4 ms·

How much of this is caused by people marking mailing list emails as SPAM instead of properly unsubscribing?

notahacker 11y ago
Relatively little. Gmail's filtering system just seems to be increasingly erratic, so one Meetup group email ends up in the Spam filter whilst another appears with high importance. If anything, the problem appears to be the opposite: de-emphasising the sending organisation.
therealarmen 11y ago
I don't blame them when the Unsubscribe link is buried at the bottom of a 8MB marketing newsletter in 4px font.
- pd1 11y ago
  Or when you need to log in again to unsubscribe
  - Bill_Dimm 11y ago
    Which is presumably done so that if you forward the newsletter to someone else they can't (accidentally or maliciously) unsubscribe you by clicking the link.
    - click170 11y ago
      When it's trivial to re-subscribe if you want to, I'd prefer that they do include a one-click unsubscribe. I'll deal with anyone who maliciously unsubscribes me from a mailing list that I want to be subscribed to, and this will highlight who my "good" friends are anyway.
  - eCa 11y ago
    Which is illegal in the US[1] (and I believe EU, as well), and hence deserves to be reported as spam. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4496688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4496688
    - TylerE 11y ago
      A big problem I've had is that many of these are "business relationship/transactional" e-mails, which play by different rules. My address is my first name + last initial (neither of which are all that uncommon), and this is made much worse by Gmails idiotic ignoring of periods in addresses. There is a dude in Denver, CO who is absolutely convinced his e-mail address is tyler.e@gmail.com. It isn't. I'm really sick of getting his AT&T and car insurance e-mails.
      - detaro 11y ago
        Can't you just set a filter on the wrongly dotted address? Not something you should have to do, but...
        TylerE 11y ago
        I suppose I could, but I"ve seen MANY variations, and tbh there are enough mis-sends to tylere@gmail.com that it wouldn't really help. TBH I hardly use personal e-mail these days, it's basically a bucket that receipts and confirmation gets dumped in to, in which case search works well enough. Most actual conversation is done via Facebook or IM, etc.
      - tizzdogg 11y ago
        This happens to me all the time as well. I also have firstname.lastname@gmail.com and apparently a lot of other people seem to think they do as well. Or at least, they have firstname.lastname1@gmail.com and people easily forget to add the number. I wish there was a better way to deal with this type of situation other than constantly sending "please fix your address book" emails. Email is a broken system.
        e12e 11y ago
        I'm not sure how you go from: Unless you have Google Apps for Business (or whatever), there are no vanity domains for gmail; to: email is a broken system? Gmail.com is certainly broken in the sense that they want to cram 10 billion users into a single domain. It's ridiculous marketing/brand-motivated UX failure. Since forever most mail services had a few vanity-domains, so people could get first.last@wherever.com. But no, Google doesn't want to provide email, they want to provide "Google Mail". Apologies for the rant, but I can't stand it when big companies create problems through stupidity.
- thaumaturgy 11y ago
  I'd assume cybojanek is talking about majordomo-like mailing lists, the sort used by lots of open source projects, which typically require an email sent to a specific address with "unsubscribe" in the subject line and so on and so forth.
  - click170 11y ago
    Curiously, having to email <mailinglist>-unsubscribe@server.com to unsubscribe from a mailling list is, to me, preferable to having to login to a website in order to unsubscribe from the same mailing list. I think it's because I'm beginning to resent the idea of every website and its dog requiring that I have a user account before I'm allowed to even browse the content.
    - thaumaturgy 11y ago
      You're not alone. I much prefer majordomo to any other web-based mailing list system. I just chalked it up to a greybeard quirk; HN at large seems to be the opposite.
eridius 11y ago
How much of this is caused by marketing mailing lists sending messages to people who never subscribed? I know I get a fair amount of unsolicited marketing list messages that do have an Unsubscribe link, which I click, but I also mark as spam because I never subscribed to it in the first place (of course, I'm also not using Google Mail, I'm using FastMail with a personalized SpamAssassin filter, but I assume it will still influence the global default SpamAssassin filter).
imh 11y ago
Just because there's an unsubscribe button doesn't mean it's not spam.
Tinyyy 11y ago
Well if I didn’t explicitly sign up for the mailing list, I’m just going to report it as spam.
Too 11y ago
Sounds like there should be another choice after you report something as spam: Spam - ads I didnt ask for. Spam - fraud attempt, Spam - I unsubscribed 5 times but still get updates, Spam - my ex keeps stalking me, etc.

