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Comment by array_key_first | Hacker News Reader

I mean, it's kind of an insurmountable obstacle. Why bother trying to unsubscribe when you're always gonna get spam anyway? It's just gonna come back.

Also, websites are shady. If you put in a required email, they'll usually automatically check a little box for you that says "allow us to ruin your inbox?" How helpful of them.

And, I'm not even convinced that checkbox does anything.

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It's definitely not insurmountable. It just takes a little bit of inbox maintenance. Pressing unsubscribe and report when I have spam in the inbox, 5 seconds here, 5 seconds there. I still get spam, but it's minuscule compared to not doing this.

I just flag every marketing email as spam. It's much more effective than unsubscribing since it tells your email provider to just redirect everything from them to spam, and it causes trouble for the sender.

Exactly. Unsubscribe is for newsletters you consciously subscribed to but no longer want. Anything unsolicited that isn't a genuine one to one communication is spam and all the "unsubscribe" option does is verify that your email is active and will be able to receive more spam.

It's not insurmountable. Spam filters have been around for decades. They're pretty good. If I didn't expect the email, I train my spam filter that it's a bad email. There are a few that get through, maybe 1-5 a week, which require flagging.

The checkboxes seem to be a placebo. Sometimes there isn't one. Sometimes it doesn't do anything. Sometimes they say "updates on your order", which apparently also means future products you might want to buy a week after you receive your order. (Marketers' English seems like a foreign language to me).

I realise that CANSPAM as a law in the US is titled appropriately but I live in the UK where declarative opt-in is a must apart from a couple “soft” opt-in scenarios.

People. Opt. In.

Stop conflating your preferences with other people’s.

Spammers ignore both opt-in and opt-out, they do not care about UK or US law. That is where hosting provider enforcement matters.

Agreed but I don’t find the framing of labelling marketers as spammers particularly accurate or useful.

Ah yes, the law. Famously followed by every party, especially on the internet.

Riddle me this, if a shady company not even headquartered in the UK sends you a newsletter you didn’t willingly opt in to, what happens to them?

"Report as spam and block sender"

Repeat until the emails stop.

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