Ask HN: Dealing with SPAM emails after you unsubscribed?

#1

Post by magnetic » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 4:07 PM UTC

I unsubscribed from a marketing email list over a month ago. This is from a large pharmacy chain in the US that I suspect I got enrolled into during a medication purchase.

I keep receiving marketing emails from them, and when I click "unsubscribe", the backend keeps telling me "There are no email subscriptions associated with *@*". That means it did take into account my unsubscribe request the first time around, as it doesn't find me in the DB.

So their DB doesn't have me in there, but I still get emails.

I understand the challenges of distributed systems, eventual consistency, etc... and so it appears the entity sending the email is using an "old" DB with my email address in it, that isn't sync'd yet with my removal update, but after waiting for over a month, I'm beginning to think this will never stop.

How would you deal with that?

Re: Ask HN: Dealing with SPAM emails after you unsubscribed?

#2

Post by entrepy123 » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

Add a rule/filter in your mail account settings that sends mail from that domain/sender/subject/etc. to the Trash/Junk/SPAM folder (or 'Delete' action).

Re: Ask HN: Dealing with SPAM emails after you unsubscribed?

#3

Post by pavel_lishin » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 4:22 PM UTC

> How would you deal with that?

1. Start marking them as spam, to train my email provider that this sender is to be treated as such (correctly).

2. Set up filters to automatically archive/mark-as-read those emails.

3. If I was having a particularly slow week with nothing else to do, start finding the emails of engineers & managers at various responsible entities, and making it their problem every time an email comes in.

Re: Ask HN: Dealing with SPAM emails after you unsubscribed?

#4

Post by Qem » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 4:30 PM UTC

Thunderbird bayesian filter works fine for me. You only need to remember marking new spam it does not recognize yet, so it learns to properly classify it.

Re: Ask HN: Dealing with SPAM emails after you unsubscribed?

#5

Post by LinuxBender » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 4:49 PM UTC

View the headers and use regex (if your mail provides that level of details in rules) to block the the PTR records and reverse DNS from sending to you. If not then block emails based on keywords in the subject or body. If that isn't an option contact your mail provider and have them block it. Or find a better mail provider that gives you better filter rule options. Also start submitting the headers/emails to Spamcop. [1]

[1] - https://www.spamcop.net/

Re: Ask HN: Dealing with SPAM emails after you unsubscribed?

#6

Post by JohnFen » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 5:10 PM UTC

I just set up filters (on my mailserver, but you could do it in your mailreader) to automatically delete all emails from such misbehaving senders. Then I don't even have to see them.

Re: Ask HN: Dealing with SPAM emails after you unsubscribed?

#7

Post by pwg » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 5:22 PM UTC

Name and shame. The large pharmacy chain is Walgreens.

I've been very tempted to look up the email for their legal department and send them an explanation of how they are in violation of the CAN-SPAM law.

Re: Ask HN: Dealing with SPAM emails after you unsubscribed?

#8

Post by magnetic » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 5:38 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #6

I just set up filters (on my mailserver, but you could do it in your mailreader) to automatically delete all emails from such misbehaving senders. Then I don't even have to see them.

That is a reasonable strategy, but I need to figure out a way to delete SPAM emails only.

I still need transactional emails to go through, unless I change pharmacies, which isn't impossible to do, but has downsides that may be more painful than having to "Mark As Spam" a couple of times a week.

Re: Ask HN: Dealing with SPAM emails after you unsubscribed?

#9

Post by cpach » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 6:46 PM UTC

What are the options from your mail provider? E.g. can you filter it and send directly to trash?

On Gmail I would just flag it as spam and go on with my day.

Re: Ask HN: Dealing with SPAM emails after you unsubscribed?

#10

Post by JohnFen » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 7:49 PM UTC

magnetic wrote: post #8

JohnFen wrote: post #6

I just set up filters (on my mailserver, but you could do it in your mailreader) to automatically delete all emails from such misbehaving senders. Then I don't even have to see them.

That is a reasonable strategy, but I need to figure out a way to delete SPAM emails only . I still need transactional emails to go through, unless I change pharmacies, which isn't impossible to do, but has downsides that may be more painful than having to "Mark As Spam" a couple of times a week.

With the right filter, you could have the best of both worlds. Assuming that the company spamming you has a set format or some standard text in their spam that isn't in their other emails, you could filter based on that.