[mulmen]

Even if the unsubscribe link works I still report spam as spam. If it is unsolicited then it is spam, plain and simple.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

I'm very surprised to see you are being downvoted, I was convinced everybody is doing that. Spam is spam, period. Asking me go click on a link that leads somewhere is just a waste of my time - and there are still a few culprits out there who instead of unsubscribing me straight away demand that I log in to "manage my notification preferences"!

[blitzar]

Furthermore I consider it a public service, if enough good people mark it as spam then the algorithm can block it for other users too.

[jacquesm]

The worst ones are the ones that add a whole paragraph to their spam to explain why it isn't spam and they have a right to send you their junk.

[justinclift]

Yeah, those are lousy.

Even worse though are places like Atlassian, which add a footer to some of their emails like "this email can't be unsubscribed from".

Even though it's directly illegal for them to have emails that can't be unsubscribed from.

It's their own special "Fuck You!" message to their email recipients.

[PedroBatista]

Their lawyers will argue that’s a transactional email part of the functionality of the app, so they can play fast and loose with legal requirements

[justinclift]

I'm not even their customer (and never will be), so not really sure what kind of app functionality they'd be claiming. :/

But the concept of your comment "they're just doing what they want because they reckon they can get away with it" is pretty common among large tech companies.

[piva00]

Or some simply do not unsubscribe you.

After feeling gaslighted by some spam emails that I was very sure I had unsubscribed from, I started keeping a spreadsheet to track my requests with date, and what link I followed to get removed. Almost 25% of my requests have never been honoured, it's disgusting.

[offices]

Well, computers are tough. It takes ~31 days to update a database, right?

[gafage]

A database? No, that's instant.

But when you have dozens of databases, each owned by a different company, and they feed off each other perhaps once a day, then you can end up with a long time before all your data is deleted.

[MereInterest]

And that’s their problem, not mine. If they structure their email campaigns such that it takes a long time to update every database, that’s a design choice on their side. When that design choice means they effectively ignore my unsubscribe, well, I don’t see why that should receive any sympathy.

[developer93]

Or move your email to a list they can sell on..

[justinclift]

When someone sends spam perhaps don't click on any "Unsubscribe" type link...?

Those links are often spammer controlled and just confirm your email address as valid.

[Hnrobert42]

Nah. Hit unsubscribe every time.

I own my own email domain, and I use a different email address per service. I have done so for 13 years.

On legitimate emails, unsubscribe works correctly almost every time.

True spam seems to originate from a handful of compromised services like LinkedIn, parkmobile, etc. I don’t hit unsubscribe on those, but I don’t see how it would make things any worse.

[justinclift]

Would you happen to be running a windows desktop when checking your email?

[Hnrobert42]

No.

[worksonmine]

If your e-mail client loads external images it was already confirmed on open without clicking any link.

[crote]

Are people still using that for tracking? I thought it was made pretty pointless by the large cloud providers simply prefetching and proxying it through their servers, and independent mail clients only loading them on-demand.

[justinclift]

Ewww, why would anyone have their client configured to do that? That would be truly idiotic.

Personally, my email is text only. It drops all HTML. I prefer it this way. :)

[8organicbits]

Most clients are configured this way by default. I change it every time I switch.

[freedomben]

Nearly everyone has their client configured to do that, because it is the default setting. Gmail makes that very easy to change, but many other clients have it buried in the menu

[account42]

None of the E-mail clients I use load external images by default and I haven't had to configure that behavior myself.

[nunez]

It's not spam if you agree to receive marketing emails from the sender

[mulmen]

It is spam if I didn’t specifically ask for it. Offering an opt-out as part of some other flow doesn’t mean I want your marketing crap.

[crote]

Ah yes, the 5-pixel-wide grey opt-out checkbox placed on a grey background, claiming to be for "essential communication"...

[x0x0]

eh, some vendors take this to mean daily (or twice daily) emails.

They get the spam flag too for not being respectful of my inbox.