Three things to try
when unsubscribe doesn't work.
Hi Everyone Leo Notenboom here
for Askleo.com, let's dove right into today's question.
"If you use ... And then try to unsubscribe, they will not let you out.
They keep sending emails almost every day.
All I can do is delete them.
But what really stinks is that they do not honor that unsubscribe."
This was a question I got from a reader not long ago.
He was actually talking about a specific
service, but the concept actually applies more broadly.
It's one of those things where if you
subscribe to a legitimate service and try to unsubscribe and they don't honor
that request, in my mind, they're not a legitimate service anymore.
And I've gone down this path myself.
Here are the things to try if you find yourself in that situation first.
If after you unsubscribe,
you continue to get messages, the first thing I suggest you try just marking it as spam.
They've become spam.
That is now the very definition of spam.
This is unsolicited email.
You've explicitly told them to stop and they didn't.
Typically, if your email service provider
is smart enough, eventually if you mark it as spam enough, it'll start showing up
in your spam folder rather than in your inbox.
The downside here is that, well,
technically they started out as a legitimate email service.
There are probably other people who actually do want that email,
and even if it ends up in their spam folder, they'll mark it as not spam.
So we've got some competing priorities here.
But it's the first thing that I suggest
you do. Just start marking them as spam as they continue to arrive.
The next thing is to see if you can block senders.
Now, there are a couple of different ways
to do this, depending on what email service or email program you're using.
I've stated in the past that blocking
senders is not effective when it comes to blocking spammers, and that's still true.
Spam comes from a variety of changing
"from" addresses that if you block one, they just switch to another.
However, in this case, we've got a, again, formally legitimate sender that is likely
to be sending from the same email address every time.
So if you then block that email address in theory, you'll no longer get their email.
It'll either not arrive or it will also go directly to your spam folder.
The third option, and this doesn't apply
everywhere, but does apply with a lot of different email providers and email
programs that allow you to do this is to set up a Rule.
Spamming them didn't work and blocking them isn't an option for you.
For whatever reason.
What you'll need to look into is whether
or not your email provider allows you to set up what are called Rules.
In Gmail, for example,
you would search for the emails that you are looking to block.
And in that search criteria, then you can set up what's called a filter.
You can say "This is what should happen whenever I get one of these emails."
Now, ironically, Gmail specifically doesn't say
"automatically mark them as spam", but at a minimum,
you can say "automatically delete them as soon as they arrive."
I suppose there's a fourth option
and that's simply to ignore them and just get on with your life.
Honestly, I'm surprised at how much anger and irritation of unwanted email sometimes
provides when in fact all you really need to do is delete them.
It's like a quarter of a second of your life.
I admit it adds up if you get a lot of them and it can be irritating.
But sometimes the simplest solution,
the easiest solution is really not to do much of anything at all and just move on.
In any case, yes, if you unsubscribe from an email you are
getting regularly and you continue to get it, that shouldn't happen.
You should be in control.
That's the whole idea of that unsubscribe link.
But unfortunately,
sometimes what we consider to be legitimate email services for a variety
of reasons may end up ignoring or missing the unsubscribe request.
Then, as I said, they become a little bit less than legitimate.
And the techniques that you can take to then get rid of that email or stop
receiving it, they're all totally legitimate to take.
I hope that was helpful. For links related to this article,
For updates and more, visit Askleo.com/130185.
I'm Leo Notenboom.
This is Askleo.com.Thanks for watching.