Coping with SPAM: Should You Try to Unsubscribe?

By Joe St Sauver (joe@oregon.uoregon.edu)

Victims of SPAM (unsolicited commercial email) may have noticed that the unwanted message often contains an email address or web page where they can try to "opt out" or "unsubscribe" from future mailings.

In our opinion, attempting to unsubscribe is unwise for many reasons:

• Incredible as it may sound, some unscrupulous spammers actually use "unsubscribe" addresses as a source of known-valid, known-active addresses for future spamming runs.
• In other cases, "unsubscribe" addresses provided by the spammer often won't work when you try them. This could be because the spammer simply fabricated them in the first place, or because the address has already been removed by ISPs inundated by user complaints.
• Some spammers even list "unsub-scribeÓ addresses that actually belong to antispammer activists or totally unaffiliated innocent parties--either to punish antispammers or to obscure their own identity. Thus, by sending email to what is purported to be an "unsubscribe" address, you may actually be participating in a distributed mail-bombing attack on an innocent party.
• Unsubscribing, or "opting out," unfairly puts the burden on you to avoid SPAM. You shouldn't have to beg to be left alone by online marketers.
• Unsubscribing isn't a scalable model--spammers can create new SPAM lists faster than you can possibly attempt to remove yourself from them.
• ¥Many spammers harvest new addresses to spam each and every time they do a SPAM run, so there's nothing for them to remove your address from.

What Can You Do?

Your best bet is to complain to the source of the SPAM, which will often not be the address that's listed in the "From:" line of the email message. For information on determining the true origin of SPAM you receive, please consult the FAQ titled "Figuring Out Fake Email" at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq/spam-faq