<p>I decided this week to unsubscribe from every single unwanted email I receive at work - hotel and rental car soliciations, seminar ads, “news” services. I had heard before that when the “unsubscribe” page requires you to type in your email address, you are really just confirming your email address and will receive more emails instead of less. </p>
<p>Anyone know whether that is true or just urban legend?</p>
<p>I don’t know, but snopes.com probably has some good information about this as it exists to prove or disprove urban legends.</p>
<p>I have successfully unsubscribed from a number of places. The only ones I have a problem with are a few that want a password I can no longer remember. Without the password, I can’t tell them I want out. Fortunately, they don’t send me much.</p>
<p>If you are unsubscribing from providers that you used to have business with (like subscribed for their emails or purchased something from them), then there will be no harm. They will stop email you.</p>
<p>However, if there is provider you’ve never dealt with, I suggest that you create a spam rule without clicking on any links.</p>
<p>Actually you could just change your email address or do what I do. I have two separate addresses, one to surf the net when I have to register for a site and know that i will get the junk/spam and the other one for important things. The second address gets significantly less junk.</p>
<p>It is a bad idea in general because you are verifying that your email address is valid. That is true. </p>
<p>But if the email is from an actual company - like Hertz - then you can unsubscribe. You have to decide on your own which carry risk and which don’t.</p>
<p>I have successfully unsubscribed from dozens and dozens of unwanted emails. There hasn’t been a single problem.</p>
<p>Some come from companies I do business with, but when I unsubscribe it is only to the solicitation part of that company, not from any essential notices.</p>
<p>Many of them were irritating to unsubscribe to (having to type in your email address and check a box, etc), many others were much simpler. I get much less unwanted email now.</p>
<p>Once you get a sense of what you are looking for, you can tell pretty easily if it is a genuine unsubscribe link. A lo of the mail bulletins are handled by major companies (for example, Constant Contact) – it is automated and you will be removed from the list. </p>
<p>Also, the way email works in general – the spammer already has your email in the system. When the email doesn’t bounce, you are kept on the system. So you really aren’t giving them anything they didn’t already know if you click on the “unsubscribe” link and it takes you to a page which already has you email address pre-entered. Now if they ask you to enter an email address to unsubscribe - that’s another story.</p>
<p>Right, those are the ones that concern me - the ones that want me to type in my email address to unsubscribe. Seems like i should just block those senders instead, right?</p>
<p>For actual companies I unsubscribe (usually places where I purchased things online, frequent flyer programs, etc).</p>
<p>For spam that somehow passed gmails good filters, I just mark it spam and never open it.</p>
<p>I recently started unsubscribing to things because I was getting to much junk. I hate it.</p>
<p>Sounds like you are getting a whole lot of unwanted e-mails from legitimate companies. I’d just go ahead and unsubscribe. I do it all the time. I receive very little spam or junk e-mail. I use Outlook.com.</p>
<p>I religiously unsubscribe from everything I do not want. It has helped.</p>
<p>My personal pet peeve is all the shopping email after I order from anywhere–JCP, Kohls, Land’s End, etc. They do it every time. Arggg. I don’t want my inbox cluttered with their stupid advertising.</p>
<p>I am annoyed with all the shopping emails too. I shop quite a bit online and there are several companies that send me emails almost every day! It is so dumb. I wouldn’t mind one a couple times a month, but this is 5-7 times a week.</p>
<p>I mark unwanted email as spam and the email service then puts subsequent emails from the sender in the spam folder. Sometimes it will try to automatically unsubscribe me if it feels that the service is legitimate. Use the features of your email service provider.</p>
<p>If I’m using an email client like Thunderbird, I can mark email as spam or create a spam rule that moves email from that address or similar addresses directly to trash.</p>
<p>I have an separate but related question. When you get one of those annoying phone calls either to your home phone or cell and at the end of the message it says press 1 if you want to be removed from our list. Is it a bad idea to press 1 or not?</p>
<p>Hang up immediately.</p>
<p>Thanks. I just asked my H and he said the same thing.</p>
<p>
That’s pointless for them to even ask for your email address because if you click the unsubscribe link it sends an email back to them and from that they have your email address. Any that ask you to enter your email address should be assumed to be bogus and just blocked and not responded to.</p>
<p>If it’s a definite legitimate company you can click the unsubscribe link. You can know it’s legitimate if you can determine why you received the email in the first place - for example you recently purchased something online from Macys, Amazon or otherwise signed up for something - many of which default to sending you notices via email unless you unchecked the box when you first registered with them.</p>
<p>But if it’s not a legitimate company, or one that might look legit but you can’t think of any reason why they’d be emailing you, then don’t click the unsubscribe. This would not only confirm to them they hit a real email address but also tells them you’re susceptible to a phishing attack where they try to trick you into giving personal info or naively giving them your credit card info (because you wouldn’t have clicked the unsubscribe if you were savvy in this area), and sometimes that link isn’t an unsubscribe at all but a way to put a virus on your computer.</p>
<p>For these suspect illegitimate emails, don’t ‘unsubscribe’ but rather, move them to ‘Junk’ or an equivalent type of area so they’re marked as an unsafe sender and your email provider will block them from you. Gmail has this feature and several others do as well. If yours doesn’t have a feature like this consider changing to a different provider.</p>
<p>I am a lawyer and lots of companies that pitch seminars, who’s who lists, etc. must buy mailing lists of lawyers. I receive a lot of “updates” etc. that clutter my in-box.</p>
<p>Sometime legitimate companies are sending you email even though you have had no contact with them because they got your email from an affiliated source or some 3rd person or agency provided your email to them without your permission. The best practice for the email marketer is to require confirmed opt-in for all mailing lists – so that the recipient has to click a link in a confirmation email before being subscribed, but not all companies do that.</p>
<p>If you really want to get specific about it, you can generally tell from the headers on the email whether the sender is legit or not.</p>