[ale42]

Not really true. Many spams (at least in the past) used to include unsubscribe link, either for faked-legal-compliance, to give some illusion of legitimacy of the mail/originating company to the recipient, and/or to track who is actually receiving them.

But if you landed in a mailing list, there are quite high changes that the unsubscribe link is legit.

[account42]

> But if you landed in a mailing list, there are quite high changes that the unsubscribe link is legit.

"Legit" in that it will unsubscribe you from that exact list but not the 100 others they added you to at the same time.

[ale42]

Totally true, but sometimes people just want to unsubscribe to a mailing list they got in because they forgot to uncheck the box "send me promotions" when buying something online, or maybe they even signed up on purpose in the past. Still, some of these just mark the mails as spam not to get them any more.

[nottorp]

The unsubscribe link is legit, but how did I end up on the list? I've never ever signed up for something with the goal of receiving marketing emails. I've never given explicit permission to receive marketing emails.

So if you send me a marketing email, it's spam because I didn't ask for it. It may be legal but that doesn't impress me.

[ale42]

If you ended up on the list without signing up, well I wouldn't blame you to click the "Report spam" button, because that's what it is.

But I'm pretty sure that some people who actually signed up on purpose to be on some mailing list just click the spam button not to see them any more, because they are not any more interested, or for whatever other reason.

[nottorp]

That's probably 1% of 1%. The rest is opt out instead of opt in and dark patterns.