One of the B2B newsletters I used to help manage costs $25k per year to subscribe to. When email security systems started auto-clicking, we fielded a bunch of angry phone calls before we figured it out.

I know there’s a vocal contingent here on HN that hates all email, but the reality is that email is heavily used for things that people want.

The one-click policy is actually about sending the list-unsubscribe header so the email client can render an opt-out button.

An unsubscribe link in the body of an email can have a confirm step.

In fact if you are serving a B2B audience it is essential that you do, since an increasing number of security services like Barracuda, Fortra, etc. auto-click every link in the email body to check for phishing. If you have one-click unsubscribe links in your email body, those people will be constantly unsubscribed without their knowledge.

This is less true than it used to be. Email inbox providers return a hard bounce if the email does not exist. Most load images by default, which returns a positive signal.

Same thing with SMS: if the number can’t receive SMS, the system returns an error.

If you’re not sure, using the client-provided unsubscribe link (usually up near the “from” address or subject line) is better than the one in the footer. Inbox providers like Gmail, Microsoft, Yahoo etc log these clicks and use them to adjust their filters.

My general approach is: if I recognize that it is something I signed up for, I usually use the unsubscribe link (either in the email client or the email footer). If I get another email from them after about a week, I mark that as spam.

Same idea with text messages. If I know why I’m getting it, I use the “reply STOP” feature.

If I don’t recognize the sender of an email or text, I mark it as spam or junk. Apple Messages has a nice “delete and report as junk” feature for unwanted text messages.