[clarkm]

Even though I use ghostery and provide unique email addresses to websites I don't trust, I still feel a bit uneasy about voluntarily providing my personal information to these companies just so I can "opt out". I know these sites are legitimate, and I trust the EFF; however, it still feels unnecessary.

Maybe I've just been conditioned by the fake unsubscribe links found in email spam, but I don't want to accidentally give these advertisers more information than they already have. Even if they already have complete information on me (which they undoubtedly do), I don't want to provide them with unnecessary confirmation that the information they have is correct.

[dsl]

I never understood the "fake unsubscribe" thing. In a previous life I did infrastructure consulting for people with ROSKO listings and they collected and processed every single unsubscribe. They even traded unsubscribe lists.

Back then everyone was using pinks (contracts with an allowed quota of complaints per day baked in) for mailing. If you scrubbed your lists against unsubs and bounces, you got less complaints and could negotiate better rates in the future.

[mcintyre1994]

I agree, I've seen a few but not many, and when they Email me again I just mark it as spam and never see another one. Email is commanded by algorithms right now, which take a heap of hints from their users, it's seriously stupid not to unsubscribe people kind enough to unsubscribe instead of marking you as spam.

[tripzilch]

Last year I read an article about someone doing an experiment with unsubscribe links on a very old email address. It got loads of spam, and he clicked all the unsub links (or maybe wrote a script to do it). The amount of spam that address received decreased significantly.

So whether or not the "fake unsubscribe" thing was real (my intuition says yes it was), it appears that times have changed!