4 ms·

I'm seeing a lot of spam by companies that purport to be legit startups. 1. I make an account on their service, or buy something. 2. There is no newsletter sig

by graeme 12y ago

I'm seeing a lot of spam by companies that purport to be legit startups. 1. I make an account on their service, or buy something. 2. There is no newsletter signup box. 3. They send me lots of newsletter emails. 4. They often keep coming after unsubscribes. I consent to transactional emails, but I'm not consenting to newsletter and marketing emails. It's spam. I hope laws like this help deter such behavior. Meanwhile, I've been marking non-consented emails as "spam" in gmail. If enough people do this, the companies will get blacklisted, which is another form of deterrence.

puranjay 12y ago
I wonder when, if ever, they'll dock LinkedIn for this. Easily the worst offender in my inbox as far as legitimate companies are concerned.
- rhizome 12y ago
  Funny thing about LinkedIn emails: some years ago I got sick of it and tracked down everything I could turn off. I then got no LinkedIn email. Now, I've been looking for jobs and such and wanted to turn on inbox notification emails and maybe some job search results, and they've changed their settings around enough that I can't figure out how to turn these things back on. A+ work!
- graeme 12y ago
  Everything from Linkedin goes straight to my spam filter. They simply will not shut off emails.
- click170 12y ago
  At this point, I'm convinced LinkedIn is literally paying Google to whitelist their spam. I have yet to find a single person who actually appreciates the emails LinkedIn sends them. That includes business people who got their job through LinkedIn, and the recruiters who use it. When it gets to the point when TV shows are casually taking jabs at LinkedIn for their abusive email policy, I think that's a sign that they're not wanted. Anywhere. Edit: To clarify, the recently released Simpsons episode poked fun at LinkedIn, as has John Stewart (multiple times), and John Oliver.
  - puranjay 12y ago
    I definitely think there are some backroom deals. Usually, emails I don't ever click on or explicitly mark as spam end up in my spam box automatically. Gmail is smart enough to do that. Even Quora emails land directly in the spam box. Not so for LinkedIn. I've never clicked through on an email from LinkedIn. I don't even have a profile on the site - just an account that's sitting empty. Yet, all emails still land in my inbox. I wonder why...
    - click170 12y ago
      One of the benefits of running your own email server: You can block all LinkedIn spam at the gateway. All LinkedIn email is banned at my gateway. As is any vendor who considers me purchasing from them to be an agreement whereby they can send me unsolicited email. 0 tolerance.
brandon272 12y ago
This kind of spam actually deters me from signing up for much of anything anymore for the purposes of quickly test driving the service. I feel like just putting in my email address and a password is now more often than not considered an invitation to start emailing me useless marketing material once a week until I eventually get frustrated and open one of the emails to proceed with whatever their unsubscribe process is. I have notification "fatigue" as it is and I don't need my attention drawn once a week to an email "ding" from a company I tried once. If I were creating a new service I'd explicitly state on the signup prompts that I will not be send you marketing material, or at least have a checkbox.
kazinator 12y ago
> I hope laws like this help deter such behavior. Wishful thinking. The law in Canada, to my understanding, says that if you have conducted business with someone, then it's fair game for them to contact you with offers for some period of time (either 6 months or 12; I can't remember which.) Spam is defined as unsolicited bulk mail. If you bought something or subscribed to a site or whatever, then it's not unsolicited regardless of any opt-in or opt-out mechanism. The "do not call" registry of phone numbers similarly only applies to unsolicited callers; companies you've done business with can spam you with calls if you give them your phone number. For these throwaway subscribes and transactional e-mails, I use an e-mail of them form <user>.<pin>@<mydomain>. When my mail server receives mail for this pattern, it changes it to <user>@<mydomain>, and bypasses all filters. Thus I'm sure to get important transactional e-mail. From time to time, and when I start seeing spam, I simply change the value of <pin>, which is a global in my mail server's config file. Some people have date-based approaches, which can work well. E.g. if it is March 2015, your mail server might recognize an e-mail of the form you.201503@yourdomain, and map it to you@yourdomain. When April comes around, it stops working.
- colechristensen 12y ago
  With gmail you can also simply add some text after a + e.g. cole.christensen+hnspam@gmail.com And when mail from that source becomes troublesome setup a filter based on that To: address.
  - wl 12y ago
    And then filtering is often your only option because the unsubscribe link doesn't work right with the plus character in it. Also, Gmail helpfully prevents us from creating filters that pipe the messages in question to /dev/null.
    - davenaff 12y ago
      In gmail you can setup a filter that automatically deletes messages. Not quite /dev/null but pretty close.
PirateDave 12y ago
If I sign-up for something just to get through a paywall or to use the service one-time, I will usually use something like guerrilla mail: https://www.guerrillamail.com https://www.guerrillamail.com

by graeme 12y ago

puranjay 12y ago

I wonder when, if ever, they'll dock LinkedIn for this. Easily the worst offender in my inbox as far as legitimate companies are concerned.

