If You Get Spam Do Not Do This:, Why not to OPT-OUT


Article explaining why you must NOT opt out of a spammers email list.

"Press Reply and Type Remove." Seems like every spam you get these days has that somewhere in it, doesn't it? Spammers claim that if you would just do this for them, then they won't send you any more ads! There's a lot of reasons why this doesn't work, but we'll cover the basics here:

* Why Should I Have to Remove Myself From a List I Never Joined? Think about this; is it right that you should be forced to remove yourself from mailing lists which you never elected to be on in the first place?

* You Still Get Spam. In order for this to work, you have to receive the spam in the first place. Your time, money and energy, not to mention huge amounts of bandwidth --the excess costs of which are (or will be) passed on to you in the form of higher access fees -- from your Internet Service Provider, and the rest of the Internet. Why do we have to pay to receive ads we never asked for?

* So You're Off THAT Spammer's List -- So What? There are literally millions of potential spammers out there! Even assuming that every one of them will accept "remove" requests, you'll still have to "remove" yourself from each list, once again ensuring that you'll continue to receive spam.

* What About "Global" Opt-Out Lists? A single database where people could opt-out of all spam would be nice. However, it doesn't answer the basic question of "Why do I have to spend time getting off a list(s) that I never wanted to be on?" In addition, there's no way to force spammers to honor such a list, and they will not.

* No Reply Address. Much spam has been forged in some way so that it is very difficult to determine the origin, and impossible to just hit "reply"- the address you are replying to doesn't exist!

* I Removed Myself Already. Even if the "remove" address is valid, many spammers don't remove you! It is not in their interest to do so; far easier to simply auto-delete any responses. In addition, some junk emailers simply treat the remove request as verification that your email address is valid and continue to spam it.