5 ms·

Show HN: Hatchet – Extracts unique unsubscribe links from mailing lists in Gmail

44 points by analogj 5y ago

Leftium 5y ago
I have a filter that automatically adds the "Sub" label to all emails that contain "unsubscribe." Then I have a bookmarklet to show me all emails without the "Sub" label. Works wonderfully.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  > Works wonderfully Until your boss mails you „emergency, our pubsub is getting too much load, we need to unsubscribe from the logging queues asap“ or something ;-)
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Hopefully this isn't to your personal email :)
analogj 5y ago
Hey HN, I got frustrated with the amount of daily spam in my Gmail "Promotions" tab -- especially since it made searching for email basically impossible. While there are services that will help me unsubscribe from all the mailing lists I'm signed up to, they wanted unfettered access to my Google account, which I wasn't going to give. I wrote a open source tool called hatchet which will access your Gmail account using IMAP, find the latest unsubscribe link for each unique email sender, and write it all to a csv/spreadsheet file.
- jldl805 5y ago
  No offense but you care about a clean inbox and you have the Promotions tab activated!?!?!? That's crazy to me. My gmail is just my last name, only six letters long, and I get maybe one or two spam emails a month, if that.
  - analogj 5y ago
    The promotions tab is just a filtering mechanism, it doesn't mean that you'll get more spammy promotional email?
    - jldl805 5y ago
      Clean as in clean design, not clean as in spam free.
- commoner 5y ago
  Thank you for creating this excellent tool! Is there any reason hatchet is described as a tool for Gmail, when it lets the user specify any IMAP server? Are other email service providers officially supported by hatchet?
  - analogj 5y ago
    its currently targeted towards Gmail users because it specifically looks for the "All Mail" inbox which Gmail provides. I'm working on allowing users to configure the inbox name, which means it should work with any email provider.
    - commoner 5y ago
      That would be a great feature, I'm looking forward to this. Thanks again for developing Hatchet.
    - louis-lau 5y ago
      That would be a great addition! Why this was only for gmail was my first question.
jasonpeacock 5y ago
I just click the unsubscribe links. If you have a backlog to process, maybe it'll take you an hour a day for a few days to click them all, but it's doable. Then I'm aggressive about clicking unsubscribe when the unwanted emails show up. It's been very effective, I basically get no spam other than the pure junk that my provider (Fastmail) filters for me, and for which GMail would do the same. When I see other people's inboxes full of crap I don't understand why they don't just click unsubscribe and be done with it?
- denysvitali 5y ago
  Tbh I saw some spammers adding an unsubscribe link. And that is stupidly effective. I've clicked on an unsubscribe link once, and now I'm in some weird email list and get a lot more spam. Goes without saying, don't blindly click unsubscribe, and only click it for big mail delivery services like mailchimp (you can see it in the URL). Otherwise, don't bother and mark the email as spam.
  - jasonpeacock 5y ago
    I was worried at first about scammy unsubscribe links, but in my experience it's not an issue given the spam-filtering capabilities of modern email providers. Those emails either never get to my inbox, or they obviously bad spam and don't get clicked. 99% of legitimate spam is from business you've bought from/interacted with, or who have sold your email to others, and those unsubscribe links all do work quite effectively.
- stavros 5y ago
  I do the same thing, and the only emails I get (a few a week) are Github notifications and legitimate mail from people who want help with some project. It's extremely effective.
nfoz 5y ago
Off-topic, but a bug I recently filed against Gmail: I didn't want Gmail sending my full name to spammers, so I set my "display name" to just my email address. Thus when I send mail it's as: emailaddress <emailaddress> instead of MyRealName <emailaddress>. However: when I flag something as spam, and Gmail (un)helpfully asks "Do you want to Unsubscribe & Mark as Spam?", when I say "yes unsubscribe", then -- somehow -- it sends that "Unsubscribe" email using my REAL NAME and not the display-name that is used for normal outbound mail. So in the end the behaviour is precisely backwards from what I would want. My conclusion is to never ever use their "Unsusbcribe & mark as spam" anti-feature, instead I have to just mark anything I don't want as spam. Sigh. I am getting a LOT of spam lately that annoyingly has false Unsubscribe links being used to collect data. The world is an evil place, and Gmail is not very helpful at blocking that.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
judge2020 5y ago
This has been a service for years called 'unroll me', but it's not exactly privacy-friendly[1]. Glad to see this. 1: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/17/21027159/unroll-me-email-privacy-ftc-settlement https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/17/21027159/unroll-me-email...
- analogj 5y ago
  Yep, thats one of the public services that I looked at initially, but there was no way I was willing to give an unknown third party access to the complete contents of my inbox.

