This right-wing zealot David Horowitz put me on his email list after I wrote to him regarding an issue I disagreed with him about. Yeah, I know, that was dumb of me. Anyway, he keeps sending me all these nonsense newsletters full of Republican propaganda, and although each newsletter says I can unsubscribe by replying with the word “unsubscribe” in the subject line, 5 letters I have sent asking him to remove me have apparently not gotten gotten the message through his thick skull. I could teach my spam filter to dispose of his garbage immediately, but frankly, I’d rather teach the guy a lesson and complain to some authority. Is there any agency that deals with this sort of issue?
As far as I know, there is no authority for such an issue. The false unsubscribe option has always been an internet trick and I have never heard of any site or group getting called on it.
Better use your Spam filters for that one. There is no one to save you like there would be with phone call nuisances.
Their actions may be a violation of CAN-SPAM. The law says that there must be a means to opt out of mailings, and the sender must respect requests to do so; I’m not sure if this case is covered by it. If it is, you can report the spammer here, at which point the FTC will spring into action with typical government alacrity. :rolleyes:
I solved a similar problem I had by spamming the spammers with their own message about 2000 times a day. Yes, it took a really long time, but it eventually got them to stop.
Just keep forwarding every message back to them about 100 times.
It’s oddly satisfying.
You mention “5 letters I have sent asking him to remove me”. ‘Letters’ implies to me that you have been writing things to him asking to be removed.
If so, that may be what’s preventing you from being unsubscribed.
Many email automation programs look for the exact original email, with the word “unsubscribe” (and nothing else!) in the subject line.
If you write a letter into your reply, or say “unsubscribe me, damn you!” in the subject line, or anything like that, the automated unsubscribe feature won’t recognize it, and you will not be unsubscribed. (Unless someone does it manually, and large email lists generally have too big a volume for the author to do this.)
Personally, I agree that he is a right-wing Republican zealot, and don’t think they really care about treating other people fairly, anyway.
Go ahead and have your spam filter delete it, and let him continue to spend time & money sending it to your trash bin.
Assuming you’re not whooshing here, just how did you determine who to reverse-spam?
Unless you have a very smart purpose-built email reflector that understands spoofed headers, odds are you’ve been counter-spamming an innocent party whose address was faked into the mail.
Sometimes it takes time for the unsubscribe to filter through multiple databases. How long since asking the first time?
Why don’t you just block the sender and not receive his email. If you are using Outlook Express, you can just click on Message and then Block Sender.
If he’s got a domain name, most times you can move up to his ISP or host. Spamming or not removing from a email list normally violates TOS. Most times you can find the TOS on the ISP website.
Send an email to the ISP/hosting service and CC the subject.
But I’ve followed the exact directions of the newsletter, which states to write the word “unsubscribe” in the subject line, which is what I did three times. The other two letters were me saying something along the lines of “REMOVE ME, YOU STUPID F***!” (with “unsubscribe” in the subject line).
But I wonder if he has his stuff set up to automatically add to his email list the address of anyone who writes-- even if they’re writing to ask him to remove them from his list. The first time I wrote to him, he should not have gotten the impression that I wanted to have anything to do with his political philosophies, which is why I’m miffed that he added me in the first place.
by the way, it’s been 3 months since my first request.