Even if unsubscribe "works", and you get removed from the list, you just get added to the list again for the next campaign.
If it's not something you subscribed to then it's spam.
this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2026
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Deleting is way too much hassle. I mark them as read (sometimes) and move on. Until I get annoyed enough to go on an unsubscribe rampage
If I can reasonably believe I did subscribe by mistake, unsubscribe. If there is no chance I willing consented to it, report as spam.
It's a Black Friday tradition. By that date, everyone starts sending offers so that's a good time to unsubscribe from all of that.
Hitting 'unsubscribe':
- Takes you to website where you have to go through multiple steps of inquisition: your email, are you sure, want to just get less, are you really sure, give us a reason, ok it's queued up and we'll get to it whenever.
Or,
- Hey, this is a live email. Ok, whatever, thanks. We'll make more money selling this email to data brokers. Mission accomplished.
If on gmail, hit unsubscribe.
If you don't think you ever subscribed to it, even by mistake, report it as spam.
Also they know your email is live if you loaded the unique HTML content of the email from their server.
I just report as spam and block
Let them deal with the spamlist fallout
If you’re not in my whitelist, you don’t get to my inbox.
Simple.
I've wanted to do this too, but I'm worried a website will have different domain names that I didn't know about. Say I subscribe to lemmy.com. Then I find out a month later that lemmy.com sends me important alerts from from lemmyalerts.com. If I had only whitelisted lemmy.com, I would have missed those alerts.
Has this ever happened to you? Do you have a strategy for these?
If someone emails from different domains like that, then they've missed one of the biggest security lessons in how to use the internet: only trust domains that you trust/can-verify. If you get an email from YourBank.kp or YourBankOfficialReallyIPromiseBro.com then don't trust it.
The burden of proof lies with the sender to convince you they are who they say they are, by providing verifiable info and not using a domain you have to go whois.
I think PayPal sends emails from PayPalMail.com or something like that, so when a friend asked me if it was real, I said probably not, but when I investigated it further I found the morons from PayPal did actually (sometimes?) email from another domain. It makes sense however that a company like PayPal, so closely connected to psychotic conman Musk, would do something that idiotic.
Must be nice living in Canada. When I was there I heard you guys bitching about your administrations a lot, but at least the administrative stuff was pretty straightforward (I almost experience culture shock when I went to do some administrative stuff to regularize my social security situation, and student visa a few years letters, and got all the correct answers from talking to a single person, who didn't even try to backhandedly redirect me to some other service.
Over here in France, we get official, sometimes of crucial importance, communications that look like textbook phishing (strange wording, embedding links to shady-ass looking domain names).
Hell, with the latest gov data breach (which is like, the 5th one this year or something?) they sent us mails with anti-phishing good practices telling stuff like "never click on a link from a mail, go to the official website by yourself and find the thing from there" then follow up with a link...
Sometimes they'll use extremely shady links too (sorry, my dear Republic, but I ain't clicking a link to something that doesn't end in .gouv.fr from you)
Cherry on top : they recently passed a law exposing private companies to huge fines for not respecting stuff like breaches disclosures etc, then they (the government and/or related institutions) admitted to no wrongdoings after getting caught burying the evidence and not respecting basic security best practices. The only one that got some traction is the latest one because the hacker allegedly managed to extract all the financial data of the country's top tax evaders
Warning unsubcribe buttons can be phishing attempts.
Assuming unsubscribe works and isn't just confirming your email is valid.
Or the unsubscribe button is a phishing scam
TBH I just set up a Thunderbird filter to move anything from their domain into my bullshit folder. Takes about the same amount of time as unsubscribing and I know for sure it'll work. 👍
Has to in Canada.
Or what? What's the enforcement on that, especially if the sender isn't in Canada?
If some anonymous spam farm in India sends you more spam after you unsubscribe, what exactly is Canada going to do about it?
Why would you subscribe to one of those in the first place?
Spam and subscribeable emails are totally different things and issues.
Spam and malicious emails aren't the same as a newsletter from a genuine company. I'd know if I subscribed to something, I'm not even opening spam let alone click a link in it. Genuine companies will follow the law in Canada and other developed countries.
I live in Canada. Walmart.ca won't stop sending me emails no matter how many times I click unsubscribe. Never even signed up, just bought something from them once. I'm still glad there's a law about this, but companies are absolutely not following it reliably.
Genuine companies
Yeah okay think about what he said and what you are saying. Canada cant enforce the law against the non genuine companies based offshore. When you click unsubscribe often you don't know if its a genuine company or not.
I know, which is why i included
I'd know if I subscribed to something, I'm not even opening spam let alone click a link in it.
Perhaps I could have written that more clearly. Despite not all spam and malicious emails being easy to spot, for me the opposite is very true: i can spot whether I subscribed to something or not. If I believe I didn't, it goes straight to spam. If it turns out i barely or ever read something I subscribed to, I rather unsubscribe then delete or move to spam each individual message every time I get one.
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Is Canada gonna reach out through tcp/ip and arrest them?
Anything you could want to know is here.
