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Show HN: Please-unsubscribe.com – fwd emails to unsubscribe from marketing

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Re: Show HN: Please-unsubscribe.com – fwd emails to unsubscribe from marketing

#181

Post by paledot »

Moru wrote: post #143
gruturo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been doing this for well over 10 years and can confirm the approach, with one small tweaks: The address for friends and family should be split in 2 - one for the really technologically literate ones, who will never do stupid crap with it like using it in a pinterest "Share this!" form, and one for everyone else (who must never learn you didn't give them "best" address because they're clueless). Also, if you ow…

You can also use the + for email adress, my.name+facebook@domain.com. No need to register another mail adress for each service. It can lead to problems logging in though, not everyone knows that + is a legal character in mail adresses.

I had enough validation and dictation issues with that approach that I registered a catchall email on a subdomain, so I give out yoursitename@email.example.com. For one thing, anyone wise to that trick will just strip

  /\+[^@]*/
from your address and bypass the fingerprinting.

Re: Show HN: Please-unsubscribe.com – fwd emails to unsubscribe from marketing

#183

Post by patja »

vntok wrote: post #109
xtiansimon wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wiktionary ‘defines’ spam as ‘unsolicited and unwanted’. Elsewhere, Wikipedia describes spam as ‘unsolicited or unwanted’. And vs. Or. Of course spam’s definition should use ‘and’. When you sign up for a newsletter, and later decide you don’t want it, to call it ‘spam’ is merely metaphorical. [1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spam [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam

Nah. You forgot to quote the key word from those definitions: email. Not "newsletters subscriptions", not "promises to receive interesting emails", not "agreements to get sent x mails per week". Spam is unsolicited and/or unwanted email, period. It does not matter whether you were tricked into subscribing to some newsletter or whether you checked a "receive interesting emails from us" box while paying for something.…

The legacy definition of spam is any unwanted email, or "unsolicited commercial email"

But in the context of social media, what does spam mean? It isn't email. And an awful lot of it is simply self-promotion or commercial promotion.

And many FB groups and the like are permissive when it comes to posts that are really advertisements, or are just one person's definition of "off topic." And there are mechanisms for reporting content as "spam", but what does that even mean when it isn't an email?

I've found that many people have redefined the term "spam" as repetitive content, not unwanted/unsolicited content. I guess this comes from gamer/chat culture where there is talk of "spamming the jump button" or "spamming the chat" where it isn't the content that is remarkable, it is the repetition. You can kind of see where it comes from as most email spammers are quite repetitive and indiscriminate. But a spam email can be just one, and that definition doesn't seem to fly in the inherently noisy social media context.

I was just struck by this evolution of the term spam when I tried reporting some (unwanted by me) commercial self-promotion on social media, only to be told that it wasn't spam at all because the poster only posted it once. I guess a lot of it comes down to how territorial and defensive people are about their email inbox vs. social media feed.

Re: Show HN: Please-unsubscribe.com – fwd emails to unsubscribe from marketing

#184

Post by ComputerGuru »

This reminds me of an article maybe ten years back on how to a static email can change its appearance when it’s forwarded so as to hide the unsubscribe button so forwardees can’t unsubscribe (accidentally or otherwise) the forwarder. As I recall, there were a few different solutions that were each specific to the mail client doing the forwarding (using css that matches the DOM structure of the forwarded content).

I think it’s still an open question because federal regulations still require either a one-click unsubscribe or at most an unsubscribe link leading directly to a form with at most a single required input being the email address to unsubscribe, i.e. no chance to verify the clicker.

Re: Show HN: Please-unsubscribe.com – fwd emails to unsubscribe from marketing

#185

Post by Scaless »

EgoIncarnate wrote: post #179
Scaless wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, what they're doing is illegal. [1] § 316.5 Prohibition on charging a fee or imposing other requirements on recipients who wish to opt out. Neither a sender nor any person acting on behalf of a sender may require that any recipient pay any fee, provide any information other than the recipient's electronic mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any other steps except sending a reply electronic mail message…

I think he's talking about signing into a preexisting account. It maybe be illegal to require you to sign up, but I don't think it's proven that requiring preexisting customers to sign in to a preexisting account to adjust their communication settings. Personally I'm all for requiring an automation enabled unsubscribe header and double opt in (requiring a response from a subscription confirmation email to subscribe i…

The wording is very clear, you can NOT require login to change subscription settings. A password would classify as additional information outside of email address and preferences. Otherwise someone could sign up with your email and you would have no recourse to end the spam, or the company could just bulk create accounts for you without any way to log in (i.e. Facebook).

