The dangers of unsubscribe links and how to avoid them
Email remains one of the key tools in the playbook of most marketers. Hard to believe, but the first email blast was sent as far back as in 1978, and it went over ARPANET, the network that preceded the Internet. That mailing gave a computer product demonstration to 397 recipients, and, generating an estimated $12-14 million in sales, was a commercial success. The guy who came up with the idea was Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corporation; despite the fact that his campaign was a targeted one, Gary still got labeled “Father of Spam.”
Today, email marketing has a fantastic return on investment: each $1 spent on a campaign is estimated to generate from $36 to $42 in sales, which gives the efficiency factor of up to 4200%. As you understand, this tool isn’t going into oblivion anytime soon.
Email marketing communications are regulated on national and international levels. For example, in 2003, the US passed the CAN-SPAM Act, which tells the marketers to add the unsubscribe (opt-out) link to commercial emails. Currently, the practice is ubiquitous; unless it’s spam – which accounted for over 46.8% of email traffic worldwide in 2024 – there will be an unsubscribe link in the letter. And therein lies the danger.
In recent years, scammers adopted a practice of forging emails that look much like legit marketing communication, except they are not that. The purpose of such letters is to make you click the unsubscribe link, which redirects to a malicious page that can try to upload malware to your computer or phish out some personal data from you. Regardless of the specific mechanism of the attack, the consequences are always among those that you’d rather avoid.
How to counter scamming attempts involving unsubscribe links
It’s pretty simple, really, but you have to always stay alert and remember the rules.
- Check the sender’s handle AND email. Many email clients, web-based and not, show the name of the sender explicitly and hide the email address. If a letter looks legit, but you aren’t sure why it’s landed in your inbox, check both the handle and the email. Scams usually look weird, with letters replaced by similar looking figures, etc.
- Opt-out through your account. If you have an account with the business you received an unsolicited marketing email from, log on and uncheck the opt-in boxes there. If they are unchecked, report suspicious activity to the support team of that business.
- Mark as spam. Don’t hesitate to mark a letter as spam if you know for sure you haven’t subscribed to anything of the kind. Even if it looks legit. It’s worth saying again that scammers can do a very good job at designing their communications, so, be merciless.
- Use the built-in unsubscribe tool. Gmail, for example, has a built-in opt-out function that doesn’t require you clicking a link and landing somewhere outside the email client. Use it when available, and if the service doesn’t show the Unsubscribe button to right of the subject line in the Inbox view, consider that letter suspicious, with everything that entails.
- Block senders and create filters. It’s not common for spammers and scammers to use an email address repeatedly, but subject lines and business they pose as are recyclable, so setting up respective blocks and filters in your email client adds a layer of protection, too.
Stay safe out there! The Internet is not as safe as it used to be, but we can’t live without it nowadays. If you’re looking for a solution to give you peace of mind about your online safety, here’s the relevant Informer catalog section:
