[BowBun]

I can see how people get annoyed (I do), but I think this strategy is harmful to some companies. For example, I work for a web company that sends out a LOT of emails as reminders for events. ISPs (or some other web intermediary, I'm not sure) have rankings based on your likelihood to spam. A lot of spammy emails are already caught in the filter, and either don't go through or go to your spam folder. We work pretty hard to clear up misunderstandings that could harm our email rating so that users don't miss important events.

That all being said, reporting spam instead of unsubscribe could hurt their email rankings in the future. Obviously I'm not talking about VIAGRA6969.NZ, but avoid the spam button if the company is respectable at all.

[awakeasleep]

If your company forces me to sign in before I can unsubscribe, it's not a respectable company and I want to hurt it- desperately.

[JoeAltmaier]

I see how that advice benefits your company. But it doesn't benefit me, much. I'd prefer to err on the side of pushing that button too much.

[linkregister]

On the other hand, a false positive does harm you if it makes it more difficult for your email provider to weed out the genuine spam.

(But I think you are only clicking "spam" on the unsolicited or hard-to-unsubscribe stuff, which I support)

[DanBC]

As soon as a company sends me email other than hat I signed up for I report as spam.

Companies need to learn that merely being in possession of my email address doesn't mean they can send me anything they like.

I'd pay money for a modern day SPEWS-like art project.

[linkregister]

There are a number of modern-day services that perform a similar function. Spamhaus is probably the most famous. Looking at the wikipedia entry, it looks like SPEWS failed because their whitelist process was not good (and the DoS attacks).

[wanderfowl]

Consider it a message from your customers that you're doing email incorrectly. If your service is indistinguishable to customers from an unsolicited bulk commercial email sender, you've doubtless got some tweaks to make to improve that distinction.

[Ueland]

If the company does not let me unsubscribe in a single click, then i don`t care, easy as that.

If i receive unwanted email that i can not easily get rid of, then it is enough for me to consider it spam.