Feedback from users is an important part of Cloudmark’s spam filtering (along with spam traps, a policy engine, and other goodies.) Even with the best of spam filters, sometimes a new type of spam message makes it through to an end user’s inbox. However, if they are at one of our clients and they click on the
Spam button in their mail client, the Cloudmark Global Threat Network receives a notification. Using this, our filters learn automatically and in real time what the new attack looks like.
Yet, more than half the time that someone in the US clicks on the
Spam button, what they are complaining about is not really spam at all, but marketing or bulk email they probably signed up for. In these cases, if the end user doesn't want to receive these email messages anymore, then they would be better off unsubscribing. In a recent study of the feedback that we receive from a major US client, I found that users were more likely to flag notifications from social networks as spam than they were miracle diet ads.
Here are the categories for the spam reports we received. The genuine spam message categories are highlighted in red.
As you can see, only about 40% of the total spam reports in this study were genuine spam. Though the pharmacy spammers were the most frequently reported, we receive fewer reports for them than we do for legitimate business trying to contact their customers. Our system has ways of telling the difference between real spam and other unwanted email that gets flagged as spam, but from the point of view of the end user, flagging all unwanted email as spam is not effective. Commercial and social network email will continue to turn up in future. For managing these messages, unsubscribing or adjusting your delivery options is a far better choice.
If you are a commercial sender worried about your mailings getting flagged as spam, then a first step would be to make your unsubscribe link more obvious, and give your customers and easy way of configuring how often you contact them and what sort of emails they get from you. Please make certain that you are signed up to all available
Feedback Loops, especially if you are sending to those networks. The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) provides detailed best practices for senders:
MAAWG Best Practices [PDF]. If you need help with this Cloudmark's partner
Return Path can help you improve your customers' experience.
There has long been conventional wisdom that you should not click on unsubscribe links in spam because that tells the spammers you are there, and it will just cause them to send you more spam. Personally, I haven't found this to be true. For several years now I have unsubscribed from every unwanted bulk email that comes my way and haven't suffered any negative consequences. Of course, I keep my operating system, browser and anti-virus software up to date, just as we all should. Even if you may not want to click on unfamiliar unsubscribe links, you won't come to any harm unsubscribing from web sites you are familiar with.
So, before you hit that spam button, think for a moment. Is this message from a social network you have signed up for? A company you have bought from? A political group you sent money to? Your church or knitting circle? In that case, please check for an unsubscribe link that you can use instead of the
Spam button. In fact, you can even be proactive about it, and use the search feature in your mail client to look for old emails containing the word
unsubscribe. If you see several unwanted messages from the same source, then consider unsubscribing. For social networks such as Facebook and Linkedin you may have to find an options page where you can decide exactly what types of message you want to receive from them, but there should always be a link to that page in the unwanted message.
Unfortunately, unsubscribing won’t work for your aunt in Florida who forwards all those Calming Manatee pictures to everyone in her address book. I recommend sending her a link to Honey Badger.
