Unsubscribed to loads of emails - Now getting more spam?

[anonymous-user]

I have had the same personal email address for probably 24 years now, and as you can imagine I get maybe 10 or 15 marketing emails each day from companies I have used over the years. As regular as clockwork all the same companies would email me every week, or month or whatever.

I decided to try to put a stop to this and actually start using the 'Unsubscribe' button on the bottom of every email I got over the course of a week or so. I probably unsubscribed from maybe 30+ companies or services so far.

Whilst it does seem to have have largely reduced the daily spam in my inbox considerably, I now seem to be getting the odd new marking email from companies I have never heard of before, and in some cases, I'm fairly sure are just phishing or fake businesses.

Is it possible that clicking all these 'unsubscribe' buttons on every email has somehow alerted a spammer to the fact that my email address is actually active?

[Troubleatmill]

Yes

You just confirmed your email address is live.


Remember - if it is coming for free - then you are the product.

[Gman20]

you only want to click unsubscribe on emails from organisation you actually trust to be legitimate senders.
otherwise report it as spam

[bigandclever]

Gman20 said:

you only want to click unsubscribe on emails from organisation you actually trust to be legitimate senders.
otherwise report it as spam

I’d still want to check the link went to an address associated with the legitimate sender.

But yeah, I don’t Unsubscribe, just mark them as spam.

[timmymagic73]

Oh dear. Yes, as already confirmed above your good intentions will have further consequences. This happened to my mother in law and was the end of her original email account - it just got spammed to death to the point it was unusable.

[Gren]

Gman20 said:

you only want to click unsubscribe on emails from organisation you actually trust to be legitimate senders.
otherwise report it as spam

Exactly this. If you've signed up it's not really spam and can usually be unsubscribed from without an issue. Usually I don't as GMail provides a 'Promotions' folder where the legitimate stuff goes automatically so I can keep it separate, you never know when that 'offer' might be worth a second look. Usually though those 20 or so emails per day get deleted without opening.

It's the stuff that you never wanted in the first place that you should never unsubscribe to. Simply mark it spam and have your email provider sort it for you.

[Derek Smith]

I'm on the subscription list of about 40 email marketing companies, mainly for research as I write on email marketing. I keep an email address, gmail, just for marketing emails and most go there. The ones that don't are Amazon and such that I use personally.

I realise it's a bit late for the OP's mother.

I occasionally subscribe to a rogue list and then, once the spam arrives, all I do is move to another email address. Gmail separates marketing emails from 'normal' ones with a decent degree of precision.

I've occasionally bought items from the companies I subscribe to merely for research. I've got some bargains.

There's a way of using email marketing to your benefit as if the algorithms suggest you are losing interest, perhaps by not opening an email or two, they will try an offer you don’t want to refuse to get you back in the fold.

The same goes for subscribing to e-newsletters. I subscribe to a dozen or so, although just three for my own purposes.

Take care when subscribing and use an email address you can dump easily. If there's an email from a company you did not subscribe to, then mark them as spam and do not try to unsubscribe.

[anonymous-user]

Gman20 said:

you only want to click unsubscribe on emails from organisation you actually trust to be legitimate senders.
otherwise report it as spam

I was really quite careful to not click unsubscribe on anything that wasn't from say Tesco, Next, Hilton, Marks & Spencers, Sainsburys, Hugo Boss, Abercrombie, etc as I was wary of what might happen.

I'm 99% sure that everything I have unsubscribed from are companies that I have bought from on at least 1 occasion.

The problem with just marking all the above as spam is that I still want to receive emails from them when I place an order, I just don't want to be sent a marketing email from them twice a week!

Edited to add: This is an old AOL email address that I have had for at least 25 years now. I doubt their filtering systems are as good as Gmail etc.

I'll see how its going in a week or so...

It's not the end of the world if I have to get myself a new personal email address, it's just a pain as I must have it registered as a login with probably 50 different places for online shopping, banking, and suchlike.

Edited by anonymous-user on Wednesday 16th December 09:16

[Sheepshanks]

timmymagic73 said:

Oh dear. Yes, as already confirmed above your good intentions will have further consequences. This happened to my mother in law and was the end of her original email account - it just got spammed to death to the point it was unusable.

I always thought that was case, and certainly at work we're advised not to unsubscribe unless we know the company, but my FIL passed away earlier this year and I've been monitoring his BT email account. He was getting a ton of marketing emails but I've been steadily unsubscribing and it's now down to just a couple of emails per week.

[NGRhodes]

Worth checking if your email address is on any list from compromised systems: https://haveibeenpwned.com/

[anonymous-user]

NGRhodes said:

Worth checking if your email address is on any list from compromised systems: https://haveibeenpwned.com/

I'll have a look thanks.

But I'm worried websites like that simply 'put you on the list'

[The_Nugget]

I religiously unsubscribed for about a year and hardly get any spam now.
Any persistent ones after unsubscribing I add to the block list and I don’t get much now.

[NGRhodes]

Lord Marylebone said:

NGRhodes said:

Worth checking if your email address is on any list from compromised systems: https://haveibeenpwned.com/

I'll have a look thanks.

But I'm worried websites like that simply 'put you on the list'

Don't worry, its run by a well known name Troy Hunt in security circles, who also works as a Regional director for Microsoft.