10 ms·

Does it count if there's no user interface? Amazon has my email address, I've been a customer since the late-nineties. They keep inventing new email lists and

Does it count if there's no user interface? Amazon has my email address, I've been a customer since the late-nineties. They keep inventing new email lists and signing me up for them. Each time I get a new "newsletter" it says something like, "You got this message because you're subscribed to the 'Tablet News' newsletter." I click the unsubscribe link to remove myself from it. Along with the unsubscribe link there's a link to my subscriptions. When I go there, it only shows the ones I want (the specific authors I'm following). I want to unsubscribe not only from this latest list you just signed me up for, but also from all future lists you may want to sign me up for. I really don't want to get any unsolicited marketing email from you. Really. I don't want it. Please let me out. Also stop letting marketplace sellers email me begging for feedback after every marketplace item I accidentally order. I try my best to not order marketplace seller items anymore but when I accidentally do (or buy a gift for someone that is only offered this way) I always end up getting emails from these guys. Are you sharing my email address with them? Does unsubscribing or responding to them share my email address with them? I have no idea. There is never anything useful and it's impossible to unsubscribe from all past and future marketplace emails which is really annoying. Come on, amazon, I really want to love you and continue shopping there but it's getting to the point that I'd rather go to wal-mart! (ok not really)

bottled_poe 10y ago
Not just Amazon, I am constantly clicking through those unsubscribe links but just get auto-signed up for new lists. Fuck you Amazon and anyone else that does this. I'll buy your junk when and if I need to. Leave me alone and stop wasting my life.
- 0x0 10y ago
  Report them at https://www.spamcop.net/anonsignup.shtml https://www.spamcop.net/anonsignup.shtml
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    Please don't. All you're doing is polluting the data at Spamcop and violating their terms anyways. https://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/125.html https://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/125.html Bulk email can be split into two categories: Opt-in and Opt-out. Opt-in is email that an individual requested or agreed to receive. Many legitimate mailers use opt-in methods for marketing. Individuals are responsible for reading and understanding a company's privacy policies and acceptable use policies (if applicable) before submitting an email address. If a privacy or acceptable use policy clearly states that signing up for the service results in receiving marketing or commercial email, then the individual has "opted-in" to receive email and that email is not spam. A company emailing you when you have given them your permission to email you, but about certain topics you decide you don't like is not spam.
    - 0x0 10y ago
      Obviously you need to "unsubscribe all" on the first mail before taking such an action on subsequent mails.
    - mkesper 10y ago
      This practice is clearly not opt-in! There's no button "please spam me with all future newsletters we invent" you have set yourself.
      - Karunamon 10y ago
        Permission is granted company by company, not topic by topic. I get that "spam" has become throwaway shorthand for "email I'd rather not receive", but that is not the definition used by law and by antispam groups.
- username223 10y ago
  Never click a spammer's "unsubscribe" links -- that just tells them they have a valid account. If you use a big email provider like gmail, flag them as spam. Otherwise, make a rule in your mail client to automatically file anything from their domain to the trash.
  - test1235 10y ago
    I've had good success with unsubscribing from legitimate mailing lists using the links at the bottom of an email. It's not the company's fault if I unthinkingly subscribed to their newsletters - they shouldn't have all their emails forever tagged as spam for my mistake. Real spam however, rarely makes it into my inbox - it gets filtered out and deleted without ever being opened.
    - nothrabannosir 10y ago
      > It's not the company's fault if I unthinkingly subscribed to their newsletters - they shouldn't have all their emails forever tagged as spam for my mistake. It is. Default checked "subscribe" boxes during sign in, hidden settings, new lists which you are auto subscribed to; it's a never ending battle and the incentives are wrong. If there was no unsubscribe link but only the spam button, publishers would be much clearer about these things. Ironically, the unsubscribe link has probably led to more spam, rather than less.
      - douche 10y ago
        Half the time, clicking the unsubscribe button leads you to another form that is almost impossible to comprehend, which results in (maybe) unsubscribing you from one list, but subscribing you to fourteen other newsletters and update and special offer lists, for a net increase in spam.
        mnw21cam 10y ago
        If the email says "click here to unsubscribe", then it should do exactly what it says. Taking you to a page that allows you subsequently unsubscribe is not sufficient. And yes, you should only ever follow links for companies that you are confident are not spamming you out of the blue, because of the danger that you are just confirming your email address is active. My other gripe is that I'm not sure how anyone is going to tell that I have clicked on a word in an email, given that it's displayed on an xterm. But if they say that by clicking on it I am unsubscribed, it's their problem to make sure it happens.
- antocv 10y ago
