Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

ftc.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 793 posts

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#371

Post by kemitche »

battle-racket wrote: post #244
amatecha wrote: post #67

Nice. I canceled a service recently and I had to "continue to cancel" and click on other such "confirmations" such that I think I proceeded through 7-8 pages before my subscription was actually canceled. Truly manipulative and obtuse. That was Spotify btw. I should have recorded the process, as it was nearly comedic (if it weren't so hostile).

At least they didn't make you make a phone call and have a rep try to prevent you from doing so for an hour (looking at you NYT).

NYT has had click to cancel for a few years at this point. Were they later than they should be? Yes. Are they bad now? No.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#372

Post by Anduia »

rootusrootus wrote: post #333
susanthenerd wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Services like this are the reason I prefer to pay thru google play. It is much easier to just cancel it

As much as I used to hate them, I've now gained an appreciation for PayPal for this kind of stuff. For when I don't want to give my credit card to yet another vendor to possibly be compromised, or manage a sketchy subscription, PayPal is a pretty good solution. I do prefer Apple, but not every subscription can be bought that way.

Don't you pay more if you use Apple instead of Paypal?

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#373

Post by maccard »

inetknght wrote: post #353
ksd482 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I have noticed companies do is resume emails after a year or so. They probably think people would forget about unsubscribing them after a year, and for the most part they are right. If I catch any of these email lists not respecting my unsubscribing, I immediately mark them as "spam". Gmail then doesn't send them to my inbox anymore. I don't think just one person marking them as spam hurts them, but at least I f…

> I immediately mark them as "spam". Ahh yes, the feel-good response that Google gives you without doing anything substantial to prevent spam from reaching you in the future.

My experience with the spam button is 1) they never ever go into my inbox again if they do keep sending, and 2) as someone who has had emails marked as spam (from people who actively clicked the sign up to my newsletter button) your ability to send email gets neutered pretty quickly.

What is your experience?

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#374

Post by maccard »

hnburnsy wrote: post #358
Uehreka wrote: post #190

When people try and say that regulating stuff like this is impossible, I often think about how unreasonably great the regulations around “Unsubscribe” links in emails are. There really seems to be no loophole or workaround despite there being huge incentive for there to be one. Every time I click an “Unsubscribe” link in an email (it seems like they’re forced to say “Unsubscribe” and not use weasel words to hide the…

>There really seems to be no loophole or workaround despite there being huge incentive for there to be one. Every time I click an “Unsubscribe” link in an email... The loophole is that companies now claim that the email is 'service' related as part of your 'account relationship' so you cannot unsubscribe at all, even though it clearly is for marketing and promotion.

That’s what the report spam button is for.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#376

Post by IggleSniggle »

lovethevoid wrote: post #221
Uehreka wrote: post #190

When people try and say that regulating stuff like this is impossible, I often think about how unreasonably great the regulations around “Unsubscribe” links in emails are. There really seems to be no loophole or workaround despite there being huge incentive for there to be one. Every time I click an “Unsubscribe” link in an email (it seems like they’re forced to say “Unsubscribe” and not use weasel words to hide the…

Got to love the CAN-SPAM act. It seems rare such acts would pass these days without making substantial compromises for advertisers. Which if it were up to them, we would still be looking for a tiny unsubscribe link at the very bottom in a font color that matches the background.

Wait wait, are you saying you don't need to do that? You and I live in different worlds

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#378

Post by inetknght »

vel0city wrote: post #361
inetknght wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I often think about how unreasonably great the regulations around “Unsubscribe” links in emails are. The sheer number of comments that think the state of "unsubscribe" is good is... saddening. I should not have to click a link to "unsubscribe" from something that I did not subscribe to. There's no recourse for me against these thieves.

So what, people should only be able to email you if you've previously emailed them? How am I supposed to know who I'm allowed to email?

> So what, people should only be able to email you if you've previously emailed them?

No, people should be able to email me as they would normally.

I should be able to block senders, or entire domains. To use a direct example: if I decide that substack is shit because they subscribe people without consent (which is exactly true), then I should be able to block all things from substack and not just a single email address from the domain.

If the spammer is operating within the continental US (or any other country with a reasonable court system), then the spammer should be legally and monetarily liable for the time and money wasted. Everything from the second it takes my server to receive the message, to the second it takes to transmit to my email client, to the multiple seconds it takes me to read the headline and/or body, and the time it takes to press the block button -- the energy costs, the hardware cost, the bandwidth cost, my own time's cost, and the cost of lost confidence in the safety of the internet (just as a thief in your home makes you lose confidence in the safety of your neighborhood) -- all of it should be legally and monetarily liable.

So when that shit substack email puts on a SendGrid or Mailchimp facade, or goes through some Cloudflare or CloudFront or whatever CDN, those "businesses" also get blocked and sued into oblivion because fuck any "business" that doesn't want to own the relationship with their customer, and fuck any "business" whose customer is not the person they're emailing.

So... you want to send me an email? Cool! I hope you will agree that it's legitimate *and wanted*. Because if it's not then I should be able to take you, or your business, to court for wasting my time (and time is money) -- and win on that ground alone.

tl;dr:

Why do I have such a stark view on this, many might ask?

Well let me put it simply: "legitimate" spam is indistinguishable from targeted phishing. So that "unsubscribe" link that people so proudly claim is a great solution? Clicking it does not improve the spam situation and does increase vulnerability to malicious actors. I'm not going to click on that because it doesn't go anywhere that I recognize and can verify. That "unsubscribe" link is worse than a real solution because it's only theatre.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#379

Post by IggleSniggle »

dyno12345 wrote: post #312
Uehreka wrote: post #190

When people try and say that regulating stuff like this is impossible, I often think about how unreasonably great the regulations around “Unsubscribe” links in emails are. There really seems to be no loophole or workaround despite there being huge incentive for there to be one. Every time I click an “Unsubscribe” link in an email (it seems like they’re forced to say “Unsubscribe” and not use weasel words to hide the…

there's a particular car rental company that I can't get off their list because it error 500's when I click the unsubscribe button

Keep trying! Their server is just a little slow, and can only handle about 1 request per second, gets flooded "sometimes," understandable

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#380

Post by ProfessorLayton »

kemitche wrote: post #371
battle-racket wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least they didn't make you make a phone call and have a rep try to prevent you from doing so for an hour (looking at you NYT).

NYT has had click to cancel for a few years at this point. Were they later than they should be? Yes. Are they bad now? No.

I don't know how NYT has been handling cancellations in other states, but California has required companies to allow cancellations in the same form as sign ups for a few years (Sign up online requires the ability to cancel online too).
Post reply on HN