Cloudmark Monday announced a service designed to replace the unsubscribe option found in e-mail newsletters that subscribers
have come to no longer trust.
Because of warnings from e-mail security experts over the past few years that tell e-mail users not to click on an unsubscribe
link within a message because doing so can actually lead to more spam, users instead have turned to labeling newsletters that
they no longer want to receive as spam - despite the fact that they signed up to receive such e-mail - so that the are relegated
to the quarantine folder instead of cluttering inboxes, according to Cloudmark.
This practice leads to a greater number of false positives, or messages mistakenly categorized as spam, and complaints from
newsletter publishers that legitimate subscribers are not receiving their products, both of which create headaches for ISPs
managing their users’ e-mail preferences, Cloudmark says.
Cloudmark is releasing Safe Unsubscribe, a new feature to its Network Feedback System, an interface for Web-based e-mail offered
by ISPs that use Cloudmark’s antispam technology to give the ISP’s subscribers the same power to report spam, phishing, and
other messaging threats as users of Cloudmark’s client software, called Cloudmark Desktop, says Jamie de Guerre, technical
director of program management with the company.
Safe Unsubscribe appears as a button in the Network Feedback System interface that users can click on instead of the unsubscribe
link embedded in an e-mail, officials say. By clicking on this button, the subscriber notifies their ISP they no longer want
to receive the newsletter, and the ISP has record of the subscription cancellation to provide to the publisher.
Cloudmark intends to release Network Feedback System with Safe Unsubscribe during the third quarter, officials say.