44 points by analogj 5y ago

I have a filter that automatically adds the "Sub" label to all emails that contain "unsubscribe." Then I have a bookmarklet to show me all emails without the "Sub" label. Works wonderfully.

axiosgunnar 5y ago
> Works wonderfully Until your boss mails you „emergency, our pubsub is getting too much load, we need to unsubscribe from the logging queues asap“ or something ;-)
- judge2020 5y ago
  Hopefully this isn't to your personal email :)

analogj 5y ago

Hey HN, I got frustrated with the amount of daily spam in my Gmail "Promotions" tab -- especially since it made searching for email basically impossible. While there are services that will help me unsubscribe from all the mailing lists I'm signed up to, they wanted unfettered access to my Google account, which I wasn't going to give. I wrote a open source tool called hatchet which will access your Gmail account using IMAP, find the latest unsubscribe link for each unique email sender, and write it all to a csv/spreadsheet file.

jldl805 5y ago
No offense but you care about a clean inbox and you have the Promotions tab activated!?!?!? That's crazy to me. My gmail is just my last name, only six letters long, and I get maybe one or two spam emails a month, if that.
- analogj 5y ago
  The promotions tab is just a filtering mechanism, it doesn't mean that you'll get more spammy promotional email?
  - jldl805 5y ago
    Clean as in clean design, not clean as in spam free.
commoner 5y ago
Thank you for creating this excellent tool! Is there any reason hatchet is described as a tool for Gmail, when it lets the user specify any IMAP server? Are other email service providers officially supported by hatchet?
- analogj 5y ago
  its currently targeted towards Gmail users because it specifically looks for the "All Mail" inbox which Gmail provides. I'm working on allowing users to configure the inbox name, which means it should work with any email provider.
  - commoner 5y ago
    That would be a great feature, I'm looking forward to this. Thanks again for developing Hatchet.
  - louis-lau 5y ago
    That would be a great addition! Why this was only for gmail was my first question.

jasonpeacock 5y ago

I just click the unsubscribe links. If you have a backlog to process, maybe it'll take you an hour a day for a few days to click them all, but it's doable. Then I'm aggressive about clicking unsubscribe when the unwanted emails show up. It's been very effective, I basically get no spam other than the pure junk that my provider (Fastmail) filters for me, and for which GMail would do the same. When I see other people's inboxes full of crap I don't understand why they don't just click unsubscribe and be done with it?

denysvitali 5y ago
Tbh I saw some spammers adding an unsubscribe link. And that is stupidly effective. I've clicked on an unsubscribe link once, and now I'm in some weird email list and get a lot more spam. Goes without saying, don't blindly click unsubscribe, and only click it for big mail delivery services like mailchimp (you can see it in the URL). Otherwise, don't bother and mark the email as spam.
- jasonpeacock 5y ago
  I was worried at first about scammy unsubscribe links, but in my experience it's not an issue given the spam-filtering capabilities of modern email providers. Those emails either never get to my inbox, or they obviously bad spam and don't get clicked. 99% of legitimate spam is from business you've bought from/interacted with, or who have sold your email to others, and those unsubscribe links all do work quite effectively.
stavros 5y ago
I do the same thing, and the only emails I get (a few a week) are Github notifications and legitimate mail from people who want help with some project. It's extremely effective.

nfoz 5y ago

Off-topic, but a bug I recently filed against Gmail: I didn't want Gmail sending my full name to spammers, so I set my "display name" to just my email address. Thus when I send mail it's as: emailaddress <emailaddress> instead of MyRealName <emailaddress>. However: when I flag something as spam, and Gmail (un)helpfully asks "Do you want to Unsubscribe & Mark as Spam?", when I say "yes unsubscribe", then -- somehow -- it sends that "Unsubscribe" email using my REAL NAME and not the display-name that is used for normal outbound mail. So in the end the behaviour is precisely backwards from what I would want. My conclusion is to never ever use their "Unsusbcribe & mark as spam" anti-feature, instead I have to just mark anything I don't want as spam. Sigh. I am getting a LOT of spam lately that annoyingly has false Unsubscribe links being used to collect data. The world is an evil place, and Gmail is not very helpful at blocking that.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

judge2020 5y ago

This has been a service for years called 'unroll me', but it's not exactly privacy-friendly[1]. Glad to see this. 1: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/17/21027159/unroll-me-email-privacy-ftc-settlement https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/17/21027159/unroll-me-email...

analogj 5y ago
Yep, thats one of the public services that I looked at initially, but there was no way I was willing to give an unknown third party access to the complete contents of my inbox.