[pavel_lishin]

I always click the "unsubscribe" link, first. If I get anything else after that, then I mark it as spam. (I don't buy into the 30-business-days bullshit, it's 2014.)

I also have catch-all addresses at my domain, so I register for things as SERVICE@mydomain, so I know exactly where spam is coming from.

Except I've been doing this for years, and 90% of garbage still just comes to my plain ol' gmail address that I've been using for over a decade, which suggests that businesses finally have wised up to the fact that sending garbage to everyone who puts their email address into a form is a bad, bad idea.

[MBCook]

> I don't buy into the 30-business-days bullshit, it's 2014

I just went through that a few weeks ago. I ordered something and the merchant decided to start spamming me with product info on a daily basis. I thought I unchecked the "spam me" button, but I guess I was wrong.

So I unsubscribed. And got two more emails.

They were required by law to stop sending me emails within 10 business days. They carefully waited exactly 10 business days. In the mean time, they sent me two emails a day in case I might change my mind.

After two days I started marking the messages as spam. Luckily they were kind enough to provide me with an opt-out confirmation email. I was ready to sue them when they stopped right at the boundary.

Just a pure jack-ass move by the company. I'll never buy from them again.

[ggreer]

I'd appreciate it if you could name the company so that I and others may avoid them as well.

Edit: I am very confused by the downvotes.

[revnja]

Tanga does this. It's very easy to unsubscribe, but that's beside the point. I bought one thing from there and started getting "daily deal" mails, very annoying. I try the unsubscribe, but then if mail is still flowing, I will mark as spam, but I am very conservative with that Spam button. I manage mail for a large ISP and too know the horrors of customers complaining that our IP space is blacklisted.

[click170]

Can someone help me understand why naming and shaming companies for what is in the customer's opinion poor behaviour deserves down-votes? No sarcasm, honest question.

Were the down-votes for something else? I honestly think some naming and shaming would be a good thing in situations like this. Especially in this day and age when complaining on twitter is more and more likely to get a response from the company in question.

[ggreer]

I can't edit my comment anymore, but earlier it was at -1 with no replies.

[coldpie]

What company was this? Name and shame them. Ticketmaster did something similar for me. They subscribed me to three or four lists, each of which I had to individually unsubscribe from. I will never buy from Ticketmaster again.

[pavel_lishin]

Isn't that basically tantamount to not going to live shows anymore?

[partisan]

ProFlowers did this to me. I ordered a condolence package for my manager who had a passing in the family. I immediately started receiving emails from ProFlowers and several of its brands.

It was spam, plain and simple. I purchased flowers because someone passed away and suddenly I was on the list of people who are just on the verge of buying chocolate covered strawberries, but just waiting for the right discount.

Thinking about it now, do chocolate covered strawberries and price conscious consumers even go hand in hand?

[kaoD]

> I always click the "unsubscribe" link, first. If I get anything else after that, then I mark it as spam.

Then you're much more resilient than me :P

I used to do that but I thought, since they want to deliver their message, I'll deliver mine: "I don't want your unsolicited mail and I'll flag you without hesitation".

Apparently it works.

[yebyen]

I click "unsubscribe" because I actually want to stop receiving the mails. Granted there are two classes of unsubscribe link, 1) I got on your list somehow through my own action and now I click here to get back out, and 2) you bought a big list of e-mails and removing my name from your list, while legitimate, is not going to stop them from reselling my name forever to V1agr4 sellers and c1al1s remailers, and I'll continue to get these spammy e-mails forever no matter what I do as long as I get this address.

The difference is more important to me because I get catch-all mails for addresses on a domain that are no longer good (former employees) and they MAY have actually signed up to some of these things on purpose. This doesn't mean I won't both unsubscribe and also mark as spam completely useless e-mails from companies I don't care for. But I do notice that the RIDICULOUS volume of spam I get actually goes down sometimes when I do spend some time unsubscribing from what I find seems to be from legitimate companies, the frequently repeating contacts in the spam buckets. YMMV.

[0x0]

Would be interesting to see if you would see a difference if you reported spam through spamcop.net.

It's a pretty nifty interface that will automatically look up all relevant abuse contact emails for the ip ranges and let you file and register complaints with a single click.

[AxisOfEval]

Many companies sell your email address when you unsubscribe. By unsubscribing you have established two things:

1. You are not interested in their product or service (Obvious)

2. You read your mail, and it is not a throw-away box. (Non-Obvious)

Unsubscribe and your email address suddenly gets commercial value that it did not have before.

[dingaling]

> I also have catch-all addresses at my domain, so I register for things as SERVICE@mydomain

This is a great technique. I was receiving Nigerian-style spam to my santander@ e-mail address, but Santander ( a big Eurobank ) denied that they had leaked the address. They blamed me, stating that I must have entered that into some web form somewhere.

So I changed my address with them to santander_2014-03-20@ and guess what.. .within a couple of weeks spam came to that one too.

No subsequent response from them as to how these are being leaked / compromised. None of my other e-mail addresses of the form companyname@ are being spammed.

I'm gradually closing my Santander accounts, I just don't trust their IT systems and processes.

[eli]

In the US, the CAN-SPAM Act requires opt-outs to take effect within 10 days, so you see a lot of "you will be removed within 10 days" messages written by lawyers even when the opt-out is instant.

[duskwuff]

And to be fair, if you're horribly unlucky and an email was already queued to send to you when you hit the "unsubscribe" link, you are going to receive that message, even though you'd unsubscribed -- given some of the retry mechanisms in certain mail servers, I can certainly see the logic in being conservative and giving a ten-day window.