Don’t ever click on things like that.

There are two kinds of mass emails: valid ones from things you have subscribed for, and spam.
“Unsubscribe” links are very different from one to the other. In legitimate emails, the unsubscribe link is valid.
But remember that people sell email addresses to spammers. If they can get some response from a person, they know there is a person reads email at that address. For unsolicited email, the unsubscribe link really means “please sell my email address to spammers so I can be deluged with spam!” So unless you know the email is valid, delete it; never click any link in it at all. If you have a spam filter, mark it as spam first.

I get those and others. I have my spam filter set high, but Outlook just isn’t that good. I send them to spam without opening or reading.

Best way to handle this is to just trash them if your spam filter doesn’t catch it. Now the spammers know that you’re a “live” email, that someone actually checks it.
In the future, if you’re not sure it’s a legit link, make sure you turn on your status bar at the bottom of your browser window. If your isn’t on, you can probably go to something like “View>Status Bar.” Since I don’t know what you use, it might be slightly different.
Once your status bar is visible, when you mouse over (don’t click it) any legit link, it will show you in the status bar where you’re about to go if you click it. If it looks fishy, don’t click it.

Cheryl,
I can always count on you to know this sort of thing. Well, I use Mac stuff. I’ve got a Status Bar — marked with a checkmark. What to do next? Oh, man, I see … it appears in the grey bar at the bottom of the page. Cool, super cool.
Thanks.

Hi Scot,
In response to this sort of treachery, I’m thinking a biblical approach may be necessary. You know – sending a lying spirit from the Lord to lull them into complacency while you drive a tent spike through their head – that sort of thing.

Ah WfO,
Being a red-letter new testament sort, I agree with the biblical approach – but lets try Matthew 5:44. (The rewards are greater)

what server are you on, scot?
i saw something similar in my gmail spam folder. you know why? simply because gmail is the best in the world in catching spam. i’ve used it for four years, and can count the spam on my left hand.
and, furthermore, they have a feature now that prevents you from drunk-emailing. not that you ever would, but it’s nice to know that they’re looking out for you all the same…

Ah, Scot…welcome to my world! ;^)
Everyone has already said it, but let me just agree that you just delete e-mail from folks you don’t know or that you didn’t ask for.
The “hovering” trick is important…Cheryl, you rock!
And WoO…my husband is right there with you, after spending three days and 15 hours removing over 60 viruses and Trojans trying to turn my computer into an attach bot. YIKES! (Gotta respect Jael…)

Just as I was reading this I received an email address from my own email address with a dirty title. I started to worry that it was sent to everyone in my address book, but after some research I found out that it’s a trick of spammers – they mask emails with the address of the recipient to beat spam filters.
Have you been selling our email address Scot? (joking).

I received a very authentic-looking email from Chase today, asking me to log onto their secure website to update some information…just click on the link to log in. The blue underlined hyperlink looked especially authentic:
http://chaseonline.chase.com/Secure/webform/OSL.aspx?LOB=3600…..
But when I held the cursor over the link, I could look at the actual url it would link to, as Cheryl instructed you to do. It was close, but not the same:
http://chaseonline.chase.gobbletygook.cz/Secure/webform/OSL.aspx?LOB=3600…
The “.cz” in the url means that I would have been whisked away to a phony Chase website hosted in the Czech Republic, where they’d prompt me to enter my account name, password, and other personal information. I do some banking with Chase, and it was a very basic, convincing “phishing” email, but luckily I took the time to investigate it.
I guess the solution is to never, ever click on anything in an unsolicited email, especially from financial institutions!

I’ve been getting a similar “MSN Featured” email from numerous sources over the past few days — all running through my school address. It’s unusual that something like that would get through the Gmail spam filter — let along numerous times. I finally just copied a phrase out of the email (there is some common wording) and set-up a filter in Gmail to send them all to trash. No problems since then.

On one hand it feels good to not be along in this situation. The past couple of days I’ve been getting around 20 of these type emails. Prior to that I’d say 2-3 a day. I like the idea Brad suggested; to copy a common phrase into your filter…I’ll give this a try and hope it works.
Sorry Scot you’re now in the spammers club. Membership dues can be sent to the phony address below…lol