I was getting pissed with the hundreds of spam I got everyday. Most of them were the same stuff over and over again. Bouncing using Mailwasher was not helping. I noticed that most of them had a phone number, address, and url to unsubscribe. Fearing that I was just going to make things worse, I tried it anyway.
Holy crap! Three days later I’m only getting 30 or so spam. I got rid of all the job offers for cops and nurses, free gift cards and other giveaways, and dating service offers. Now all I’ve got is the penis enlargement offers and other really obvious crap.
I thought I’d let people know, just as a public service.
I actually thinks unsubscribing works peopel say it makes things worse by “confirming” your adreess. I dont see how spam peopel would care or not if its confirmed.
Generally, it depends on the company. Most legitimate companies that do business on the web will honor unsubscribe requests. The ones that don’t are the unscrupulous unidentified spammers.
(my emphasis added) A phone number and address doesn’t necessarily make them a “legitimate” company (the phone number and address could be faked), but it will improve your chances that the unsubscribe url is also legitimate. I still wouldn’t try unsubscribe urls from any messages that don’t look completely above board.
Hmm. My current e-mail address has been available on the web for over ten years now, and it gets roughly 1,100 spams per day right now. Maybe I should try this. It could hardly get any worse, right? <nervous smiley>
I’ve noticed the really skeevy ones don’t bother with the pretense of letting you unsubscribe, but I’d suggest being selective anyway. Right now the only spam I’m still getting are the obviously spam with the attempted filter evasions.