Unsubscribing from suspicious emails can result in more junk mail because you’re exposing yourself as a real person (who actually reads emails) to a potential spammer. Fortunately, there are ways to silence annoying emails without clicking the unsubscribe link, which may or may not be legitimate.
As spammers became smarter about how they found out if an email address is real and active, services and tools arose in order to help people safely unsubscribe. There are a few options out there (including one from yours truly!), and most work in a similar way. Essentially, you mark any sender you don’t want to receive future emails from, and then all subsequent messages from that sender will be sent directly to the trash. This really is the best of both worlds, because you get rid of the emails you don’t want, but without clicking any links or leaving your email to unsubscribe on another site.
3 reasons this is a better way to unsubscribe
1) It’s faster
It’s far more efficient to drag and drop an email or click around within your email than to go through the arduous and intentionally difficult unsubscribe process. There are no new windows to open, no fields to fill out, and no check boxes to mark.
2) It’s rewarding
Nothing, and I mean NOTHING is more rewarding than banishing an irritating sender into email abyss, never to be heard from or seen again!
3) It’s safer
As we mentioned above, unsubscribing from suspicious emails is risky. Your success really depends on the integrity of the sender. There are plenty of examples where unsubscribing from suspicious emails actually results in WAY more junk mail because you unknowingly exposed yourself to more spammy mailing lists.
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What isSaneBox
SaneBox is a simple service that analyzes your past behavior (which emails you open, which you respond to, how quickly, how often, etc) and determines the importance of incoming emails without ever looking at the content (only the headers). It moves unimportant emails out of the Inbox into a separate folder called SaneLater and summarizes them in a digest. It works anywhere you check your email (since it's just an email folder).