" child of my main "Inbox". The main
| exception I've seen that falls under "Suspicious" is that
| Amazon shares your account's email address with their
| shippers; so you'll receive a Fedex notification at your
| Amazon address, which falls under "Suspicious" because the
| sender address doesn't originate from Amazon.
|
| What I find mildly strange is that, in the 2 years since I've
| migrated from Gmail to a super-organized, rules-based
| organization with Fastmail, I have literally not received a
| single spam email. I credit this to having migrated my GitHub
| account to use their privacy wrapper, so none of my commits
| have my own personal email in them anymore.
| takeda wrote:
| Not exactly what you mentioned, but if you host your own mail
| server you can use bogofilter-milter.pl[1] when it detects that
| mail is a spam it rejects it with a configurable message.
|
| [1] https://stuff.mit.edu/~jik/software/bogofilter-milter/
| sesuximo wrote:
| I think unsubscribing is a good/polite first step. If that
| doesn't work, then a more aggressive spam/ghosting method makes
| sense.
|
| Translates nicely to interpersonal communication
| ipython wrote:
| I am often subscribed to lists I never personally consented
| to. That can happen for benign reasons such as someone
| mistaking my email address for theirs, or more nefarious
| reasons.
|
| For that reason I have no need to be "nice" to entities who
| send me unsolicited email. I avoid clicking any link on email
| I didn't request as - just like answering the phone confirms
| that a live person is home - clicking "unsubscribe" just
| means the email address is valid and has a human behind it.
|
| We have to stop pretending like there are humans behind our
| communication. If I had to guess, 99% of my email volume is
| generated by a machine of some sort.
| dicknuckle wrote:
| reminds me of a time someone with my very uncommon last
| name and same first initial had signed up for
| skipthedishes.com with my [first initial] [last
| name]@gmail.com and started ordering takeout from various
| places local to them, halfway across the country. the
| website doesn't send a validation email when creating an
| account. this went on for months, getting a food order
| confirmation email with no charges on my credit card.
| finally I got so annoyed that I reset the password, logged
| in and found their cell number. I sent a polite text
| message describing what happened, assured that the website
| obscured credit card details properly and that they should
| change the password from [generic password].
| dave5104 wrote:
| Did you ever find out why that person signed up with an
| email that didn't belong to them? Did they intend to use
| a real email and for some reason didn't? Or did they want
| to use a dummy email that they didn't own?
| willcipriano wrote:
| I've done something like this [0], postfix sends a nice
| rejection message the next time they try to connect. Ironically
| I've had people email me that rejecting their spam is filling
| up their inbox with error messages.
|
| [0]https://blog.tinned-software.net/permanently-reject-a-
| specif...
| flak48 wrote:
| >Ironically I've had people email me that rejecting their
| spam is filling up their inbox with error messages.
|
| Wow
| joahua wrote:
| I get this on my domain, it's called backscatter I think.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_(email)
|
| Less technical folks would likely complain about it, as it
| tends to resemble the spam that was sent from their spoofed
| domain (I.e. "re: fake pills" subject lines as the
| rejection message hits their inbox).
| brightball wrote:
| It would be interesting to see the side effects of doing
| something like that.
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