Don't opt-out of spam?

Yesterday, Laura Atkins wrote a blog post suggesting that unsubscribing from spam doesn't lead to more spam.¹ I know that this is a project that she's been working on for at least a month, and I don't have any reason to doubt her results.²

Interestingly, this morning, there was a new post by Brian Krebs³ suggesting that spammers do, in fact, trade opt-out information. He even includes an image file from a spammer forum that lists opt-outs and unsubscribers.

The purpose of offering this information isn't likely to be to build lists of "HOT, ACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS" but to help spammers build lists of people who are complaining (or are likely to complain) about email. According to Brian, the last entry there mentions "abusers," which is spammer-speak for what used to be called a "screamers list". The irony runs thick with network abusers labeling the people who complain as abusers.

Brian and Laura aren't actually in disagreement. Her experiment addresses whether unsubscribing causes more mail; his evidence addresses what spammers do with the data once they have it. Both can be true at once. It will only take one mistake (or one sale) for those suppression lists to become something other than suppression lists.