Relatively little. Gmail's filtering system just seems to be increasingly erratic, so one Meetup group email ends up in the Spam filter whilst another appears with high importance. If anything, the problem appears to be the opposite: de-emphasising the sending organisation.

therealarmen 11y ago

I don't blame them when the Unsubscribe link is buried at the bottom of a 8MB marketing newsletter in 4px font.

pd1 11y ago
Or when you need to log in again to unsubscribe
- Bill_Dimm 11y ago
  Which is presumably done so that if you forward the newsletter to someone else they can't (accidentally or maliciously) unsubscribe you by clicking the link.
  - click170 11y ago
    When it's trivial to re-subscribe if you want to, I'd prefer that they do include a one-click unsubscribe. I'll deal with anyone who maliciously unsubscribes me from a mailing list that I want to be subscribed to, and this will highlight who my "good" friends are anyway.
- eCa 11y ago
  Which is illegal in the US[1] (and I believe EU, as well), and hence deserves to be reported as spam. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4496688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4496688
  - TylerE 11y ago
    A big problem I've had is that many of these are "business relationship/transactional" e-mails, which play by different rules. My address is my first name + last initial (neither of which are all that uncommon), and this is made much worse by Gmails idiotic ignoring of periods in addresses. There is a dude in Denver, CO who is absolutely convinced his e-mail address is tyler.e@gmail.com. It isn't. I'm really sick of getting his AT&T and car insurance e-mails.
    - detaro 11y ago
      Can't you just set a filter on the wrongly dotted address? Not something you should have to do, but...
      - TylerE 11y ago
        I suppose I could, but I"ve seen MANY variations, and tbh there are enough mis-sends to tylere@gmail.com that it wouldn't really help. TBH I hardly use personal e-mail these days, it's basically a bucket that receipts and confirmation gets dumped in to, in which case search works well enough. Most actual conversation is done via Facebook or IM, etc.
    - tizzdogg 11y ago
      This happens to me all the time as well. I also have firstname.lastname@gmail.com and apparently a lot of other people seem to think they do as well. Or at least, they have firstname.lastname1@gmail.com and people easily forget to add the number. I wish there was a better way to deal with this type of situation other than constantly sending "please fix your address book" emails. Email is a broken system.
      - e12e 11y ago
        I'm not sure how you go from: Unless you have Google Apps for Business (or whatever), there are no vanity domains for gmail; to: email is a broken system? Gmail.com is certainly broken in the sense that they want to cram 10 billion users into a single domain. It's ridiculous marketing/brand-motivated UX failure. Since forever most mail services had a few vanity-domains, so people could get first.last@wherever.com. But no, Google doesn't want to provide email, they want to provide "Google Mail". Apologies for the rant, but I can't stand it when big companies create problems through stupidity.
thaumaturgy 11y ago
I'd assume cybojanek is talking about majordomo-like mailing lists, the sort used by lots of open source projects, which typically require an email sent to a specific address with "unsubscribe" in the subject line and so on and so forth.
- click170 11y ago
  Curiously, having to email <mailinglist>-unsubscribe@server.com to unsubscribe from a mailling list is, to me, preferable to having to login to a website in order to unsubscribe from the same mailing list. I think it's because I'm beginning to resent the idea of every website and its dog requiring that I have a user account before I'm allowed to even browse the content.
  - thaumaturgy 11y ago
    You're not alone. I much prefer majordomo to any other web-based mailing list system. I just chalked it up to a greybeard quirk; HN at large seems to be the opposite.

eridius 11y ago

How much of this is caused by marketing mailing lists sending messages to people who never subscribed? I know I get a fair amount of unsolicited marketing list messages that do have an Unsubscribe link, which I click, but I also mark as spam because I never subscribed to it in the first place (of course, I'm also not using Google Mail, I'm using FastMail with a personalized SpamAssassin filter, but I assume it will still influence the global default SpamAssassin filter).

imh 11y ago

Just because there's an unsubscribe button doesn't mean it's not spam.

Tinyyy 11y ago

Well if I didn’t explicitly sign up for the mailing list, I’m just going to report it as spam.

Too 11y ago

Sounds like there should be another choice after you report something as spam: Spam - ads I didnt ask for. Spam - fraud attempt, Spam - I unsubscribed 5 times but still get updates, Spam - my ex keeps stalking me, etc.