The Unsubscribe Trap: Why Clicking That Junk Email Link Might Be a Bad Idea

I trust my emails from this company. But if you aren't familiar with them, don't click their links, even to unsubscribe from mailing lists!

It’s tempting, right? You get some junk email about “Luxury Watches” or “You’ve Been Selected for a FREE iPad!!!” and you think, ugh, no thanks, then scroll to the bottom and click that little “unsubscribe” link like you’re solving a problem.

But here’s the rub: clicking that unsubscribe link might not save you—it might actually screw you over.

If the email came from a real company you recognize—say, a store you once bought something from or a newsletter you actually signed up for—then yeah, sure, go ahead and unsubscribe. They probably don’t want to get sued for spamming people. They’ll remove you.

But most of the junk clogging your inbox? That’s not from anyone you want to trust. It’s from faceless spam factories running out of sketchy domains that vanish as fast as they appear. These aren’t businesses trying to market a product. They’re trolls with mailing lists.

And clicking “unsubscribe” on one of their emails doesn’t make you disappear. It does the opposite. It tells them, loud and clear: this email address is real, a human is reading, and even better, that human interacts. That’s gold to them. They sell that information. They plug your address into more mailing lists. You end up with even more garbage, possibly laced with phishing scams or malware links, and now you’ve got a real mess on your hands.

Some of those links don’t even bother pretending. You click to “unsubscribe” and land on a fake site that installs malware or tries to get you to download something you absolutely should not.

So what should you do instead? Just mark it as spam. Let your email provider know it’s trash, so the filters can learn and start throwing that garbage out before you ever see it. Don’t click. Don’t reply. Don’t even open it if you can help it. If there is an unsubscribe button at the top from your email provider that is probably safe. But in doubt? Mark as spam or don't touch.

If it’s something you actually subscribed to and it’s just gotten annoying, then sure, unsubscribe away. But if it’s one of those messages that makes you squint and go, “when the heck did I sign up for this?” don’t fall for the trap.

Because in the weird gladiator arena that is your inbox, that unsubscribe button isn’t always the escape hatch. Sometimes, it’s just bait.