Unsubscribing From Internet Offers Could Cause More Headaches
NEW YORK (CBS) - When you click on the unsubscribe button on an Internet offer, you may be doing the exact opposite.
It's a choice many of us face every day. Whether to subscribe or unsubscribe to an Internet offer can have big consequences on your future online experiences.
When you unsubscribe to large trusted sites, you are off their mailing lists. However, with others, it's a different story.
See if Marquise Gordon's experience sounds familiar.
"Some of these companies that offer me loans, I unsubscribe and I just keep getting the offers, and more, over and over again," he said.
If that's happening to you it's not your imagination, but why does it happen?
Sometimes the motives are hidden and misdirected, but often scams will simply do the exact opposite of what they claim.
In this case, unsubscribing means they will now consider you a subscriber.
"What you are doing is authenticating that yours is a good e-mail, and they can take it and resell it, so you wind up with more e-mails," Claire Rosenzweig of the New York Better Business Bureau said.
An e-mail address can be so valuable that sites have been set up to mimic the Federal Trade Commission's "do-not-call list," with a false "do-not-e-mail" list.
"Those that claim there is a do-not-e-mail registry, there is no such thing. They are only trying to get you to click," she said.
To unsubscribe from real established sites follow their instructions.
When you are confronted with suspected spam, don't click it. Instead, just delete it.
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