You'd be surprised for how many technology-inept users that wouldn't make a difference. They'll still mark the email as spam. It's easier for many people to understand and easier to click.

You are absolutely right, e.g. I marked Microsoft's MSDN emails as spam. But that was largely due to the fact that the unsubscribe link in their emails redirected me to an unreachable server for weeks and then I gave up.

If an email doesn't offer an unsubscribe link, or if that link doesn't immediately unsubscribe me without any extra clicks (e.g. takes me to an "update email preferences" page or, god forbid, asks me for my email address or other info), I click Report Spam for it.

You'd be surprised how many opt-out messages and messages sent to unverified addresses I get. They all have unsubscribe links but I'll hit report spam each and every time.

It sometimes can be better to mark it as spam. There was a thing a while back where the unsubscribe link was just verifying that you still check that email account, and you click on links, so they'd send you more spam.

That's closer to an urban legend than the truth. If you once gave them your email address, they are generally good about honoring unsubscribe requests. It's expensive for them to create a high-quality customer list, so they're not going to play games that put them into a gray area. Don't be lazy and classify them as spam on this basis, because it fails to distinguish good-faith businesses from actual spammers.

Senders who bought, stole, or brute-forced your email address are a different story. For them it's just a numbers game. They are, by definition, spammers and should be treated as such.

There is a final group of senders who you did once interact with but who show these behaviors:

1. They are too incompetent to keep the unsubscribe server running;

2. They broke the the mail template so it doesn't point to a valid URL;

3. They fail to control subscription preferences within their own company so that the marketing department keeps using the same old list even though months of unsubscription requests have accrued since then;

4. (My pet peeve) They take you to a blank form that asks for personally identifying information in order to unsubscribe, rather than embedding an identifying token in the email's unsubscribe link. Out of principle, I will not enter PII into any form on the other side of an email link, even if it comes from someone in my family. It's too easy to fall victim to phishing, and I resent any sender that puts me in that situation. If a business asks for any PII to unsubscribe, I close the tab and mark the email as spam.

Any of those get marked as spam. Their intent was not to spam me, but I can't do business with incompetent senders.

Mark spam as spam. Unsubscribe from content you signed up for and no longer want.

And how many things are "signed up for you"? There's a lot of those. It's getting harder to tell what I actually signed up for, and what I thought I was signing up for.

If they say "signed up for you," then it's spam -- it's unsolicited commercial email. Unless you designated someone else as your agent to sign you up for crap on the web, then you didn't solicit it.

me too. i consider it spam because i don’t want people sending me random crap and i could care less if it hurts the person sending the mail. either way it gets it out of my way.

Not just that. If I have to follow the link and log in, it's easier to go back and click spam.

And make sure people are intentionally opting in