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

(www.ftc.gov)
1737 points pseudolus | 1 comments | 16 Oct 24 13:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source
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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.

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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.

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1. _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.