  Click filter, add rule to delete from domain. But really the problem got so bad I had to stop using gmail alltogether. Moved over to mail.yandex.com and now I do not get interrupted anymore in my life. Thank you email and IM and "notifications" but no thank you, if I ever receive a notification of any kind, that account will either get nuclear delete option or disabled forever. Time to move to new email providers and new emails, and stop pretending email address is an ID, because its not, its a mailbox, when it gets full create a new one, and only people you care about and when you care will receive its attention.
Pxtl 10y ago
In general, I'm disappointed how Amazon went from being a store to a "marketplace". Sometimes I want to buy somebody who'll actually curate their list of products and has a reputation to stand behind that they don't want to sully by selling garbage or price-gouging on items they don't normally stock. But maybe that's just me.
- GuiA 10y ago
  I buy a lot of used, old, obscure things (mostly books). Very often, Amazon is the only place I can find it reliably; my other options would probably be asking my Japanese/German/etc friends to dig through second hand shops and mail it to me. I love the Amazon marketplace. (I also hate the 3rd party seller feedback emails but I have strict email filters so who cares)
  - pvdebbe 10y ago
    The marketplace works out very poorly if one doesn't have Amazon in their country. The info about shipping abroad is very much buried into whatever, and Amazon IIRC mandates that purchases can't be combined: if I buy two $0.01 books, FROM THE SAME SELLER, they will be shipped separately at $4-6 shipping & handling each.
  - a3_nm 10y ago
    > I buy a lot of used, old, obscure things (mostly books). I find AbeBooks to be very good for that. Ironically, they were acquired by Amazon, but they are still a separate system.
  - Pxtl 10y ago
    It's not that I think the Amazon Marketplace is a bad idea, it's that the way the Amazon Store and the Marketplace are conflated by Amazon that's the problem. eBay and AliExpress do what Amazon Marketplace does better than Amazon Marketplace, but Amazon wins because they've leveraged their success as a store for it.
  - germanier 10y ago
    If you are interested in books from the German-speaking region you should also take a look at zvab.com (now owned by Amazon) which is the largest marketplace for professional used book sellers.
austinl 10y ago
I've also experienced this several times. I just went through the wave of shopping emails that come from Black Friday in the US, and found that most of the time I only unsubscribed from the company's "Black Friday" list. It's a shameful way to get around CAN-SPAM. Companies know there's a risk of unsubscribes with every email they send. If they have several lists, they ought to show all lists you're subscribed to, with an option to unsubscribe from them all. They might actually keep some legitimate subscribers that way.
aaron695 10y ago
No. These seem to deal with things without consent?
nommm-nommm 10y ago
For what it's worth, marketplace sellers don't have access to your email address, Amazon relays email messages through their servers. I am a seller on Amazon. I didn't think I have access to email addresses but you got me curious. I just went into an order and clicked "contact buyer." It gives a contact form that has the receivers address as something like dq22t5nz9n27qma@marketplace.amazon.com with a note "IMPORTANT NOTICE: When you submit this form, Amazon will replace your email address with one provided by Amazon in order to protect your identity, and forward the message on your behalf. Amazon will retain copies of all e-mails sent and received using this service, including the message you submit below, and may review these messages as necessary to resolve disputes. By using this service, you consent to this action." Personally, I don't contact my buyers at all ever unless its a reply to a question they asked me. On the email front, I've been getting bizarre emails from Trulia about 1-2 times a month for the last six months. I don't open them but the subject is "1 new rental available in $(my town)." I own a house and I don't remember giving Trulia my email address ever even when I was apartment hunting many years ago. This only started six months ago. I wonder how I got on that list?
- el_benhameen 10y ago
  Going forward, you can append "+whatever" to the username portion of your email address, e.g. You+spam@gmail.com, and gmail and most other providers I've used will ignore that part. Use it to trace the sharing of that address. I used that when signing up for a particular mailing list and found that my address was shared with about a dozen other marketers.
  - gfody 10y ago
    The shady places will just trim everything after the + anyways
    - function_seven 10y ago
      Yeah, I’ve always figured as much. I use Yahoo’s disposable emails that don’t feature a “+” in them. There’s no way the sender can tell they’re sending to an alias.
swehner 10y ago
Good idea to avoid amazon. Did you try unsubscribing from all their newsletters?
novia 10y ago
I've noticed LinkedIn doing the same thing. How many times do I need to visit their site and unsubscribe from every list before they get the picture?
devicenull 10y ago
> Also stop letting marketplace sellers email me begging for feedback after every marketplace item I accidentally order. I try my best to not order marketplace seller items anymore but when I accidentally do (or buy a gift for someone that is only offered this way) I always end up getting emails from these guys. Are you sharing my email address with them? Does unsubscribing or responding to them share my email address with them? I have no idea. There is never anything useful and it's impossible to unsubscribe from all past and future marketplace emails which is really annoying. Come on, amazon, I really want to love you and continue shopping there but it's getting to the point that I'd rather go to wal-mart! (ok not really) I've begun adding 1-star reviews when I get requests begging for feedback. Seems like the only thing I can do to discourage the behavior