rhizome 12y ago
Funny thing about LinkedIn emails: some years ago I got sick of it and tracked down everything I could turn off. I then got no LinkedIn email. Now, I've been looking for jobs and such and wanted to turn on inbox notification emails and maybe some job search results, and they've changed their settings around enough that I can't figure out how to turn these things back on. A+ work!
graeme 12y ago
Everything from Linkedin goes straight to my spam filter. They simply will not shut off emails.
click170 12y ago
At this point, I'm convinced LinkedIn is literally paying Google to whitelist their spam. I have yet to find a single person who actually appreciates the emails LinkedIn sends them. That includes business people who got their job through LinkedIn, and the recruiters who use it. When it gets to the point when TV shows are casually taking jabs at LinkedIn for their abusive email policy, I think that's a sign that they're not wanted. Anywhere. Edit: To clarify, the recently released Simpsons episode poked fun at LinkedIn, as has John Stewart (multiple times), and John Oliver.
- puranjay 12y ago
  I definitely think there are some backroom deals. Usually, emails I don't ever click on or explicitly mark as spam end up in my spam box automatically. Gmail is smart enough to do that. Even Quora emails land directly in the spam box. Not so for LinkedIn. I've never clicked through on an email from LinkedIn. I don't even have a profile on the site - just an account that's sitting empty. Yet, all emails still land in my inbox. I wonder why...
  - click170 12y ago
    One of the benefits of running your own email server: You can block all LinkedIn spam at the gateway. All LinkedIn email is banned at my gateway. As is any vendor who considers me purchasing from them to be an agreement whereby they can send me unsolicited email. 0 tolerance.

brandon272 12y ago

This kind of spam actually deters me from signing up for much of anything anymore for the purposes of quickly test driving the service. I feel like just putting in my email address and a password is now more often than not considered an invitation to start emailing me useless marketing material once a week until I eventually get frustrated and open one of the emails to proceed with whatever their unsubscribe process is. I have notification "fatigue" as it is and I don't need my attention drawn once a week to an email "ding" from a company I tried once. If I were creating a new service I'd explicitly state on the signup prompts that I will not be send you marketing material, or at least have a checkbox.

kazinator 12y ago

> I hope laws like this help deter such behavior. Wishful thinking. The law in Canada, to my understanding, says that if you have conducted business with someone, then it's fair game for them to contact you with offers for some period of time (either 6 months or 12; I can't remember which.) Spam is defined as unsolicited bulk mail. If you bought something or subscribed to a site or whatever, then it's not unsolicited regardless of any opt-in or opt-out mechanism. The "do not call" registry of phone numbers similarly only applies to unsolicited callers; companies you've done business with can spam you with calls if you give them your phone number. For these throwaway subscribes and transactional e-mails, I use an e-mail of them form <user>.<pin>@<mydomain>. When my mail server receives mail for this pattern, it changes it to <user>@<mydomain>, and bypasses all filters. Thus I'm sure to get important transactional e-mail. From time to time, and when I start seeing spam, I simply change the value of <pin>, which is a global in my mail server's config file. Some people have date-based approaches, which can work well. E.g. if it is March 2015, your mail server might recognize an e-mail of the form you.201503@yourdomain, and map it to you@yourdomain. When April comes around, it stops working.

colechristensen 12y ago
With gmail you can also simply add some text after a + e.g. cole.christensen+hnspam@gmail.com And when mail from that source becomes troublesome setup a filter based on that To: address.
- wl 12y ago
  And then filtering is often your only option because the unsubscribe link doesn't work right with the plus character in it. Also, Gmail helpfully prevents us from creating filters that pipe the messages in question to /dev/null.
  - davenaff 12y ago
    In gmail you can setup a filter that automatically deletes messages. Not quite /dev/null but pretty close.

PirateDave 12y ago

If I sign-up for something just to get through a paywall or to use the service one-time, I will usually use something like guerrilla mail: https://www.guerrillamail.com https://www.guerrillamail.com