[mtkd]

Getting increasingly harder to unsubscribe.

- Some big vendors (Dell, HP?) don't seem to use unified opt-out lists or they use agencies that don't share unsubscribes

- Unsub pages with complicated unsub process (double-negative questions, button size tricks e.g. 'submit' is small and 'continue' is large)

- Unsub pages requiring input of your email address on a form without the email address pre-populated (so you have to go back and lookup which address received the email)

- 2 stage unsub process, so you think you've submitted but it's really a page saying 'are you sure?' in small text with small submit

A single-click / no interaction unsubscribe is the exception now.

[sergiotapia]

My experience has been the opposite or maybe it's just something unique to Outlook.com

They have a small button you can click to Unsubscribe beneath every marketing email. And they pop up a message saying "We'll ask them to stop. In the meantime we'll automatically move everything from this sender/company to junk."

Works really well and it's 1 click.

[ZoFreX]

There are two modes of marketing mail I've seen increase massively over the last year or two (note: completely subjective 'study' based on my own inbox):

1) "Screw your choices" spam - despite figuring out the Mensa-challenge-esque puzzle of which checkboxes to check or uncheck, when signing up for a new account the company opts you in to marketing emails anyway.

2) "Blast from the past" - a I used to use years ago has decided to add every single email address they've ever seen to their mailing list, and I'm suddenly seeing emails from them. To me this looks a lot like the desperate throes of a dying company - I believe Yahoo pulled this at some point this year. Amusing variation: My sole contact with one company was a complaint email, which they did not reply to. Two years later they started sending me marketing emails. No, thank you.

When it comes to unsubscribing there's another trick I've seen on the rise, other than the ones you already listed: An unsubscribe process that takes weeks. The page says something like "You will be unsubscribed within 28 days" and you keep getting spam in the meantime. I believe at least some of Yahoo's services do this, too? There are two main variations for this one: companies that do actually remove you after 28 days, and companies that don't (I assume it's just a distraction tactic and they hope you'll forget).

[erichurkman]

I particularly like the unsubscribe pages that have broken email validation. Sign up for a service with [e-mail] just fine, but the unsubscribe page won't accept the '+'.

Or the ones that require you to sign in update your spam preferences.

Ugh.