bottled_poe 10y ago

Not just Amazon, I am constantly clicking through those unsubscribe links but just get auto-signed up for new lists. Fuck you Amazon and anyone else that does this. I'll buy your junk when and if I need to. Leave me alone and stop wasting my life.

0x0 10y ago
Report them at https://www.spamcop.net/anonsignup.shtml https://www.spamcop.net/anonsignup.shtml
- Karunamon 10y ago
  Please don't. All you're doing is polluting the data at Spamcop and violating their terms anyways. https://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/125.html https://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/125.html Bulk email can be split into two categories: Opt-in and Opt-out. Opt-in is email that an individual requested or agreed to receive. Many legitimate mailers use opt-in methods for marketing. Individuals are responsible for reading and understanding a company's privacy policies and acceptable use policies (if applicable) before submitting an email address. If a privacy or acceptable use policy clearly states that signing up for the service results in receiving marketing or commercial email, then the individual has "opted-in" to receive email and that email is not spam. A company emailing you when you have given them your permission to email you, but about certain topics you decide you don't like is not spam.
  - 0x0 10y ago
    Obviously you need to "unsubscribe all" on the first mail before taking such an action on subsequent mails.
  - mkesper 10y ago
    This practice is clearly not opt-in! There's no button "please spam me with all future newsletters we invent" you have set yourself.
    - Karunamon 10y ago
      Permission is granted company by company, not topic by topic. I get that "spam" has become throwaway shorthand for "email I'd rather not receive", but that is not the definition used by law and by antispam groups.
username223 10y ago
Never click a spammer's "unsubscribe" links -- that just tells them they have a valid account. If you use a big email provider like gmail, flag them as spam. Otherwise, make a rule in your mail client to automatically file anything from their domain to the trash.
- test1235 10y ago
  I've had good success with unsubscribing from legitimate mailing lists using the links at the bottom of an email. It's not the company's fault if I unthinkingly subscribed to their newsletters - they shouldn't have all their emails forever tagged as spam for my mistake. Real spam however, rarely makes it into my inbox - it gets filtered out and deleted without ever being opened.
  - nothrabannosir 10y ago
    > It's not the company's fault if I unthinkingly subscribed to their newsletters - they shouldn't have all their emails forever tagged as spam for my mistake. It is. Default checked "subscribe" boxes during sign in, hidden settings, new lists which you are auto subscribed to; it's a never ending battle and the incentives are wrong. If there was no unsubscribe link but only the spam button, publishers would be much clearer about these things. Ironically, the unsubscribe link has probably led to more spam, rather than less.
    - douche 10y ago
      Half the time, clicking the unsubscribe button leads you to another form that is almost impossible to comprehend, which results in (maybe) unsubscribing you from one list, but subscribing you to fourteen other newsletters and update and special offer lists, for a net increase in spam.
      - mnw21cam 10y ago
        If the email says "click here to unsubscribe", then it should do exactly what it says. Taking you to a page that allows you subsequently unsubscribe is not sufficient. And yes, you should only ever follow links for companies that you are confident are not spamming you out of the blue, because of the danger that you are just confirming your email address is active. My other gripe is that I'm not sure how anyone is going to tell that I have clicked on a word in an email, given that it's displayed on an xterm. But if they say that by clicking on it I am unsubscribed, it's their problem to make sure it happens.
antocv 10y ago
Click filter, add rule to delete from domain. But really the problem got so bad I had to stop using gmail alltogether. Moved over to mail.yandex.com and now I do not get interrupted anymore in my life. Thank you email and IM and "notifications" but no thank you, if I ever receive a notification of any kind, that account will either get nuclear delete option or disabled forever. Time to move to new email providers and new emails, and stop pretending email address is an ID, because its not, its a mailbox, when it gets full create a new one, and only people you care about and when you care will receive its attention.

