Unsubscribe... or not.

[13m]

It irritates me that every time I buy online the company in question sees it as an opportunity to send me marketing emails; I always unsubscribe.

Today, however, I got an email from Tezenis Underwear. I clicked on the "unsubscribe" link and was directed to their unsubscribe page which had on it two girls in transparent knickers from their lingerie line. I still unsubscribed, but it was a struggle.

Clever bit of marketing.

[Cotty]

I often wondered if the "unsubscribe" button merely confirms to the company that the email address is active so continue sending junk.

[deckster]

13m said:

Today, however, I got an email from Tezenis Underwear. I clicked on the "unsubscribe" link and was directed to their unsubscribe page which had on it two girls in transparent knickers from their lingerie line. I still unsubscribed, but it was a struggle.

:scratchhead:

Not sure I understand. Can you forward me this email so that I can check?

[J4CKO]

Cotty said:

I often wondered if the "unsubscribe" button merely confirms to the company that the email address is active so continue sending junk.

But surely that would just annoy people and for me, if a company is sending me unsolicited crap that I have expressly asked them not to it would make me never buy anything from them, it is like agreeing to marry your stalker !

But, I suspect the email address does get flogged on to other spammers.

[toon10]

Cotty said:

I often wondered if the "unsubscribe" button merely confirms to the company that the email address is active so continue sending junk.

My brother says he never unsubscribes for this very reason. I'd argue that if you don't unsubscribe, they will keep sending you junk anyway. Better to unsubscribe and hope they will abide by your wishes.

[reggie82]

Cotty said:

I often wondered if the "unsubscribe" button merely confirms to the company that the email address is active so continue sending junk.

If it's from a genuine company, it is extremely unlikely they would be doing this (not only is it illegal, but it would be bad practice and counter-productive).

If it's spam and you have no idea who they are or how they got your email, then yes, it's a possibility as spammers do take that approach to create databases to spam and sell on.

[Pamoothican]

I had this last year. I bought some pyjamas online from M&S for the missus for Xmas. I was ten sent M&S lingerie emails on a near daily basis.
I unsubscribed, but it has unsubscribed me from all of the M&S emails, so I keep missing the food offers, which was all i was interested in.

[funkyrobot]

Pamoothican said:

I had this last year. I bought some pyjamas online from M&S for the missus for Xmas. I was ten sent M&S lingerie emails on a near daily basis.

The resultant action buggers your vision up, doesn't it.

[Sheets Tabuer]

This is what yahoo mail is for or alternativly https://maildrop.cc/

[thebraketester]

The new iOS gives you an "unsubscribe banner" at the top of the email, makes the whole process much easier. At least that way you wont have to suffer the sight of scantily clad women. :-)

Edited by thebraketester on Friday 16th December 13:39

[Rude-boy]

reggie82 said:

Cotty said:

I often wondered if the "unsubscribe" button merely confirms to the company that the email address is active so continue sending junk.

If it's from a genuine company, it is extremely unlikely they would be doing this (not only is it illegal, but it would be bad practice and counter-productive).

If it's spam and you have no idea who they are or how they got your email, then yes, it's a possibility as spammers do take that approach to create databases to spam and sell on.

I am not sure of the legalities but i would expect that there is some form of legal protection for those who have unsubscribed.

One 'work around' that i have encountered though is companies using multiple e-mail addresses to send you stuff from. There was a company who i bought a gift for the lady in my life from let us say that they are called Lovemoney...

I have had e-mails from a number of people there such as 'Bonny@lovemoney', 'josie@lovemoney', etc, etc. You have to unsubscribe to each of these addresses or one of them will still send you e-mails after you have unsubscribed from the other. There are other sites that are equally difficult to remove from your life!

These days I tend to unsubscribe and also add the email address to my junk list so i never see it save when doing my monthly clearing out of the Spam

[Munter]

Cotty said:

I often wondered if the "unsubscribe" button merely confirms to the company that the email address is active so continue sending junk.

Some do.

I had a few days where I deliberately unsubscribed from things I wasn't interested in. But just deleting the slightly dodgier looking ones as usual. E.g. Dell, Amazon, Sainsburys etc all probably playing by the law. Johns 2nd hand hardware emporium. Probably dodgy and going to spam me if I unsubscribe.

Then I unsubscribed from a dodgy looking one because I wasn't paying attention, within the hour I was getting many more rubbish e-mails. Let us help you with your marketing, have you considered x software, and all looking very cheap. Bugger.

[ecs]

toon10 said:

Cotty said:

I often wondered if the "unsubscribe" button merely confirms to the company that the email address is active so continue sending junk.

My brother says he never unsubscribes for this very reason. I'd argue that if you don't unsubscribe, they will keep sending you junk anyway. Better to unsubscribe and hope they will abide by your wishes.

Don't worry, they know your email address is active the moment you open the message.

[illmonkey]

ecs said:

toon10 said:

Cotty said:

I often wondered if the "unsubscribe" button merely confirms to the company that the email address is active so continue sending junk.

My brother says he never unsubscribes for this very reason. I'd argue that if you don't unsubscribe, they will keep sending you junk anyway. Better to unsubscribe and hope they will abide by your wishes.

Don't worry, they know your email address is active the moment you open the message.

I'd argue they know as soon as it's delivered, before you've opened it.

Some clients also do a good job of stopping the dynamic content that ID's who's downloaded a image etc. Outlook by default won't load images for example...

[Dermot O'Logical]

Spam emails have become the bane of my life. I use Apple Mail and just drag and drop unsolicited emails into the "Junk" folder, then "Delete Junk emails". Apple Mail then "learns" and will start to divert emails from these senders straight to the "Junk" folder, from where they can be deleted en masse without opening them, thereby giving no indication to the spammers that my email address is live.

I learned to do this after I had unsubscribed from some of the spam, only to find the volume of such markedly increased.

Last month I used Moneysupermarket.com for some comparison quotes for car insurance. The following morning I had 38 spam emails in my inbox.

[Jon321]

Why are we not talking about the girls in transparent knickers?

This thread has gone off topic.

[mybrainhurts]

Jon321 said:

Why are we not talking about the girls in transparent knickers?

Diane Abbott ate them...

[Jon321]

mybrainhurts said:

Diane Abbott ate them...

I'll add that to my mental list of things she does that irritate me.

[Patch1875]

I've recently started getting spam emails to one of my accounts I don't use very often it's all ppi, casino stuff etc is there any way I can trace the source I don't recall using it recently to give my address?

[parabolica]

Worst offenders are the ones who put the unsubscribe link in white text on a white page so to hide it; ctrl+A fixes that though. Or the unsubscribe links that take you to their website and they ask you to log into your account which you don't have because you never asked for this st.

Never set up an account with Aberdeen Airport btw - they don't even have an unsubscribe option.