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Comment by internet101010 | Hacker News Reader

How do I make gmail automatically scan every incoming email for "unsubscribe" links and click them?

So when provide.autoinsurance@fhsbsh.com sends you an email that consists of nonsense text, a sketchy link, and an unsubscribe link you want to automatically follow the unsubscribe link?

Looking at my spam folder, how about hitting the unsubscribe link in email from the alias “100_free_spins” sent from top1.povertytrap.site? There’s an unsubscribe button at the bottom.

I’m slightly impressed how that spcammer is using the email “povertytrap” but I assume it’s just by chance they hacked that domain to send spam.

You can't get the end result by automation alone but you could automate half of it.

1) Use AppScript from google to find those.

2) Save all the links.

3) Go through them manually (because each service will want you to confirm you did not click by mistake).

Virus scanners and other tools like google will fetch any urls in emails to check their target. So having a direct unsubscribe action behind GET of a link breaks your email list as Gmail will unsubscribe everyone

Is this why they always have a confirm button? That's been a pet-peeve annoyance of mine.

It’s a basic part of HTTP. If you follow a link, that’s a GET request. GET requests are supposed to be safe. A user may not have initiated the action if it’s a GET. If you want something that implies “yes, the user made an intentional choice to take action”, then use another verb, like POST.

There must be some additional logic behind that, because I see this regularly behind GET requests and I'm not being unsubscribed from everything.

Alternatively, make a filter that applies a label and skips inbox. Occasionally, open the label, select all, and Report Spam.

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