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Show HN: Chrome extension to unsubscribe from newsletters on Gmail

33 points by miquelcamps 14y ago

ck2 14y ago
Just hit SPAM and google will give you the option to unsubscribe.
- citricsquid 14y ago
  Doesn't the google spam thing affect the global standing of the sender? If that's the case it's probably the good internet citizen thing to unsubscribe without marking as spam if it isn't spam, otherwise it's negatively affecting the deliverability of someone legitimate.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    This is a feature. If an email newsletter doesn't have a functioning opt out (one that works with email address forwarding , I must add), the sender is not a good internet citizen.
- tiziano88 14y ago
  you should not mark newsletters as spam as a quick way of unsubscribing from them, since it will affect the score of the sender; other people may find their content relevant, since they subscribed to them.
- duck 14y ago
  Please don't do this unless there isn't a link within the newsletter. I seem to get a couple of people that do this every month with my Hacker Newsletter. I don't think a couple hurts, but it can if it goes above some percentage of your subscriber size.
- ck2 14y ago
  For everyone replying/panicing about this approach: Google gives you two options when you hit spam, 1) just unsubscribe 2) unsubscribe and report spam. I'm surprised those with newsletters haven't tested this. Oh and if you auto-subscribed me for anything other than me specifically adding my email to a "subscribe" form - you deserve to be spammed. Signing up for a site isn't a newsletter opt-in by itself.
patd 14y ago
You should remove the hl=es parameter in the URL to the Chrome store or everybody will see the store in Spanish.
tiziano88 14y ago
You can already quickly unsubscribe from undesired newsletters in gmail by clicking on the small arrow near the sender/receiver contact details and clicking on the "Unsubscribe from this sender" link. It seems like most (all?) of the times it sends back an empty email with "UNSUBSCRIBE" as its subject, which most newsletter mailing system correctly interpret as an unsubscription request. The approach described in the article is somewhat orthogonal to this, in that it scans the email for the unsubscribe link, so it's still not useless, I guess they complement each other.
- eli 14y ago
  The system you describe is using the List-Unsubscribe header, which is actually formalized in RFC 2369 and (if it exists in the email) seems like a way better solution than search for a piece of text.
chadyj 14y ago
A lot of ISP's already support a UI for unsubscribing, for example Gmail http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/unsubscribing-made-easy.html http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/unsubscribing-made-eas.... For more info on how this works check out http://www.list-unsubscribe.com http://www.list-unsubscribe.com
gtklocker 14y ago
Poorly written, does not even work for me.

33 points by miquelcamps 14y ago

ck2 14y ago

Just hit SPAM and google will give you the option to unsubscribe.

citricsquid 14y ago
Doesn't the google spam thing affect the global standing of the sender? If that's the case it's probably the good internet citizen thing to unsubscribe without marking as spam if it isn't spam, otherwise it's negatively affecting the deliverability of someone legitimate.
- Evbn 14y ago
  This is a feature. If an email newsletter doesn't have a functioning opt out (one that works with email address forwarding , I must add), the sender is not a good internet citizen.
tiziano88 14y ago
you should not mark newsletters as spam as a quick way of unsubscribing from them, since it will affect the score of the sender; other people may find their content relevant, since they subscribed to them.
duck 14y ago
Please don't do this unless there isn't a link within the newsletter. I seem to get a couple of people that do this every month with my Hacker Newsletter. I don't think a couple hurts, but it can if it goes above some percentage of your subscriber size.
ck2 14y ago
For everyone replying/panicing about this approach: Google gives you two options when you hit spam, 1) just unsubscribe 2) unsubscribe and report spam. I'm surprised those with newsletters haven't tested this. Oh and if you auto-subscribed me for anything other than me specifically adding my email to a "subscribe" form - you deserve to be spammed. Signing up for a site isn't a newsletter opt-in by itself.

patd 14y ago

You should remove the hl=es parameter in the URL to the Chrome store or everybody will see the store in Spanish.

tiziano88 14y ago

You can already quickly unsubscribe from undesired newsletters in gmail by clicking on the small arrow near the sender/receiver contact details and clicking on the "Unsubscribe from this sender" link. It seems like most (all?) of the times it sends back an empty email with "UNSUBSCRIBE" as its subject, which most newsletter mailing system correctly interpret as an unsubscription request. The approach described in the article is somewhat orthogonal to this, in that it scans the email for the unsubscribe link, so it's still not useless, I guess they complement each other.

eli 14y ago
The system you describe is using the List-Unsubscribe header, which is actually formalized in RFC 2369 and (if it exists in the email) seems like a way better solution than search for a piece of text.

chadyj 14y ago

A lot of ISP's already support a UI for unsubscribing, for example Gmail http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/unsubscribing-made-easy.html http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/unsubscribing-made-eas.... For more info on how this works check out http://www.list-unsubscribe.com http://www.list-unsubscribe.com

gtklocker 14y ago

Poorly written, does not even work for me.