You receive a piece of spam with an unsubscribe link at the bottom, should you click on the link or just delete the email?

If you receive a piece of spam or unsolicited email with an unsubscribe link at the bottom, it is better not to respond. The best thing that you can do with spam is to delete it and to not respond in any way. If you think about it, if no one bought anything from spam email, the spammers wouldn't make any money and much of the spam would disappear.

The CAN-SPAM Act that was passed in 2004 mandated that email have unsubscribe instructions included. So most legitimate people who send out newsletters and other mass mailings have an unsubscribe link on their email. The problem is that spammers don't necessarily follow the rules. In fact many spammers include the unsubscribe link to get you to respond. When you do, they know they have a real live email address and they add your email address to every list they can find, including lists for pornographic sites.

So by trying to unsubscribe you can sometimes cause more spam to be sent to your address and once you are on some of those lists, it is almost impossible to get off of them. Also, the unsubscribe link of an unscrupulous spammer could take you to a phishing site or another malicious website.