> I don't think this will fly when the relevant authorities finds out

I've seen public entities switch to Office 365 in order to "get rid of spam" and thereby losing a lot of incoming legitimate mails in the same process. A fact that is worsened by users using the "Mark as spam" button to delete legitimate emails from their inbox (a practice that is horribly common).

Going from that to billion-EUR fines to Google and Microsoft is a very, very long way.

I get spam from legitimate companies, probably because they don't validate the email addresses their customers give them, and thus incorrectly assume that I have a business relationship with them. I do not, thus it's spam.

Companies need to validate email addresses.

I get AT&T bills, OnStar notifications, etc. I have never used any of their services. Someone else probably signed up with my email address.

Additionally, other companies are violating the CAN SPAM Act by hiding the unsubscribe ability behind a log in. Nextdoor does this.

I don't know a single person that uses the mark as spam option to "delete legitimate emails". In fact, almost everybody just leaves those emails in their inbox after reading them. A small fraction of users use the archive function. I do however know lots of people (me being one of them) who use mark as spam for unsolicited emails. And no, spam is not legitimate, no matter how hard online marketing people are trying to make it so.

You should try working at an abuse desk for an business providing email services at some point. :)

You are, of course, absolutely right re. spam and rightfully so. On the other hand, I regularly get spam reports re. 100% legitimate mails, often in the middle of longer email conversations and so on, and where one side of the conversation marks entire email threads as spam.

We always follow up on spam complaints and the one thing we do get often in cases like that is that the other party only wanted to delete the emails and didn't realise there were other consequences.

Yes, there's a lot of people that knows how to use the "Mark as spam button". I still, however, maintain the position that a lot of other people don't know how to use such features.

If you automatically get the newsletter of a company where you have signed up on their web service, you would mark that as spam?

I would unsubscribe and delete, but have not really thought about marking as spam or not yet. Just interested in some input there.

If I would get it from a company where I have not signed up the answer is of course obvious.

In theory, I agree with the parent post and the sibling reply. If I didn't ask for email, then it doesn't belong in my inbox. In practice, I do what you do - unsubscribe and delete. If I get any more mail after that...

When I get the old "you'll be removed from our list within 10 days" message, I generally reply to it with a quick message: "Please remove me immediately or your next message will be marked as spam". Many times the sender has complied with a personal response provided someone saw my message, even for some large companies with "no-reply" emails.

For smaller companies - especially the mom and pop type operations - I'll usually give them a friendlier notice. "Hi, I unsubscribed and I'm still getting emails. Please remove me as I'd really rather not mark your messages as spam". I usually get a friendly personal response with apologies and a removal.

In all cases, after the company has been warned, I don't think twice about sending them to spam.

Yes, I would. Buying a product off you (or signing up for your free/promotional service) doesn’t mean you get to spam me, IMO.