←back to thread

FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

(www.ftc.gov)
1737 points pseudolus | 8 comments | 16 Oct 24 13:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
Show context
Uehreka ◴[16 Oct 24 15:57 UTC] No.41860626[source]▶
When people try and say that regulating stuff like this is impossible, I often think about how unreasonably great the regulations around “Unsubscribe” links in emails are.

There really seems to be no loophole or workaround despite there being huge incentive for there to be one. Every time I click an “Unsubscribe” link in an email (it seems like they’re forced to say “Unsubscribe” and not use weasel words to hide the link) I’m either immediately unsubscribed from the person who sent me the email, or I’m taken to a page which seemingly MUST have a “remove me from all emails” option.

The level of compliance (and they can’t even do malicious compliance!) with this is absurd. If these new rules work anything like that, they’ll be awesome. Clearly regulating behavior like this is indeed possible.

replies(46): >>41860684 #>>41860824 #>>41860883 #>>41861066 #>>41861129 #>>41861436 #>>41861512 #>>41861678 #>>41861722 #>>41861736 #>>41861811 #>>41861814 #>>41861817 #>>41862226 #>>41862350 #>>41862375 #>>41862533 #>>41862548 #>>41862583 #>>41863105 #>>41863467 #>>41863955 #>>41863981 #>>41864245 #>>41864326 #>>41864554 #>>41864607 #>>41864815 #>>41865404 #>>41865413 #>>41865616 #>>41866082 #>>41866103 #>>41866240 #>>41866351 #>>41866850 #>>41866986 #>>41869062 #>>41869290 #>>41869894 #>>41870054 #>>41870127 #>>41870425 #>>41870478 #>>41871231 #>>41873677 #
1. hnburnsy ◴[16 Oct 24 17:55 UTC] No.41861811[source]▶
>There really seems to be no loophole or workaround despite there being huge incentive for there to be one. Every time I click an “Unsubscribe” link in an email...

The loophole is that companies now claim that the email is 'service' related as part of your 'account relationship' so you cannot unsubscribe at all, even though it clearly is for marketing and promotion.

replies(4): >>41861989 #>>41863101 #>>41863529 #>>41866323 #
2. maccard ◴[16 Oct 24 18:13 UTC] No.41861989[source]▶
That’s what the report spam button is for.
replies(2): >>41862364 #>>41863063 #
3. nvr219 ◴[16 Oct 24 18:44 UTC] No.41862364[source]▶
And what masked emails are for. I use this with fastmail and my own domain, it’s amazing.
4. orev ◴[16 Oct 24 19:44 UTC] No.41863063[source]▶
That doesn’t work well when you actually do need to receive emails from them once in a while.

Equifax abuses this to the extreme, with every single change to your credit usage triggering an “account related” alert. But you still need to allow them for that one time they actually send a useful alert.

replies(1): >>41865180 #
5. internet101010 ◴[16 Oct 24 19:49 UTC] No.41863101[source]▶
Such as loyalty programs you apparently automatically signed up for when you shopped at a store.
6. grigri907 ◴[16 Oct 24 20:30 UTC] No.41863529[source]▶
Agreed. I get daily emails from Salesforce/Tableau that start, "this is a non-promotional email," as if those magic words cleanse anything that follows.
7. joquarky ◴[17 Oct 24 00:10 UTC] No.41865180{3}[source]▶
It seems like we have all the tools we need to filter email with classification by language models.
8. _gabe_ ◴[17 Oct 24 04:06 UTC] No.41866323[source]▶
Yep. The company that my 401K is managed through began sending me these stupid emails about “Tips to manage your wealth”, and it was marked as an email that could not be unsubscribed from because it was pertinent to my account. It took an angry note left on their feedback form with a threat to report them to get those emails to finally stop showing up. It’s disgusting. I literally can’t even tell which emails I need to pay attention to that are about my 401K because they mingle spam in there.