Columnist Brian Livingston has a post on unsubscribing yourself from spam e-mails. The common advice is to not click on "unsubscribe" links in spam messages because, it is said, you are only confirming your e-mail address as active (which, as the say, leads to more spam, not less).
But is this advice correct? According to Livingston, the answer, for the most part is yes and no. Sort of. Maybe. He quotes a report that indicates just under 2 percent of spam appears to harvest e-mail addresses this way and about 10 percent don't appear to do anything. Hence, the chances are things will be okay if you click on the link. Unless, of course, you happen to click on one of those 2 percent.
So how can one tell the difference? Livingston links to this site here that lists sites that have made their deal with the Devil. There are page after page of these guys. Having said that, I'm sure there are more that haven't made the list yet.
The point of this seems, when you receive spam, is to do what you've probably been doing, just delete it and move on.
