Does SPAM Unsubscribing Really Work?

dacarr asks: "An associate on a mailing list I am on recalled an article (which he, in turn, does not recall), in which the author managed to reduce his spam some 80% by, of all things, using the provided 'unsubscribe' mechanism in the messages. This is totally counterintuitive to what most of us have learned (doing so was a spectacularly good way to actually *confirm* your address) - but perhaps this isn't the case anymore, based on this. Has anyone else had any luck as far as this goes? By following the aforementioned unsub links, said associate found a number of broken links and dead addresses (and one link that tried to create an attachment and email it out (which he stopped)), but after three days and 400 unsub links, he trimmed his spam levels 'from an average of 250 a day to just 40 today' - that's just around 17% of what he was getting. Maybe spammers are getting their act together and listening for a change." Do any of you have any anecdotal evidence to provide to confirm or contradict this? Have you been able to lower your spam volume by "unsubscribing"?

Comments

My own suspicion is...

[rusty0101]

that the only time this is a valid mechanism, is when the sender of the e-mail has gotten your address through a partner agreement with a website where you provided an e-mail address as part of registering.

The other possibility is that some spammers are still using the functionality to validate e-mail addresses, but as part of that action, they hide the fact from the recipient by suspending spam to the address for some weeks or even months before re-distributing the address to their buddies. As a result, the recipient thinks that the "unsubscribe" worked, but in the end gets even more spam.

Then again, I could be wrong. I am sitting at around 2-300 spam messages per day, if I see other reports that this is working, perhaps I will try it out as well.

-Rusty

Unsubscribe links make cash

[mcgroarty]

You'll find that a lot of the spammers present a load of banners on the unsubscribe page. There are still banner advertisers willing to pay per impression instead of per click, believe it or not, and this is one way of getting those in everybody's face.

For what it's worth, I read an article similar to this one about a year ago. I clicked all the opt out links in my Yahoo account and continued to discard spam unread in my self-run account. I'm only one guy, which makes this statistically insignificant (and thus, it would be highly irresponsible to do something like writing an article about it!), but I can definitely confirm that the Yahoo spam skyrocketed while my other account stayed the same.

Re:I've been thinking about doing this

[AnwerB]

I vote we all go out and try this on a large scale to see if it works. I will be glad to compile the results when we're done.

Sincerely,

Alan Ralsky
CEO, Email Clearing House

Re:Pure Luck?

[AnwerB]

> When I unsubscribed (the ones which didn't bounce back, etc...), the amount of spam I started to receive grew expotentionally.

You know, it might have just grown anyway, as the email address was copied from list to list...

It might have been a good idea to do a control study, where you set up two emails, equally obscure and subscribe to the same sites. On one email unsub., and see what happens.

Not entirely the same method, but effective anyway

[Frambooz]

I have the "privilige" of owning my own domainname with unlimited email-addresses and, more importantly, a Catch-All address (e.g. mail to non existent mailboxes end up in the Catch-All address, which is, by choice, own email address).

When I register on a page (New York Times, for instance), I simply enter a non-existent email address with the name of the service: newyorktimes@[mydomain.com]. Any email (passwords) sent to that address will end up in my personal inbox, and I can easily check to which address it was delivered originally (by checking the "To" field or scanning the headers of the message).

The key part is that you can't use that address for ANY other purpose. Don't post it on forums, don't use it to subscribe to other services. If there's a spinoff-service from a site you're already registered to, and it requires you to register again, use a new address. It'll all end up in the same inbox anyway.

This has two upsides: it's easy to create sorting-rules in my email client and, in relation to this /. article, once you start receiving spam on the 'fake' address (e.g. they sold your address to 3rd parties), that address is easily blocked by creating an auto-reply on my server whenever a message to newyorktimes@[mydomain.com] arrives.

In fact, its even hard proof for them selling your message, so you can back-track the user agreement and see if they're allowed to do that.

The big downside to this is that when you use a fake address for a public mailinglist, they can require you to send mail from that fake address. Then, you'll need a client that allows you to change the From-field in one way or another.

My $0.02.

P.S. I know you can get my domain from looking at my profile, but I figured I keep the example simple by using [mydomain.com].

Re:I tried it once

[Jahf]

This is exactly my experience. About a year ago I decided to unsub from SPAM whenever it came in.

After about a month of effort, I reduced my SPAM by more than 1/2 for a short while. Within 3 months I was at a higher level than before.

Just because you unsub from the SPAM source doesn't mean your address is removed from the databases / CDs that the SPAM source purchased. It is the harvesters that are truly evil.

And I have a number of addresses that have never been published and yet occasionally show up with SPAM. I wouldn't be surprised if the harvesters are making use of Outlook addressbook exploits to further harvest.