When will the day come when we can unsubscribe from all emails at once? I’m tired of my inbox and phone constantly being blown up with ads, emails, and information. It’s already difficult to navigate and focus on the information I want to learn. With this constant information overflow, there’s times where I can’t handle it. I can’t be the only one. I solely believe I’ve unsubscribed from emails more than I’ve ever wanted to be on email listings. I also honestly can’t think of a time where I was visiting a website, purchasing a product, or joining some group, where I thought “I need to be on their email subscriptions”.
I understand the purpose behind email listings. I just think they’re getting out of control with how every service, website, product, influencer, etc need their own email newsletters. There was a new email list I was added to recently. Problem is, I never purposefully signed up for it. I simply logged into their website (for the first time in probably years) and now I’m back on their emailing list.
I haven’t done any research on this topic, but I’m wondering if there’s some online tool that helps with email subscriptions. Some central website where you can manage what email subscriptions you want and do not want. If a user wants to be added to your email subscription, they could simply search for your product, brand name, etc and choose to sign up. If a user wants to be removed from the email subscription, same process. Utilize the online tool and remove yourself.
There’s that interesting line we play with technology – centralization. One service that centralizes many has it benefits and detriments. I see centralization as a benefit to many problems out there – especially this email subscription issue. But centralization of services leads to power being held in one location. How do we de-centralize a service? Maybe FOSS?
All-in-all this random blog post came out of frustration after unsubscribing from two other email listings that I do not need.
Well… I paused and did some googling and came across this service: https://unroll.me
Here’s an excerpt taken from the site on how the process works:
“The signup process is quick and easy. Here’s how it works: Click on the “Signup” button on the homepage. Type in your email address. Unroll.me will ask for limited access to your email address using OAuth for Gmail or username/password for all of the other services. After granting limited access, Unroll.me scans your inbox and compiles a list of your email subscriptions. This can take a few moments. Once the scanning process is complete, a list of your email subscriptions will be presented to you. You’ll be able to edit them right away. That’s it!”
This almost does what I’m thinking. This tool helps with after being on the list. I’m thinking more of a checkpoint before my inbox. Like an email firewall. Basically auto-stop email subscriptions from all of these sites that force me to join their list. I’ll have to do some more digging. If you’ve heard of a service similar to what I’m trying to describe, hit me up.