I try to do that, but a lot of legitimate services send me mails because someone else trying to sign up with my email and they don't do verification right. Part of the problem is having a very simple Gmail address, but also another part of the problem is that companies think that since someone tried to validate my email as theirs now they can spam it.
Yeah, it drives me insane, once someone used my email to sign-up on eBay and started buying sex toys. Can't believe eBay didn't do email verification. I was at work and started getting emails like congratulations, your dildo is on its way, with pictures.
I got emails about the death of my mother because a guy had my email address printed on his cards by mistake. She was pretty much alive and living with me. It would scare the hell out of me if it happened again now that we are further apart.
That's too bad, as I've found the unsubscribe links generally work and mean that I stop getting emails. It means my spam folder is usually actual spam/phishing emails instead of stuff that I simply find annoying.
Huh, my spam folder is also full of what I consider actual spam, not just phishing and devious stuff. I consider what amounts to the email equivalent of junk mail to be spam.
To rephrase: my spam folder only has stuff that I can't unsubscribe from because it was genuinely unsolicited. I rarely, if ever, get unsolicited marketing because I untick the "send me promo shit" checkboxes. Otherwise, I assume it was my mistake in giving them my email in the first place.
If I get an email from an email I don't want legitimate company, I unsubscribe and never have to worry about getting non-transactional email from them anymore. I _do_ still get transactional emails from them, because I didn't misclassify them as unsolicited.
2) If I did signed up I make the effort of going through their unsubscribe procedure.
3.1) If I still get e-mails after (2), I file a request for my personal data under the GDPR (EU citizen here).
3.2) Once I got that, I use the GDPR to delete all of the data associated with my account / e-mail address.
4) If I still get e-mails after (3), it goes to SPAM.
With step 3, I hope that I can make them notice their bad behaviour. My goal is to drive up the costs of that behaviour (so they get incentivised to change it). Also, I'm generally interested in the personal data that a service has associated with me.
That would be the way to go, indeed. It didn't happen yet. I'm not sure if I'd take it to the privacy authority, since that would involve much more work, I think.
You might be surprised. I worked for an organisation that got ~1000 requests a year up until recently, each request involved going into every system manually, taking screenshots, tagging files etc. Quite often a good few hours per request and on a few memorable occasions, several days work for a single request. It definitely does cost many larger companies, but to varying degrees.
1) if I never signed up goes immediately to SPAM
2) if I did signed up I make the effort of going through their unsubscribe procedure
3) if I still get emails after (2) goes to SPAM