Gmail Just Made Unsubscribing From Bulk Emails Easier Than Ever

[Shawn Knight]

Bulk e-mails are a nuisance that everyone with an e-mail account has to deal with. While it is possible to remove yourself from most mailing lists, the unsubscribe link is often buried within the message and takes longer to locate than it should.

Fortunately, Google has added a new feature in Gmail that'll make the process much easier.

Now when a sender includes an unsubscribe link in a message, Gmail will relocate the link to the top of the message beside the sender's e-mail address. It only works with certain types of messages - those in the Promotions, Social and Forums inboxes - but it's better than nothing at all and it certainly beats the alternative of manually scanning messages one by one or worse yet, creating an entirely new e-mail address.

Google says making the unsubscribe option easy to find is a win for everyone. For e-mail senders, their mail is less likely to be marked as spam and for receivers, it means the end of sifting through an entire message trying to find the unsubscribe link.

The feature appears to have been rolling out to some users over the past few weeks, perhaps as a public beta to iron out any nagging bugs. But now, it should be available to everyone - at least on the desktop. I'm not seeing it over mobile yet but maybe that's just me. Any luck on your end?

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/57653-gmail-just-made-unsubscribing-from-bulk-emails-easier-than-ever.html

 

[Scshadow]

Sounds great in theory. What about when someone makes an unsubscribe link that leads to a malicious webpage? Suddenly Google has a hand in redirecting you to it. If Google adds the link up in the subject line, that kinda makes it seem like it has to be valid.

 

[wastedkill]

Sounds great in theory. What about when someone makes an unsubscribe link that leads to a malicious webpage? Suddenly Google has a hand in redirecting you to it. If Google adds the link up in the subject line, that kinda makes it seem like it has to be valid.

Boom tons of viagra at your door & email!

 

[psycros]

Sounds great in theory. What about when someone makes an unsubscribe link that leads to a malicious webpage? Suddenly Google has a hand in redirecting you to it. If Google adds the link up in the subject line, that kinda makes it seem like it has to be valid.

Boom tons of viagra at your door & email!

A guy I know makes extra cash ordering literally every trial supply he can find of every drug, skin cream and God knows what all. He gives them temporary addresses and info and trashes it as soon as the shipments arrive, then sells the goods at a flea market. I think he's kind of a genius.

 

[Jad Chaar]

Sounds great in theory. What about when someone makes an unsubscribe link that leads to a malicious webpage? Suddenly Google has a hand in redirecting you to it. If Google adds the link up in the subject line, that kinda makes it seem like it has to be valid.

Yeah that is very good point! I wonder if they will account for that.

 

[Guest]

Most of the time the mails are so sketchy that even when they have an "unsuscribe" option it makes you wonder if that will actually unsuscribe you or hijack your email, or worse.

 

[SNGX1275]

This is the 2nd news story I've seen recycled this week (first was the cell phones on airplanes).

Originally this appeared in an official Gmail blog back in 2009. http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/unsubscribing-made-easy.html

More recently it made the news again in Feb 2014: http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/24/5...n-gmail-automatically-removes-marketing-lists

I suppose to be fair the 2009 one only happened if you marked as spam, but the Feb 2014 is the same as what this article is discussing. It isn't just TS, other news sources are reporting this today too.

Yeah that is very good point! I wonder if they will account for that.

I don't think that is how it works, gmail handles sending the unsubscribe itself, so all you have to do is click, you never leave gmail's page (it doesn't open a new tab/window for you to unsubscribe like the old days).

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

They would have to implement something this easy right after I put in the effort to do 100's myself manually. It's a good idea, better late than never.

 

[SNGX1275]

@Skidmarksdeluxe - Unless you did it before February 2014 it really shouldn't have just happened, I do not see any difference in what is being reported now vs what was reported in feb of this year. Maybe you were really late to get included in the roll-out, but there is absolutely nothing new about this 'news'.

From another Feb 2014 article:

Previously only appearing for a small percentage of users, the feature will now be made available for most promotional messages with unsubscribe options, Google said on Thursday <February 20th, 2014>. Email recipients do not need to take action for the links to appear.