Item — HN Reader

I just click the unsubscribe links. If you have a backlog to process, maybe it'll take you an hour a day for a few days to click them all, but it's doable.

Then I'm aggressive about clicking unsubscribe when the unwanted emails show up. It's been very effective, I basically get no spam other than the pure junk that my provider (Fastmail) filters for me, and for which GMail would do the same.

When I see other people's inboxes full of crap I don't understand why they don't just click unsubscribe and be done with it?

2 comments

Tbh I saw some spammers adding an unsubscribe link. And that is stupidly effective. I've clicked on an unsubscribe link once, and now I'm in some weird email list and get a lot more spam.

Goes without saying, don't blindly click unsubscribe, and only click it for big mail delivery services like mailchimp (you can see it in the URL). Otherwise, don't bother and mark the email as spam.

I was worried at first about scammy unsubscribe links, but in my experience it's not an issue given the spam-filtering capabilities of modern email providers. Those emails either never get to my inbox, or they obviously bad spam and don't get clicked.

99% of legitimate spam is from business you've bought from/interacted with, or who have sold your email to others, and those unsubscribe links all do work quite effectively.

I do the same thing, and the only emails I get (a few a week) are Github notifications and legitimate mail from people who want help with some project. It's extremely effective.