Do Unsubscribe Links Stop Spam?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @04:18AM from the click-here-to-find-out dept.

Kaiten writes "Brian McWilliams of Spam Kings fame has just published a fascinating spammer exposé over at Salon. Using a pseudonym, he was hired to send junk email on behalf of a spam operation that has been burying people (me included) with spam for fake Rolex watches. The article details how the spammers handle the 200,000-plus unsubscribe requests they get each month. Seems that LOTS of geeks actually cross their fingers and click those remove links. And, surprise, surprise, the spammers usually ignore the unsubscribe requests."

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Don't click remove by bigberk · 2004-12-15 04:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

No, I know for sure that they don't help. For years I have been trying to get MORE spam. The main way I have done this has been unsubscribing from lists! In fact, I even "unsubscribe" an address that was never subscribed. Indeed, that new address is now getting plenty of spam.

Unsubscribing from spammer's sites will get you more spam. Unsubscribing from mailing lists will work, of course, but mailing lists != spam.