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Ask HN: What can you do when “unsubscribe” doesn't work?
I've gone through a "successful" email unsubscribe process quite a few times with some companies, only to find out that nothing really happened (keep receiving weekly/monthly spam).
These aren't shady companies either: they are large legit entities in the US.
I've given them the benefit of the doubt a few times, thinking that perhaps a bug failed to write my update to their subscription database, but after a handful of tries with the same outcome, I realized it is not isolated.
Of course I can add an email filter, but that will not take care of the root cause that most likely affects everyone else too, whether it's a deliberate attempt at denying my request to unsubscribe or simply a bug that nobody has a way to report.
What is a proper gentle nudge to say "hey, your unsubscribe system is broken, please fix it"?
There is usually no contact info available to have this kind of "out of band" communication.
- yuppie_scum 5y agoGo on LinkedIn and identify the CMO. Create a forward to that person’s email address so all the spam bounces back to them.
- qolop 5y agoIf enough people start doing this may become part of email culture. Then we're looking at a point where CMOs all around the world are getting bombarded with the same shit they force down people's inboxes.
- qeternity 5y agoI love this. I usually hit them with a GDPR request but this is pretty good as well.
- slater 5y agoE-mail them directly? Check if they have a twitter feed (and one that actually interacts with ppl, not a PR firehose) and send them a DM? Alternatively, look up folks on Linkedin working at that company, preferably sysadmins/devops/whatever-its-called-this week, and e-mail them?
- mogadsheu 5y agoYou can block the sender’s address
- slater 5y agoFrom OP: > Of course I can add an email filter
- troydavis 5y ago> What is a proper gentle nudge to say "hey, your unsubscribe system is broken, please fix it"? Report it to their email service provider via the abuse@ alias[1]. Tell the ESP what the problem is and ask them to contact their customer and clue them in. Reputable ESPs do this regularly. [1]: Use the “Received” SMTP headers to see which ESP a message was sent through: https://mxtoolbox.com/EmailHeaders.aspx https://mxtoolbox.com/EmailHeaders.aspx, https://www.lifewire.com/email-headers-spam-1166360 https://www.lifewire.com/email-headers-spam-1166360, https://www.smtp2go.com/blog/effectively-report-spam/ https://www.smtp2go.com/blog/effectively-report-spam/
- jrootabega 5y agoIs there any information to back that up? I think it's more likely that ESPs would gladly ignore a few people in favor of their paying customers, especially since in these cases they can write those people off as "cranky privacy crackpots" who don't contribute to the consumer culture they thrive in.
- troydavis 5y agoI’ve done it and had well-known ESPs write personal responses (not templates) saying they’ve contacted the customer about the problem. They could be outright lying, but that probably wouldn’t scale well beyond a small support group. I believe the incentives are more aligned than you might think. An ESP isn’t risking revenue by telling a customer that something’s not working and making them fix it. All parties know that ignoring it manifests in poor deliverability, often quickly (thanks, Gmail “Spam” button!). In my experience, your skepticism is justified about ESPs permanently shutting off a customer, but they’re comfortable doing anything short of that.
- cpach 5y agoI’m on Gmail and when this happens I just mark it as spam.
- bradwood 5y agoSet up a gmail rule that searches for the word "unsubscribe"....
- quickthrower2 5y agoHa ha genius. Gmail sort of does this automatically with the promotions tab anyway. Just periodically nuke the emails in that view.
- Nextgrid 5y agoGDPR/CCPA request if this applies to you. Alternatively, redirect the spam to someone high-up whose time is worth a lot of money.
- gingerlime 5y agoI now use one-off email addresses for every service I sign up for. e.g. <random>@mydomain.com It’s great to detect security leaks, but I can also just delete the address and then any email to it will bounce. This usually gets you off their list anyway after a hard bounce.
- Delk 5y agoAre all of those addresses aliases for the same mailbox? Do you run your own email server, or how do you manage creating a new address for each service with reasonable convenience?
- gingerlime 5y agoyes I run my own email server, but essentially forward to fastmail. I have a small script that generates a new forwarder. I add a note to remember what’s the purpose of the new email, and it also sends me an email with the note for quick lookup later on if necessary. I think there are some services that lets you set up forwarders, and even some domain registrars will give you this for free or a small fee (although I guess the script part might be something you’ll have to figure out)
- quantumofalpha 5y agoWhat's the benefit of running own server in this case? Wildcard aliases is actually a standard fastmail feature, I use it a lot. No per-email setup needed whatsoever, I just give out <whatever>@mydomain.com, they all will reach my inbox. Haven't seen people sending spam to random aliases at my domain yet.
- gingerlime 5y agocan you bounce one of those aliases? I have other reasons for having my own server (more mailboxes, domains, vendor lockin protection, own backups etc)
- 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tartoran 5y agoI find that many times unsubscribing automatically subscribes you to something else so it's simpler to just flag it as junk. Unsubscribing could be seen as a signal that said mailbox is active and is not something I am willing to share with marketers.
- jacinabox 5y agoWhat we need is more federal laws that make it a crime to continue spamming someone once of course they hit that unsubscribe button -- and of course the spammers themselves keep the rolls of who tried to unsubscribe.
- exolymph 5y agoComplaining about it on Twitter might work (tag the company, maybe an exec or two).
- quickthrower2 5y agoMark it as spam in gmail. Create a rule to trash the emails.
- jrootabega 5y agoBlocking the sender won't even work. These companies, though they maintain plausible deniability, deliberately ignore and evade attempts to escape their marketing space. They will occasionally shift the domain and sender to counter any blacklists. Or they will find a way to link your previous subscription to one list to a business relationship that allows them to add you to ANOTHER list. The most effective solution would be a fuzzy match on the org's name, but you would probably lose legitimate messages that way, and they also like to change their names every now and then. I'm not talking about sketchy criminal companies, but large US-based companies and charities like OP is. The only thing you can do is consider it a kind of digital chicken pox. It will always be a part of you, but hopefully it will remain inert. Never do anything to acknowledge that you have seen the messages or that you even remember that the sender exists.
- 28194608 5y agoI try hard to unsubscribe to small companies because marking their spam will be easy but it may hurt the companies future emails.
- shivenigma 5y agoI'll mark it as SPAM, from the 2nd or 3rd time. I marked our PM's marketing as SPAM because they're sending emails to me when I never signed up for one.
- Jugurtha 5y agoIt has happened to me. I simply sent them an email explaining the thing. They replied that I've been unsubscribed. I received emails again. I asked them again, and they fixed it. Same situation. Humans were involved, and it was resolved.