Posted on 03/14/2024 7:28:07 AM PDT by fwdude
I've become super-careful and sensitive to online security threats in recent years, through personal experience an those who I love.
One question I have advanced is the wisdom of "unsubscribing" to various junk emails from senders who I have no idea how I've been connected to in the first place. Many of them are political emails, which I can understand, since these orgs get names from databases in political donations and party affiliations.
I will readily unsubscribe from org e-mailings I'm familiar with, but what about mystery ones? I'm very reticent to click on ANY link without knowing exactly what I'm doing. An 'unsubscribe' link might just be an opening for malware.
Any thoughts?
looking in to see responses
I’ve had to do it a few times where legit businesses like the magazine “New England Today” send reams of adverts to my email. I unsubsidized to all but the main publication, and didn’t see any uptick in spam- but with other sites which might not be so trustworthy, I’m thinking that one might unsubscribe and then receive a ton of new spam emails as a result.
A better way to manage those might be to create an email rule that automatically deletes the address of that site
I never unsubscribe from junk email. Never. As you noted, it might give an opening for malware.
But it’s more than just that. When you unsubscribe, you’re telling the junk email’s sender that your email address is a live one. So there’s a good chance you’ll be placed on even more junk lists.
So I mark the junk email I get as spam instead.
I only do the unsubscribe if it’s somebody i’ve dealt with before, otherwise just delete. Unsubscribe sometimes takes a few weeks, if I keep getting stuff and it seems unsubscribe has not had an affect I will block the domain. FWIW I use Protonmail
"Mark as spam (or junk)" from organizations you do not recognize.
Simply mark as spam and discard
The only places I unsubscribe to are businesses I have bought something from and then they spam me with emails. Then I unsubscribe.
If I don’t recognize the sender I mark it as spam and delete it.
In my opinion...
If you are getting email from the same accounts or addresses you didn’t subscribe to, you should be able to block the senders’ messages (rerouting them to your ‘suspect email’ or ‘spam’ folders) by blocking the senders’ addresses through the incoming mail settings in your email account.
If you are invited to unsubscribe in the body of the email, you can follow their prompt IF YOU KNOW AND TRUST the sender but no longer wish their emails. Otherwise, block them or delete their mail unopened. Often, spammers insert ‘Unsubscribe’ prompts as verification of a working email address and keep sending stuff anyway.
There are ways to block or rerout email without interacting with the sender. Those are the ways I know. I hope that helps!
Instead, I set up a "junk mail" folder and then put filters on incoming mail so that any future emails from those senders will just funnel into my junk mail folder - which I never check. I currently have 106,228 emails sitting there, almost all of them never opened!
Trump is probably the worst offender. I gave money to one of his PACs years ago and the relentless barrage of "Trump needs your support" emails I've gotten since is staggering.
Still voting for Trump though!
That doesn't address the problem of crowded inboxes, though, which 'unsubscribe' is supposed to remedy.
I like the idea that some offered to create a rule to just move the offending spammer into the delete file. Or mark ass spam and let the platform handle it.
The spam filters don’t really work on the email platforms I use. My guess is that the spammers use a whole range of origination emails. When one is blocked, they just resort to others.
“Unsubscribe” is a two-edged sword. While it will stop spam from that particularly, annoying, email addy, the bot will still mark your email addy as being a valid email addy to be used or sold for future spammers.
I rarely ‘unsubscribe.’ I have my email program mark the sender’s email address as spam. After a while and when I think about it I simply delete the contents of the spam folder.
I was getting a bunch of emails purportedly from someone I know whose email account had been stolen or hacked. The emails were going straight to the spam folder. I was checking the spam folder and purging it regularly without opening the suspect emails. The faster I purged them, the faster they came. I finally just left them in there and let them be deleted automatically by gmail after 30 days. The emails stopped. Evidently, they were able to tell that there was someone on the other end deleting them unopened.
I've thought about that as well, except that sometimes expected or desired emails end up in that spam folder by a fluke, more often than I'd like. Then it just becomes the same problem as my main inbox: I have to sort through the junk anyway.
Ideally, 'unsubscribe' should stop the inflow from the outset. But I know we don't live in an ideal world.
Wow! That’s scary!
I had subscribed to a websites newsletter about investing. After receiving a few emails, I decided to unsubscribe. I didn’t receive anymore emails from this website - worked like it was supposed to. However over the next few weeks I would receive other emails on the same investing subject from probably 6 other different sources.
What I gathered is that the original website I subscribed then unsubscribed to sells off or shared my email address in some type of open forum where others then picked up on it. They all could be related to the original website as far as I know.
Usually not worth it unless you read the ‘How we use your data’ section in the user agreement so you know what to expect.
There is a way to block those that change- I think though it involves es blocking domains or something.
My email has key words I can block, like “electrolysis” or “financial”, or “realtor” for examples, words you know that folks wont use in their emails to you...
but you have to be careful not to block words that are common in emails,from people that you want email from. Pick the unusual words in headers or subject headlines to block
Not a perfect solution, but it does cut way down on spam, and works when the email address of sender keeps,changing, but their wording doesnt
Rather than unsubscribing, which affirms that you received the junk mail, just block the address. Don’t communicate with anyone that you don’t want to communicate with.
I have found that they are so numerous these days that you cannot bounce them all. They are getting better at it.
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