Why you should be careful before clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ button on emails in your inbox

Be careful before you 'unsubscribe'

Inboxes are chaos central these days, swarming with emails offering crypto tips, flash sales, and the annoying LinkedIn emails of who looked up your profile. The usual exit route? That trusty “unsubscribe” link. But according to cybersecurity experts, that link could do more harm than good, as per a report by The Wall Street Journal.

The report quotes cybersecurity firm DNSFilter, which suggests that one in every 644 unsubscribe clicks leads to a potentially malicious website. The danger? Clicking tells scammers your email is active and monitored—essentially raising your hand in a crowd of bots and burner accounts.

“You’ve left the safe, structured environment of your email client and entered the open web,” TK Keanini of DNSFilter told The Wall Street Journal. This can expose users to phishing sites, malware downloads, or shady data harvesting setups. Some unsubscribe pages ask for login credentials, which is an immediate red flag and something one should never do.

According to the report, even legitimate-looking unsubscribe pages can be problematic. Michael Bargury of Zenity told WSJ that re-entering your email on such pages just confirms to spammers that they’ve got a live one.

Experts recommend using your email client’s built-in “list-unsubscribe” headers, typically found at the top of legit marketing emails. These don’t open risky web pages and are managed by email providers. If that’s not available, mark the email as spam or create a filter to automatically block future messages, as per the report.

For long-term inbox hygiene, use disposable or alias emails for signups. Apple’s “Hide My Email” feature and browser privacy extensions can help mask your real address.

Don’t blindly trust an “unsubscribe” link. In today’s digital age, staying off a scammer’s radar is often safer than asking to be removed from their list.