Governments can block tcp and ISPs if they refuse to comply. They can also use it against trade relations or other negotiations as well too.
If you’re trying to make a joke instead of genuinely asking a question, well…. Okay.
The USA literally uses copyright, DRM and other stuff as bargaining chips with other countries, why would you not think the same could happen elsewhere?
Hahahahaha. I manage a mail server and they are never going to be able to block all the compromised accounts these scumbags use. I geo blocked the whole world and all domains except for the main top level ones and I still get regular fake phishing attempts using all manner of otherwise legitimate servers and domains. It doesn't matter what any law says. These people don't care and they are not going to be stopped often. I get a huge number these days from aws and google. As much as I would love to I can't block them.
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Mark it as spam and let your email client do the work. Clicking unsubscribe can have negative consequences like confirming to the spammer that you are an actual human.
This is the way.
The annoying part for me is Pi-Hole often blocks those unsubscribe links - understandably so, it's literally a link to a website operated by the exact spammers Pi-Hole is trying to block. I've started taking advantage of my email service's alias feature. Anytime a site wants my address for something, I just generate an alias address (that I can disable/delete at any time) that redirects to my regular inbox. And since the alias address typically contains the site's name, I know exactly who sold my data if I start getting spam from something I never signed up for.
I just mark as spam
If the unsubscribe doesn't work, absolutely
Things I know I signed up for, on purpose or inadvertently, get one attempt at unsubscribing. If it fails, they're spam and get treated as such. I never actually sign up for these things, but I accept that they put me on these lists when I make purchases or engage with them in some other way. I accept it, but I don't like it - and my patience with them when I try to unsubscribe is extremely limited.
But things I "signed up" for and things Gmail asks me if I want to unsubscribe from - are two very different things. Gmail asks me that question several times a week. I "sign up" for things at a rate more like several times a year. Things that I didn't subscribe to that want me to unsubscribe are just scammers trying to polish their lists up and I'm not gonna help them.
Oooohhh… clearly you have never donated to progressive causes… because deleting this shit FOREVER is not the only way to keep the inbox clean. Unsubscribing is a waste of time… they have lots and lots of telephone numbers.
And before you tell me I’m not a progressive anymore… I’m still donating… but it’s cash only for these pricks.
Ethical people wouldn't ignore unsubscriptions, or obfuscate how they contact you.
If they do, then you know you failed at recognizing unethical people (and you'll hopefully investigate more in the future), and that you should never donate again to that organization and to stop being a member.
Fun LPT from me: I always read the notifications, but I don’t actually open most of my emails. Once they build up about 6mo worth I sort by sender and set rules to automatically delete or mark as read ones I get a lot of. Like, I don’t need to know my credit card statement is available. That email has no usable information. So now it bypasses my inbox and doesn’t bother me ever again.
Unsubscribe is good too, but sometimes you want to filter out certain keywords like “receipt” but allow other stuff through for a certain address.
My bank keeps telling me I haven't looked at my statement in a while. Like, yeah? Wtf is going to have happened. Its only been 3 months, there is no way I could have spent all my money in that time.
That's a great cyber security strategy.
Blocking is sometimes better option. If its a unknown or sketchy link, its better to block than unsubscribe.
Login to Unsubscribe
Forbidden by law in the EU, one-click unsubscribe they call it.
It appears to be banned in the US under 15 USC 7704(a)(3) because it's neither one click nor does it allow the user to open a menu to select the types of messages they want to receive: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/7704
Wait, are people genuinely not unsubscribing immediately from random advertisements? RIP their inbox i guess.
You're trusting random spam emails enough to click anything? I just click the report spam button on the email client and let the spam filters take care of it.
Yeah. Many spam emailers will abuse the 'unsubscribe' link in order to build up a list of active email addresses to send more shit to.
If somebody clicks 'unsubscribe', then you know they're a hot target: an email address getting checked by a real person who looks at the spam emails at least long enough to read the title and look for an unsubscribe link!
No, i use the drop down menu on the email ui. It unsubs and reports spam.
It unsubs and reports spam.
If it's a spammer, then unsubscribing just lets them add your email address to a list of known-active email addresses, which they can sell for more money to other scammers.
If you subscribed to something, then unsubscribe, sure. If you didn't subscribe (AND accept a confirmation right after), then mark as spam ONLY - don't unsubscribe also.
If someone else successfully subscribed you to something (accidentally or on purpose), then there wasn't a confirmation process - these people should be marked as spam.
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I spend a moment blocking their domain in postfix.
Until the email is strategically lengthened past the point of my client rendering the thing in full and I have to open it in a new window and scroll all the way to the bottom only to find that they intentionally left "Unsubscribe" as just plain text and not a link.
Or you are lucky enough to have a link, but it demands you login to make changes, but you checked out as a guest and don't have an account.
Or you deliberately unchecked "send me marketing emails" when you bought something and they automatically signed you up for not just their own emails, but those of all their subsidiaries.
Or they just don't have an unsubscribe option at all.
I'd rather just mark it as spam and cause a repeated ping on their reputation every time they send an email.
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