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Gmail's 'Unsubscribe' Tool Comes Out of the Weeds
itwbennett writes "Starting this week, a new, clearly marked 'unsubscribe' link will appear at the top of the header field in marketers' emails. Previously only appearing for a small percentage of users, the feature will now be made available for most promotional messages with unsubscribe options, Google said on Thursday. Email recipients do not need to take action for the links to appear."
I've been having bad luck on that part
Probably because by clicking that button you're proving that a human exists at the end of the email address. And because you were silly enough to click it, you're probably exploitable in other interesting ways, too.
They should only put the unsubscribe link in for scrupulous vendors who will actually unsubscribe you and not sell your email address as "confirmed to be working".
I hope the unsubscribe link points back to google, and that they keep track of what I have unsubscribed. If they see me unsubscribing the same spam several times, they can safely conclude that the spammer will not respect the unsubscribe, and can start filtering the stuff out. Even better, they now know this is a spammer, and can filter out everything he sends to any gmail address, or at least add a block the first time someone else clicks on the unsubscribe link.
where are the people that bark google has too much power and are "intrinsically evil" because of it? where are the people crying that their privacy is being breached because it scans their email for context? where are the people claiming they have been "scroogled"? where are you naysayer of every change google makes to a (free) product? where is your vitriol toward google for perpetrating a clearly heinous act? then again, you could just mod me down for your bitter repute.
have you considered that google actually tries to follow their "dont be evil" edict?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
This is my biggest complaint. A few years back I had someone in Australia buy plain tickets online and used my email address. I got the info about the account and tickets, did a password reset request and got into the account and canceled the tickets. I sure hope they had a hard time when they showed up at the airport.
Wow, sure it's annoying when people accidentally uses the wrong email... I can understand that you complain about. Given that you had to commit a federal offence by illegally obtaining access to an account that wasn't yours.
I mean becoming a criminal is worth complaining about, but you could just have contacted the airline, which is perfectly legal, and asked them to resolve the situation.
Instead of going out of your way, to be an a**hole, and actually make yourself a criminal in the process.
Verification emails should be sent on all new account creations and when signing up for any mailing list. Clearly the latter won't happen because companies want the emails to go to someone, they don't care who.
Sure, but an error somewhere in the system, does not make you owner of the account. Seriously, why don't you think before you hit somebodys password reset. That's clearly illegal.
:)
I mean, wow, just wow, given how long time the US is willing to lock you up for violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, I'm surprised you decide to just go ahead... No wonder 1% of the US population is in prison
That sounds like something restricted to an internal mail system since it requires a centralized database of mappings between aliases and email addresses.
Google seems to be pretty good at handling databases for other data...I think they could handle this.
I do exactly this same thing with a database for my home mail server. Every site I deal with gets a different e-mail address, so I know who sells their lists. There have been one or two sites that have had the alias deleted because they didn't pay attention to whatever opt-out method they claimed would stop the e-mail.
This technique also protects me from phishing, as an e-mail that isn't addressed to mybankalias@mydomain.com can't possibly be from my bank.
proper aliases that are not revealing your real email and can be easily discontinued with a bounce to sender as result.
I haven’t studied SMTP for a long while, but I think what you’re describing isn’t possible with ordinary email over the ’net. That sounds like something restricted to an internal mail system since it requires a centralized database of mappings between aliases and email addresses.
No, Outlook.com has solved this the way it should be. They are using real standalone email addresses for aliases. It can be completely different than your main email, and by default it shows up in a separate folder in your inbox. If you kill the alias, it is for the rest of the world the same as killing a standalone email address, and mail to it will bounce.
I've been having bad luck on that part
Probably because by clicking that button you're proving that a human exists at the end of the email address. And because you were silly enough to click it, you're probably exploitable in other interesting ways, too.
Exactly so. Unsubscribe from one, and two or three others show up from different sources within a few days.
Since I never subscribed to these in the first place, I'm never going to unsubscribe. I'm going to mark them spam.
Sorry Google, but I'm not playing along. I'm going to stuff your spam filters (which work very well thank you) full of these UCE mailings whether or not they contain unsubscribe options. Punish every on of them and force them to stop adding people to mailing lists without a request to do so.
This is simply wrong headed. I can't believe google doesn't understand how these guys work. Why would they want to enable this kind of practice to continue?
On my company email, I've got very effective Spamassisin filters for these types of things, and I mercilessly categorize them as spam. I expect nothing less from gmail.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.