What to Do When a Company Keeps Emailing You After You Unsubscribe

What to do when a company keeps emailing you after you unsubscribe#

If a company keeps emailing you after you unsubscribe, wait out the legal window (10 business days in the US), keep proof of your opt-out and every email that followed, mark those emails as spam, report the sender to your regulator, and block or filter it while you wait. In order:

1. 1

   Wait 10 business days

   That is the US CAN-SPAM deadline for honouring an opt-out. Canada also allows 10 business days; Australia allows 5 working days.

2. 2

   Save proof

   Your unsubscribe date, the confirmation page, and every email that arrived afterwards, with full headers if your mail app shows them.

3. 3

   Mark the emails as spam

   Use Report spam or Junk in your mail app, not just Delete. It tells your mailbox provider the sender is unwanted.

4. 4

   Report it to the regulator

   The FTC in the US, the ICO in the UK, the Spam Reporting Centre in Canada, the ACMA in Australia. Links are in the country table below.

5. 5

   Block or filter the sender

   A report is slow and does not stop the mail reaching you. Block the domain, not just the address, so the emails stop showing up in the meantime.

How long does a company have to honour an unsubscribe?#

In the US, 10 business days from your opt-out request, set by 15 U.S.C. § 7704 and repeated in the FTC's compliance guide. Weekends and federal holidays don't count. The FTC's guide also says a sender can't charge a fee to unsubscribe, can't ask for personal information beyond your email address, and can't make you take any step other than replying to an email or visiting a single web page.

Other countries set their own clocks, shown in the country table below. For the sender-side detail of each deadline, see how fast senders must honour unsubscribes.

What counts as a commercial email?#

CAN-SPAM covers commercial email: messages whose primary purpose is advertising or promoting a product or service (15 U.S.C. § 7702). A newsletter, a sale announcement or a product pitch qualifies, and the opt-out rules apply to it.

Transactional and relationship messages are mostly exempt. A receipt, a shipping update, a security notice or information about something you already bought is not stopped by an opt-out. The FTC reads those categories narrowly, though: an ongoing subscription doesn't turn every promotional email into a transactional one. Check which kind you're getting before you report it, because a complaint about a receipt goes nowhere.

Before you start#

A few checks save time and keep a complaint credible.

• Is the message actually commercial, or is it a receipt or account notice the law doesn't cover?
• Did you use the sender's own unsubscribe link or the address the email gave, so the request counts?
• Have 10 business days passed since you opted out (5 working days if the sender is Australian)?
• Is this a real company, or a spammer using a forged or throwaway address? The steps differ; see the spam branch below.

What proof to keep#

Regulators and email providers act on evidence. Collect it before you delete anything.

• The date and time you unsubscribed
• A screenshot of the unsubscribe confirmation page or the confirmation email
• Every email that arrived after the 10-business-day window, unedited
• Full message headers for at least one of those emails (they show the real sending domain, servers and time)
• Any reply you sent asking to be removed, with its date

The escalation steps, in order#

1. 1

   Send one clear opt-out and start the clock

   Use the unsubscribe link in the email. If there is none, reply asking to be removed and keep a copy. The 10 business days run from this request.

2. 2

   Document that it was ignored

   Save the emails that arrived after the window, screenshots with dates and sender, and full headers. The checklist above covers what to keep.

3. 3

   Report the emails as spam in your mail app

   Report spam in Gmail, Report Junk in Outlook, the Spam button in Yahoo. It costs nothing and tells your provider the mail is unwanted, which can affect where that sender's future mail lands. Whether it reaches the sender as a complaint depends on the provider, so treat it as a useful extra, not a guaranteed stop.

4. 4

   Complain to the sender's email provider

   Legitimate senders use an email service provider whose terms ban mailing people who opted out. The sending domain in the headers usually shows which one. Many have an abuse address or a report form, and a provider can suspend a sender faster than a regulator can act.

5. 5

   Report it to the regulator

   In the US, file at reportfraud.ftc.gov. The FTC uses reports to spot patterns and build cases; it does not resolve individual complaints. Outside the US, use the country table below.

6. 6

   Only then, consider legal advice

   Individuals can't sue under CAN-SPAM. Some state laws give a route for deceptive commercial email, but not for an ignored unsubscribe on its own; the FAQ explains. A consumer lawyer can tell you what applies where you live.

How to report a company that ignores your unsubscribe#

Report to the regulator where you live, or where the company is based if that's different. Each one below takes complaints from individuals, and none of them promises to answer you personally; they use reports to decide where to enforce.

United States: file a report at reportfraud.ftc.gov. The FTC's consumer advice also suggests forwarding unwanted messages to your email provider.

United Kingdom: use the ICO's report spam emails page. If the email is a scam, such as phishing for personal details, the ICO asks you to report it to Action Fraud instead.

Canada: submit it through the Spam Reporting Centre form, which passes reports to the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

Australia: use the ACMA's spam complaint form, or forward the email unchanged to [email protected] to inform its compliance work without lodging a full complaint.

EU and EEA: find your country's authority on the European Data Protection Board's list of members. If it doesn't handle marketing email, it will usually tell you which body does.

If the company is in the UK or EU#

In the UK and EU, the right to object to direct marketing is absolute: under GDPR Article 21 and UK GDPR, once you object, the company must stop using your data for marketing, and it has no grounds to refuse. Marketing email also falls under e-privacy rules (PECR in the UK), which in most cases require your consent or an existing customer relationship in the first place. Unsubscribing counts as an objection, and the ICO says an objection can be made in writing or verbally without any special wording. If the emails keep coming, report them to the ICO or your national authority with the same evidence you'd give the FTC.

If it's actually spam, not marketing#

If the sender is a forged address, a throwaway domain or a scam with no real company behind it, an unsubscribe request means nothing and a regulator report is unlikely to change anything for you. Don't click its unsubscribe link, which can confirm your address is live. Mark it as spam or phishing, block it, and move on. For the trade-off in more detail, see should you unsubscribe or mark as spam.

If there is no unsubscribe link at all#

Reply to the sender asking to be removed and keep a copy with the date; that reply is your opt-out request and starts the clock. Check the footer for a postal address, which US commercial senders must include, and write there if email gets you nowhere. If neither exists, treat it as spam. Our guide on how to get off email mailing lists covers the rest.

Block and report spam by platform#

While a complaint sits in a queue, your inbox still needs to be usable. Block hides the sender; Report spam tells your provider. Use both.

What to do when blocking doesn't work#

A block matches one address. A bulk sender that ignores opt-outs often sends from different addresses on the same domain, so the message you blocked on Monday arrives from a fresh address on Thursday. Block the whole domain where your mail app allows it, or build a filter on the domain or a phrase the emails always contain.

Marking as spam helps your provider's filter, but it is a probability call, not a rule. The realistic goal at this stage is containment: keep the mail out of view while any report runs slowly in the background. If you're still seeing mail after unsubscribing from a sender that otherwise behaves, our guide to unsubscribe not working covers the common technical causes.

A faster way to keep them out#

AI Emaily is an email client we build. It lets you block or route mail per sender or per whole domain, so a new address on the same domain is still caught, and rules you set keep filing a repeat sender the same way without a new rule per address. Blocked mail is kept and reviewable rather than silently deleted. To be clear about the limit: this hides the company's mail from you; it does not stop the company sending it, and it doesn't replace a report to the FTC or your regulator.