Spam is one of the worst things about email. Google understands that everyone hates spam. That's why it added a new "unsubscribe" option that makes it easier than ever to get off all of those pesky emailing lists.
Nowadays it seems like nearly every business is hounding you for your email. Many stores will even deny you a valuable coupon, so that you have to subscribe to their incessant emails about new promotions. Of course, you can always just follow the company's unsubscribe instructions to leave the list, but sometimes those are so long-winded that you just give up. Either that or you can't even find the unsubscribe option in the fine print of the email. It's a terrible hassle.
Google gets it. Hence the new easy unsubscribe button. When you open your Gmail, all you have to do is click on the offending message and right next to the company's email address, there should be a link that says, "unsubscribe." Once you click the link, Gmail will send you a pop up message asking if you're sure you want to unsubscribe from this list. Then you hit "confirm" and you're home free.
The process may not be instantaneous, Google warns, but it should be painless. Google will do all the dirty work for you of contacting the email list curator and telling that person or robot to please stop sending emails to this address immediately.
"Keep in mind that mailing lists may take up to three days to process your unsubscription request, so it may take a few days for you to stop receiving mail from the list," Google wrote in a support message.
The unsubscribe option won't be available for every list that you want to get off of, but it will be there for many, so your work is halfway done for you by Google. As for the rest of those annoying messages, well, you'll still have to either studiously ignore them like you did before or actually unsubscribe manually from them (oh the horror).
Google first introduced this handy new feature to Gmail Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group conference in San Francisco. Google tested the new feature out on some unsuspecting users, but now, it's finally rolling out to all users. Take that, Spam!
