Getting Harder to Unsubscribe

[mystang52]

I have a Verizon.net email for my friends and family, and Gmail for everything else. The daily volume of junk email in my Gmail account seems to have grown exponentially. Force of habit I just delete them, and also because it takes extra steps to unsubscribe.
When I do unsubscribe, it's no longer just clicking a button. Most of the time I have to re-enter my email address, click a box as to my reason, click a box telling them Yes, I really do want to unsubscribe, etc etc.
And in the end I'm not even sure if I will in fact be unsubscribed.

Maybe I'm very late to the game on this, but I just "discovered" that I can block a sender through my Gmail. Much quicker. Hopefully this will ultimately reduce the junk mail.

 

[JustCurious]

When I do unsubscribe, it's no longer just clicking a button. Most of the time I have to re-enter my email address, click a box as to my reason, click a box telling them Yes, I really do want to unsubscribe, etc etc.

Most of those steps are not required. Although you may have to re-enter your email address, most of the rest is optional...you don't have to provide a reason.

I agree some things are presented as if they are required even though it is not explicitly stated as a requirement. It sort of reminds me of some wifi networks, especially at airports, when you first log on a screen pops up that asks you to enter certain information or create an account...but in almost all cases it is a request, not a requirement.

 

[Fishingmn]

You can also plan on using a fake e-mail address in some cases to log in to a site if they don't require a full registration.

Whoever uses joe1@yahoo gets a lot of extra e-mails as that's the one I always go with.

 

[googily]

You can also plan on using a fake e-mail address in some cases to log in to a site if they don't require a full registration.

Whoever uses joe1@yahoo gets a lot of extra e-mails as that's the one I always go with.

DH has/had an exceedingly common first initial and last name @ gmail address, and you wouldn't believe how much "wrong" e-mail he gets, not only from people who clearly used it as a throwaway, but from people who are trying to send things to friends or family and guess the wrong address.

Plus there's some guy outside of Vancouver who used it to register with Domino's and who orders pizza three times a week.

 

[RonBoyd]

... I just "discovered" that I can block a sender through my Gmail. Much quicker.

Yeah, and I have found that the "Unsubscribe" procedure simply increases the amount of SPAM. Most (well, quite a bit) of these emails are from 'spoofed" sites and all you do when you "unsubscribe" is confirm that your address is correct... and can be sold.

A better way is to use, for instance, https://www.speedguide.net/ to get the email address of the sender's ISP and report them. This is effective in about half the cases... they others are sent from a non-valid IP address... yeam that can be "spoofed" too.

Instructions (many) can be found by Googling "Report Spam" or something similar. I can, of course, list the steps if necessary.

 

[W2R]

Yeah, and I have found that the "Unsubscribe" procedure simply increases the amount of SPAM. Most (well, quite a bit) of these emails are from 'spoofed" sites and all you do when you "unsubscribe" is confirm that your address is correct... and can be sold.

+1 Personally I never report spam any more, and haven't for at least 20+ years.

My e-mail provider makes it very easy to delete spam. All I have to do is click a box next to the spam title, and go down the list clicking those boxes... click, click, click. Then I hit "delete" and they are gone.

Luckily the spammers are very considerate in that the titles of their spams are completely ridiculous, so I don't have to open them in order to know they are spams.

Today I only got 6 spam!! The spammers must be taking some time off after the holiday spamming season....

 

[scrabbler1]

After I learned that my email address had been found on the DarkWeb in July, 2016, , I began getting lots and lots of spam and struggled to find ways to keep it away.


I have a PC-based email program although it comes along with a web-based service. A few months ago, I finally figured out a decent way to keep the spam from getting downloaded into my PC. I had to go into the web-based service and change a few settings. First, I told it to only allow non-junk mail to get downloaded instead of both legit mail and junk mail to get downloaded. Second, I told it to classify junk mail as mail coming from email addresses which were not in my contacts book.


The only problem with that second, strict filter, was that the contacts book it uses is the one in the web version, not the larger one on my PC version. Over the last few months, I have had to add some legit contacts to the web version to allow their emails to get through to my PC, not to Junk Mail.


I have to remember to check my Junk Mail folder to make sure some legit emails aren't stuck there. At times, I forgot to do this and thought some (new) people weren't replying to me. My Junk Mail stays there for 7 days, so I have to go in there at least once a week or else it will disappear.


This problem is far less annoying than the spam getting through. With the spam, I can block the sender's email address, even the broader domain name, from getting through. But the spam senders change the domain name as easily as they change their email address which is often something like this:


woeiruwoeriuwoetysdonsdojh@junkmail.com


I have asked my email provider to allow us to use wild cards in the domain name which would be far more effective at blocking senders. They never replied. And this doesn't count the spoofed email addresses. I have had to block my own email address because the spammers spoofed some emails using my own address!

 

[RonBoyd]

Despite what I said earlier, my current method of handling SPAM is simply "Ctrl D."

I use MS Outlook in the "Reading Pane" mode and can read the contents without opening the email itself. "Ctrl D" is, for all practical purposes, a single keystroke - no muss, no fuss, no time lost. Spending lots of time and energy fighting SPAM is an exercise in futility... Einstein's definition of insanity.

 

[happy2bretired]

I was stupid enough to get myself on some political spam...grrr. I will be changing my email address soon and all the junk can go to the graveyard.

 

[Lsbcal]

I have a Verizon.net email for my friends and family, and Gmail for everything else. The daily volume of junk email in my Gmail account seems to have grown exponentially. Force of habit I just delete them, and also because it takes extra steps to unsubscribe.
When I do unsubscribe, it's no longer just clicking a button. Most of the time I have to re-enter my email address, click a box as to my reason, click a box telling them Yes, I really do want to unsubscribe, etc etc.
And in the end I'm not even sure if I will in fact be unsubscribed.

Maybe I'm very late to the game on this, but I just "discovered" that I can block a sender through my Gmail. Much quicker. Hopefully this will ultimately reduce the junk mail.

I didn't know you could block a sender on Gmail. What I've done is similar in that the mail winds up in the Spam folder as a reminder.

First I try to be a good guy by unsubscribing. I move that mail then to an "unsubscribe" folder I created. Then if the email continues I move it to the Spam folder and Gmail marks it as forever spam. This worked with Pinterest which would not seem to let me unsubscribe.

 

[harley]

I have a surprisingly small amount of spam that makes it into my inbox. Most gets directed to the spam folder automatically. I check it every day or two to make sure nothing legit got shunted into it. But other than that I just do a mass delete every few days.

I do unsubscribe, but mostly the emails are related to something I signed up for (recently Uber) or bought something from. So when I unsubscribe I'm sure it's a legit site. I wouldn't bother to unsubscribe from a random mailing.

 

[rbmrtn]

I didn't know you could block a sender on Gmail. What I've done is similar in that the mail winds up in the Spam folder as a reminder.

First I try to be a good guy by unsubscribing. I move that mail then to an "unsubscribe" folder I created. Then if the email continues I move it to the Spam folder and Gmail marks it as forever spam. This worked with Pinterest which would not seem to let me unsubscribe.

Blocking a sender may be futile as almost all the spam emails are spoofed. I have received the same spam multiples times in a single day each from different emails. This is to one of my disposable addresses so no big deal.

Unsubscribing also may be useless, for spammers it just identifies your address as "live". For a legit company it may work.

In past I have written custom email filters, and use disposable emails for places that require email address to register/login.