[DPWM21]

Extremely helpful, thank you.

[Marine1974]

Originally Posted by thevillager1988

I have been diligently trying to keep my emails clear of clutter by unsubscribing to the many many advertisements that find their way into my inbox. Only recently did I notice many of the advertisements are coming from suspicious links. Ug. And now I have learned that there is a scam strategy that is precisely designed to get us to click the unsubscribe. Having done a little digging, I learned it is never a good idea to click the unsubscribe - and it’s likely to be a link that attaches a virus or malware to your computer.

The attached clip from an internet post explains it better than I can.


I am now using care when clearing all the trash from my email. And because of my naivete on the subject, I have a lot of trash.

If anyone finds it helpful, or has other advice, I am grateful.

Is it a good idea to click on the email address sent from the scammer and then block it and send to junk ? Like advise

[FredMitchell]

There is too much misinformation in this post.

The typical top-level domains (TLDs) are .com, .edu, .org, and .mil. Then there are the country TLD, such as .us, .tv, and various miscellaneous ones such as .xxx

The next part to the left is the domain of an organization, e.g. "talkofthevillages". Anything to the left of that are subdomains of the organization.

So the first thing to look at is the domain structure of the uniform resource locator (URL) to determine the organization - everything after "https://" up to and including the TLD.

If the organization is one that you trust don't be rude and mark the email as spam. They are politely offering you an easy way to unsubscribe. They also don't want their communications to be labeled as spam. You probably signed up with them. If you no longer want messages from them, unsubscribe at least twice over a month or two. That is sufficient time for them to remove you as a subscriber.

Marking as spam - at least with gmail - is a serious thing that should only be used for unsolicited emails or organizations that fail to unsubscribe you (they are required by US federal law to honor your request).
Major internet service providers (ISPs) and mail services take blocking spam seriously. GMail blocks senders very aggressively from broadcasting too many emails and emails that appear to them to be spam - even when they were honest communications between a company and registered customers.

Before clicking on a link, hover the mouse over it. That should show you the URL. If you don't trust it, just don't click on it at all. Just mark it as spam. Services that allow you to mark things as spam use that and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve their spam blockers. They are pretty darn good. Almost no spam gets through in practice. They may falsely label a legitimate email as spam (false positive), but the false negative of allowing spam into your inbox is very rare.

Finally, clicking on a link will not by itself install software on your computer. If it would then your computer is probably too ancient to even run it. Modern operating systems (OSes) will download a file, but it won't be opened without the permission of the owner of the computer.

Finally, do yourself a favor - google phishing - and read a few articles to understand what it is and how it works. Basically, it relies on you clicking on some link and actually doing something beyond that.

[Topspinmo]

Originally Posted by Two Bills

Microsoft says not.

I’ve only for about 15 emails saying it is from MS saying switch to outlook.

[rsmurano]

Apple has implemented new features to take of this a couple years ago. It works great. If you use this feature, it doesn’t matter if the vendor sells your email. I manage my 60+ aliases very easy and with 1 command I can get rid of an alias and never get another email from the companies that I joined with this alias.

[Two Bills]

Originally Posted by Topspinmo

I’ve only for about 15 emails saying it is from MS saying switch to outlook.

Yep. But your Hotmail account stays.

[thevillager1988]

Originally Posted by Marine1974

Is it a good idea to click on the email address sent from the scammer and then block it and send to junk ? Like advise

I would just mark the email as SPAM. The scammers use many different email addresses. and I feel it's impossible to keep up. I am no expert. Just know that clicking unsubscribe sent me to the Geek squad at Best Buy to have my computer cleaned up from a lot of malware.

[Bwanajim]

Originally Posted by thevillager1988

I have been diligently trying to keep my emails clear of clutter by unsubscribing to the many many advertisements that find their way into my inbox. Only recently did I notice many of the advertisements are coming from suspicious links. Ug. And now I have learned that there is a scam strategy that is precisely designed to get us to click the unsubscribe. Having done a little digging, I learned it is never a good idea to click the unsubscribe - and it’s likely to be a link that attaches a virus or malware to your computer.

The attached clip from an internet post explains it better than I can.


I am now using care when clearing all the trash from my email. And because of my naivete on the subject, I have a lot of trash.

If anyone finds it helpful, or has other advice, I am grateful.

Thanks! I was just thinking about the last few weeks. It seems the more I click unsubscribe the more emails I get. I was going to quit clicking unsubscribe.i will no