Re: Show HN: Please-unsubscribe.com – fwd emails to unsubscribe from marketing

#186

Post by reaperducer »

Scaless wrote: post #156
needle0 wrote: post #145

Btw, how specific is the American CAN-SPAM act in terms of how the unsubscribe link should work? In my country I sometimes get emails with unsubscribe links that require you to log in first, which can be a pain to pull out the credentials when you don't really remember signing up for it in the first place. Does CAN-SPAM specify, say, that an unsubscribe link 1)must not require a login? 2)must lead to completion of th…

Yes, what they're doing is illegal. [1] § 316.5 Prohibition on charging a fee or imposing other requirements on recipients who wish to opt out. Neither a sender nor any person acting on behalf of a sender may require that any recipient pay any fee, provide any information other than the recipient's electronic mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any other steps except sending a reply electronic mail message…

§ 316.5 Prohibition on charging a fee or imposing other requirements on recipients who wish to opt out.

Tell that to eBay. I cannot got them to leave me alone.

There is no unsubscribe link. Only “To change which emails you receive from eBay, go to Communication Preferences in My eBay.” But there is no such option in My eBay.

There is a “Communications Preferences” elsewhere, but there’s nothing in there to stop eBay spam. I have everything set to off, but they still keep coming.

Re: Show HN: Please-unsubscribe.com – fwd emails to unsubscribe from marketing

#187

Post by reaperducer »

Scaless wrote: post #185
EgoIncarnate wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he's talking about signing into a preexisting account. It maybe be illegal to require you to sign up, but I don't think it's proven that requiring preexisting customers to sign in to a preexisting account to adjust their communication settings. Personally I'm all for requiring an automation enabled unsubscribe header and double opt in (requiring a response from a subscription confirmation email to subscribe i…

The wording is very clear, you can NOT require login to change subscription settings. A password would classify as additional information outside of email address and preferences. Otherwise someone could sign up with your email and you would have no recourse to end the spam, or the company could just bulk create accounts for you without any way to log in (i.e. Facebook).

you can NOT require login to change subscription settings

And yet it happens all the time. Even Apple does it. I expect Apple’s lawyers have a better understanding of the rules than most people.

Re: Show HN: Please-unsubscribe.com – fwd emails to unsubscribe from marketing

#188

Post by reaperducer »

dharmab wrote: post #138
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #110

My e-mail address is on a 3rd party list that is sold repeatedly to marketers. The marketers do not employ unsubscribe links or provide a means to get off of their list in the e-mail. I'd rather not engage them and ask their source. Is there a way to learn who the original list holder is and get my address off?

This is illegal in the US under the CAN-SPAM act, with severe penalties. No legitimate company will send marketing emails without an opt-out. If you don’t want to engage them, you should mark the email as junk. This flags the email in their email provider. If their rate of junk email increases too high, they lose their ability to send email through that provider.

The sort of spammers he’s talking about user email providers that don’t care. Or will look the other way for a fee.

Source: I used to know a mid-sized spammer in Chicago. He saw nothing wrong with his business and was happy to answer questions.

Re: Show HN: Please-unsubscribe.com – fwd emails to unsubscribe from marketing

#189

Post by reaperducer »

J-Kuhn wrote: post #142
dharmab wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is illegal in the US under the CAN-SPAM act, with severe penalties. No legitimate company will send marketing emails without an opt-out. If you don’t want to engage them, you should mark the email as junk. This flags the email in their email provider. If their rate of junk email increases too high, they lose their ability to send email through that provider.

Afaik, there is no automated information flow to the provider. It kind of works, but differently than you said. Let's say, you flag a mail on GMail as spam. GMail's filters will learn: both the spam filter for your inbox as well as a shared filter. If the shared filter learned that all mails from that provider are junk, then gmail may not accept any more mails from that provider. But the provider is interested in his…

GMail's filters will learn: both the spam filter for your inbox as well as a shared filter

Considering how many dozens of times I’ve marked messages from Soma as spam in Gmail, yet they still keep coming, I have zero faith in Gmail’s learning ability. Either that or Soma can pay Google to bypass the spam filter. Other email providers will.

Re: Show HN: Please-unsubscribe.com – fwd emails to unsubscribe from marketing

#190

Post by edoceo »

reaperducer wrote: post #187
Scaless wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wording is very clear, you can NOT require login to change subscription settings. A password would classify as additional information outside of email address and preferences. Otherwise someone could sign up with your email and you would have no recourse to end the spam, or the company could just bulk create accounts for you without any way to log in (i.e. Facebook).

you can NOT require login to change subscription settings And yet it happens all the time. Even Apple does it. I expect Apple’s lawyers have a better understanding of the rules than most people.

Or nobody is fighting them. Enforcement starts with a complaint to the "authorities"
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