Is it relevant to hit the unsusbscribe button in an email which looks like spam?

Question

I have received several emails from a website called Zorpia, which I am not interested at all in.

According to the Wikipedia page, it is a social network which tries to recruit users with spamming, scamming and phishing methods. For instance, in my case, I have received an email on January 7, 19 and 23, and all emails were trying to trick me with the following message:

Hi WOK,

Kow has left you a private message for you. Click on the button below to view it.

View Private Message (in fact, a link to hack into my Gmail contacts and send them similar spam)

Regards,

The Zorpia Team

This message is sent on behalf of Kow.

Block future emails like this. Privacy policy

Is it relevant to hit the unsusbscribe button (Block future emails like this) in an email which looks like spam? Or am I doomed to receive these emails every week for the rest of the year?

I know we should not try to unsusbscribe from spam. But in this case, the link looks like this, which looks okay (no redirection, etc.) if the website is not a total spammer:

ZORPIA.com/email/optout/[email protected]

Solution 1

Whereas the other answers are correct, you could make a simple filter to block messages like this (or at least from this site). From your post, it seems like you are using Gmail.

First, copy down the email address ([email protected] or whatever the email is). Next, go to settings, then filters, and add a filter. Press Add a new filter and put the email in the 'from' field. Then, do a test search, and if everything seems okay, create the filter. This shouldn't be needed if you mark it as spam in Gmail a few times. After that, Gmail makes an automatic filter that sends a unsubscribe message to the sender and marks all other incoming messages from that sender as spam.

Solution 2

Depends how ethical the spammer is. There are 3 main results of hitting an unsubscribe option:

1. You will be unsubscribed

2. You will be redirected to a non-existent/useless/malicious site

3. You will be tagged as someone who clicks spam links, and be put on a list that generates more spam

From personal experience, I find option 2 happens the most, with option 1 only occurring if the person gives full verifiable details.

Solution 3

I think that you'll find that many people believe that the best way to handle Spam is to just delete it. If you click on any links in the message, all you've managed to do is verify that the your email address if valid. This, of course, doesn't apply to things that you've intentionally subscribed to.

Comments

[sean christe]

There is no one real good answer for this.

[Ramhound]

First use the unsusbscribe method. If that doesn't work setup a filter to delete all emails from this provider.

[Jon Coombs]

I generally only use unsubscribe if I believe the company is legit--trustworthy enough, at least, to not link to a malicious false "unsubscribe" site. Failing that, the only option, really, is to log into your email server and block that sender. (Or, email clients like Thunderbird let you create auto-delete rules. You won't be bothered with the messages anymore, but they'll only get deleted after they've been downloaded to your computer, so that wastes bandwidth.)

[Ryan M]

I wish I had more than one upvote for this answer

[Supercereal]

2. could also be a malicious site...

[SeanC]

@Kyle, good point - I'll update the answer

[SeanC]

while marking an email as spam multiple times is useful, it has a far reaching effect. If you forget you've subscribed to something, and mark it as spam, then it can happen that other people on that subscription list stop getting that email. I know that this has happened to the This is True email list I am subscribed to