how to unsubscribe from emails without opening them

What you are getting is most likely spam. Unsubscribe from things you originally subscribed to, or for which there was a legitimate business relationship.Just marking an email as spam won’t actually unsubscribe you from the mailing list. But that Spam button should just be used for real spam - unsubscribe from the legitimate commercial emails you receive with their included Unsubscribe links. Luckily, modern email services like Gmail and have made great strides against this type of nasty spam, and it shouldn’t reach your inbox very often. It would also be hard to find these people, because the spam emails are probably coming from a botnet of compromised computers instead of a legitimate email server.

Sure, you could report a serious scammer to the FCC for not including the required unsubscribe mechanism, but they’re probably sending emails from outside the US and countries with similar laws. But the real spammers are outside the reach of these laws. The CAN-SPAM Act helped clean up commercial emails sent by legitimate companies. For example, this includes newsletters from website you subscribe to (like our own How-To Geek newsletter), promotional emails from Groupon, or any other organization that’s received your email and your permission to market to you. RELATED: Who is Making All This Malware - and Why?īear in mind that this only applies to emails from legitimate organizations. This is why you’ll usually find such unsubscribe links! If a legitimate business emails you and fails to include a way for you to opt out of emails, you can actually report them to the FCC. For example, in 2006, the Kodak Imaging Network was fined $32,000 for failing to include an unsubscribe mechanism and their physical address in an email campaign they sent out. The FCC has enforced the law in the past. This isn’t one of those laws that’s just on the books and never used. Europe has the similar EU Opt-In Directive. For example, Canada’s CASL anti-spam law also mandates an unsubscribe link in each commercial email. While this is a US law, other countries have similar laws. The FCC has more information about this on their website.

The “From” field must be accurate, and the “Subject” must be relevant and not deceptive.

The email must contain a legitimate physical mailing address associated with the sender.

Your request to opt out must be honored within 10 business days.

The unsubscribe process can’t charge a fee or ask for any personal information beyond your email address when you opt out.

The unsubscribe link can take you to a page where you can choose the types of emails you want to receive, but they can’t require you to visit more than one page to unsubscribe.

All emails must contain a visible unsubscribe mechanism - this is most often a link, but can be an email address you have to send a request to.

Under this law, the FTC enforces compliance with a few basic principles for commercial emails. The US CAN-SPAM Act was signed into law in 2003. Note that “transactional emails” - for example, a receipt for a product you just purchased online - don’t have to have an unsubscribe email. If there isn’t, there has to be an email address you can email to opt out, although this is now very uncommon. Yes, it really is just that simple - there’s almost always an Unsubscribe link. To speed things up, you can press Ctrl + F to bring up the search feature in your browser or email client and type “Unsubscribe” to search for it.Ĭlick the link to unsubscribe from future communications from that website or business. It’s often in fairly small text so you don’t notice it, but it should always be there. If you want to unsubscribe, scroll all the way down to the bottom and look for the “Unsubscribe” link. RELATED: Forget The Gimmicks: Here's the Best Way to Organize Your Gmail InboxĮvery legitimate email will have a visible unsubscribe mechanism, and this is usually a link at the bottom of the email.

How to unsubscribe from emails without opening them