Pxtl 10y ago

In general, I'm disappointed how Amazon went from being a store to a "marketplace". Sometimes I want to buy somebody who'll actually curate their list of products and has a reputation to stand behind that they don't want to sully by selling garbage or price-gouging on items they don't normally stock. But maybe that's just me.

GuiA 10y ago
I buy a lot of used, old, obscure things (mostly books). Very often, Amazon is the only place I can find it reliably; my other options would probably be asking my Japanese/German/etc friends to dig through second hand shops and mail it to me. I love the Amazon marketplace. (I also hate the 3rd party seller feedback emails but I have strict email filters so who cares)
- pvdebbe 10y ago
  The marketplace works out very poorly if one doesn't have Amazon in their country. The info about shipping abroad is very much buried into whatever, and Amazon IIRC mandates that purchases can't be combined: if I buy two $0.01 books, FROM THE SAME SELLER, they will be shipped separately at $4-6 shipping & handling each.
- a3_nm 10y ago
  > I buy a lot of used, old, obscure things (mostly books). I find AbeBooks to be very good for that. Ironically, they were acquired by Amazon, but they are still a separate system.
- Pxtl 10y ago
  It's not that I think the Amazon Marketplace is a bad idea, it's that the way the Amazon Store and the Marketplace are conflated by Amazon that's the problem. eBay and AliExpress do what Amazon Marketplace does better than Amazon Marketplace, but Amazon wins because they've leveraged their success as a store for it.
- germanier 10y ago
  If you are interested in books from the German-speaking region you should also take a look at zvab.com (now owned by Amazon) which is the largest marketplace for professional used book sellers.

austinl 10y ago

I've also experienced this several times. I just went through the wave of shopping emails that come from Black Friday in the US, and found that most of the time I only unsubscribed from the company's "Black Friday" list. It's a shameful way to get around CAN-SPAM. Companies know there's a risk of unsubscribes with every email they send. If they have several lists, they ought to show all lists you're subscribed to, with an option to unsubscribe from them all. They might actually keep some legitimate subscribers that way.

aaron695 10y ago

No. These seem to deal with things without consent?

nommm-nommm 10y ago

For what it's worth, marketplace sellers don't have access to your email address, Amazon relays email messages through their servers. I am a seller on Amazon. I didn't think I have access to email addresses but you got me curious. I just went into an order and clicked "contact buyer." It gives a contact form that has the receivers address as something like dq22t5nz9n27qma@marketplace.amazon.com with a note "IMPORTANT NOTICE: When you submit this form, Amazon will replace your email address with one provided by Amazon in order to protect your identity, and forward the message on your behalf. Amazon will retain copies of all e-mails sent and received using this service, including the message you submit below, and may review these messages as necessary to resolve disputes. By using this service, you consent to this action." Personally, I don't contact my buyers at all ever unless its a reply to a question they asked me. On the email front, I've been getting bizarre emails from Trulia about 1-2 times a month for the last six months. I don't open them but the subject is "1 new rental available in $(my town)." I own a house and I don't remember giving Trulia my email address ever even when I was apartment hunting many years ago. This only started six months ago. I wonder how I got on that list?

el_benhameen 10y ago
Going forward, you can append "+whatever" to the username portion of your email address, e.g. You+spam@gmail.com, and gmail and most other providers I've used will ignore that part. Use it to trace the sharing of that address. I used that when signing up for a particular mailing list and found that my address was shared with about a dozen other marketers.
- gfody 10y ago
  The shady places will just trim everything after the + anyways
  - function_seven 10y ago
    Yeah, I’ve always figured as much. I use Yahoo’s disposable emails that don’t feature a “+” in them. There’s no way the sender can tell they’re sending to an alias.

swehner 10y ago

Good idea to avoid amazon. Did you try unsubscribing from all their newsletters?

novia 10y ago

I've noticed LinkedIn doing the same thing. How many times do I need to visit their site and unsubscribe from every list before they get the picture?

devicenull 10y ago

> Also stop letting marketplace sellers email me begging for feedback after every marketplace item I accidentally order. I try my best to not order marketplace seller items anymore but when I accidentally do (or buy a gift for someone that is only offered this way) I always end up getting emails from these guys. Are you sharing my email address with them? Does unsubscribing or responding to them share my email address with them? I have no idea. There is never anything useful and it's impossible to unsubscribe from all past and future marketplace emails which is really annoying. Come on, amazon, I really want to love you and continue shopping there but it's getting to the point that I'd rather go to wal-mart! (ok not really) I've begun adding 1-star reviews when I get requests begging for feedback. Seems like the only thing I can do to discourage the behavior