Yes, that's where I expect to find it, but that involves scrolling down and reading through a bunch of fine print to find the right thing.
Oh, and I've had plenty of cases of using the unsubscribe link not actually work, or only unsubscribe me from one of the five lists that they autosubscribed me to, that it's hard to trust.
On the other hand, the spam button is right up top, in the same place every time, and easy to click. It's a lot faster and more user friendly, and it generally gives me better results.
Let's not forget about the cases where the "unsubscribe" link is really just confirming that a person is receiving the emails so that more can be sent!
No, it's better than that. An advertiser that remails to someone who clicks "unsubscribe" risks prosecution, but he can share his unsubscribe list with a third party in the advertising business, and he can do it legally. This is a loophole in Can-Spam that no one noticed (and not the only one).
> Who would want to buy a list of people who unsubscribe?
A spammer. Before Can-Spam, spammers would always re-use and sell the address of someone who replied to a prior spam mailing, even if the reply was a threat of legal action.
If you're a spammer, there are far easier ways to get lists of email addresses of people who are much more likely to buy something. People who take the time to unsubscribe from a mailing list are incredibly unlikely to buy anything from bona fide spam. Sorry, I'm just not seeing it.
Before Can-Spam, spammers ranked e-mail addresses read by a human higher than dead addresses (no surprise). The economics of spamming dictate that a mailing list of living humans, however acquired and however unlikely to result in sales, will be spammed again and again, simply as a bet that some fool somewhere will respond as the spammer would like.
Now that we have Can-Spam and unsubscribe links must be present, the spammers have changed tactics -- instead of collecting reply addresses known to be read by humans, they collect unsubscribe addresses known to be read by humans. Old wine in new bottles.
> are incredibly unlikely to buy anything from bona fide spam.
Yes, but let's say that an unsophisticated computer user receives, not a simple spam message, but a carefully designed phishing e-mail that is known to fool .1% of its recipients. For that scenario, e-mail addresses acquired as explained above would make perfectly suitable targets.
Yes, that's where I expect to find it, but that involves scrolling down and reading through a bunch of fine print to find the right thing.
Oh, and I've had plenty of cases of using the unsubscribe link not actually work, or only unsubscribe me from one of the five lists that they autosubscribed me to, that it's hard to trust.
On the other hand, the spam button is right up top, in the same place every time, and easy to click. It's a lot faster and more user friendly, and it generally gives me better results.