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Ask HN: Do you unsubscribe from spam emails? Why? Why not?
So for the record, I don't mean marketing mails from lists you've subscribed to - but genuine spam emails that have gotten your emails from who knows where.
I'm curious how the HN community feels about using the Unsubscribe when it's just confirming to the spammer that theres a real person on the other side
- GianFabien 5y agoI am lead to believe that hitting 'unsubscribe' confirms that the email works and might be used again. So I hit 'mark as spam' in the hope that the email provider will block emails from that source to other recipients.
- berkeshire 5y agoAnecdata from a sample size of 1 (me): 7 of 10 times the unsub functionality works. The other 3 times where I do end up confirming that I am a human on the other side, the "Mark as Spam" functionality of email providers - that kicks in after a couple of weeks.
- TomVDB 5y agoI often do, and it works wonders.
- a0-prw 5y agoI put it in the spam folder and my email provider blocks it. Why should I waste my time confirming to the spammer that he's got a real address?
- jjjbokma 5y agoI never do. If I bother to do a thing with spam other than deleting it I report it to SpamCop [0]. [0] https://www.spamcop.net/ https://www.spamcop.net/
- dyingkneepad 5y agoI do when it when the company sending it is legit and operating in the US. Most of the times it works and I stop being spammed. When it doesn't, I report spam until it stops showing up on my inbox.
- jordansmith 5y agoI usually just add a filter so it automatically skips my inbox and gets deleted