Why your fight against Spam shouldn’t involve clicking unsubscribe.–PC Pitstop.
Don’t Unsubscribe From Spam
By Leo Notenboom
Don’t unsubscribe from spam
Now, I have one caution for you: never ever “unsubscribe” from spam.
Spam is email you did not ask for. Spam is email from companies you’ve never done business with.
Clicking on the “unsubscribe” link on spam emails only confirms to the spammer that they’ve found a live person in their mass mailings, and it will likely get you more spam, not less.
On the flip side, never mark email that isn’t spam as spam.
Email from companies you do business with typically isn’t spam. Often, as you go through the purchase process, you give them permission to add you to their list (sometimes inadvertently, by failing to uncheck a checkbox). This is not considered spam. Unsubscribe instead.
Similarly, never mark email that you actually asked for as spam. For example, if you subscribe to my newsletter and later on you no longer want it, unsubscribe.
In both cases, marking legitimate email as spam can actually harm the business and its customers, because email providers may use your actions to begin filtering this legitimate email as spam for others, who may not think it’s spam at all.
