Often these "spam" reports by end users are just accidental clicks as well. Many of the abuse reports we get are like an email from someone's Mum and visibly legitimate. At other times there are users who use the Report Spam function as a kind of inbox management tool - a way of moving mail away so they don't have to see it because Trash or Delete or whatever is just further away from their pointer.
I tell my friends and family to never click unsubscribe links, unless they had proactively subscribed. Buying something from a company that requires an email does not count. unsolicited marketing emails are spam and should be treated as such. Double so if that company sends marketing emails disguised behind support@company.com.
No, sending marketing from support emails is almost certainly trying to game spam filters. Marketing@company.com would work for the allow replies purpose.
"Report spam" is quicker and easier than "unsubscribe".
Gmail added a popup asking the user if they want to unsubscribe when flagging a newsletter with the appropriate unsubscribe headers, so it must be common enough to warrant Gmail developer attention.
Thing is, unsubscribe links are often an "inform spammers that this mail address is in use" link. Even the ones Gmail offers up.
If I didn't click their button to subscribe, I'm not clicking their button to unsubscribe. Who's to say they won't just "sign me up" again after a while? In fact I know several large US corporations which routinely sign you up for notifications again after a few months.
If you didn't click the button, then of course, you don't send the unsubscribe message.
If you did subscribe to a newsletter and no longer want to receive it (which is the majority of these cases), then the unsubscribe action is the logical thing to do.
> If you did subscribe to a newsletter and no longer want to receive it (which is the majority of these cases), then the unsubscribe action is the logical thing to do.
