I like to call this the "father in law" feature.
Block and Unsubscribe
41–50 of 131 posts
Re: Block and Unsubscribe
#42A bit unrelated, but Google and other companies have been using a lot more gifs in blog posts lately. I find my eyes have a harder time keeping my position in the text, and I keep losing my place/getting distracted. Any others feel the same way?
Re: Block and Unsubscribe
#43This is unethical; You have no right to block people trying to advertise to you.
Re: Block and Unsubscribe
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I don't understand (possibly noob question), is the scenario where I get spam and I click on "Report spam" to be prompted with "Unsubscribe and report spam". I'd never subscribed to it so why am I asked whether I would like to "Unsubscribe". Is it that the spammers got hold of my email from somewhere and "Subscribed" me automatically? Shouldn't "Report spam" implicitly imply that it's not a subscription?
People use the Report Spam button on things that they explicitly signed up for all the time, and Gmail has adjusted its behavior to match how users use it rather than try to persuade them to instead do the right thing.
Interesting. Isn't there an information loss since now they would have to infer the motive to decide whether to blacklist the sender?
Re: Block and Unsubscribe
#45> That’s why you can now block specific email addresses in Gmail [...] Future mail will go to the spam folder (and you can always unblock in Settings). It's nice to have a one-click button for it, but this was already available by configuring a filter. You just need to select all emails from a particular address and then choose to always mark them as spam or send them directly into the trash. From the headline I was…
I wonder though if they have taken it out of the filter flow. Filters are interesting in that they can really slow things down, and if a previous one fires before the send to trash one does, sometimes it has a different result. If they have called this out as a behavior that can happen on the inbound pipeline, and more importantly if they can reflect it back as a 5xx error to the sender, it would be nice improvement.
Seems like the Inbox team has rethought the filter flow at least in terms of UI and there are clearly some architecture/backend changes too. Perhaps this new "block" flow in GMail is a reflection of working together with the Inbox team.
Re: Block and Unsubscribe
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I don't understand (possibly noob question), is the scenario where I get spam and I click on "Report spam" to be prompted with "Unsubscribe and report spam". I'd never subscribed to it so why am I asked whether I would like to "Unsubscribe". Is it that the spammers got hold of my email from somewhere and "Subscribed" me automatically? Shouldn't "Report spam" implicitly imply that it's not a subscription?
People use the Report Spam button on things that they explicitly signed up for all the time, and Gmail has adjusted its behavior to match how users use it rather than try to persuade them to instead do the right thing.
That's right. All too often I've subscribed to a mailing list expecting the odd email now and again only to suffer a deluge of totally irrelevant and annoying 'updates' on an almost daily basis.
The worst offenders also make it difficult to unsubscribe. Hence, the report spam option.
Re: Block and Unsubscribe
#47I wonder if this is just a shortcut to create a filter. That would make the most sense, at least.
Yep. I think less sophisticated users would be intimidated by creating a filter and this solves for that.
Yeah, the filter config for GMail is very full-featured. Like there are a dozen actions you can take on a mail, all listed on a single popup. Makes sense to provide an easier path.
Re: Block and Unsubscribe
#48What happens when you later need to see emails from that email address again? Are the emails saved somewhere?
It says they go to Spam, so I assume it will be treated like other spam (autodelete after 30 days, IIRC).
(What I'm writing applies to individuals, not mailing lists.)
I think a bounce would be preferable! Why waste someone's time?
I think it should only hell-ban via a special checkmark. By default it should cause a bounce saying that this person is not receiving email from that address. Then neither sender nor recipient have their time wasted going forward.
I mean for the 0.01% of cases where someone would literally create a new address just to continue harrassing you, yeah, you could then hellban their second address.
Re: Block and Unsubscribe
#49I would like it better if blocked users received undeliverable messages.
You could mailbomb someone by getting spam sent with their address as a from address. Then they'd be hellbanned from the internet and mailbombed at the same time. This could become a problem.
Re: Block and Unsubscribe
#50Hilton hotels, can't unsubscribe because of account login forced. This is my new fix!
It's amazing how many unsubscribe links, which are mandated by law, are broken or flaky.
I just "report spam" now when that happens, and it totally works. No regrets.