Somehow my email account got hacked in such a way that the hacker subscribed me to literally hundreds of subscriptions. Most are legitimate companies trying so hard to interest me in their products that I have absolutely no interest in. Even with a good third party anti-spam filter on my Outlook, I had to read through each day's long list of spam or risk losing an important legitimate email.

My choices seemed to be either to change my email address (would create all sorts of issues) or just unsubscribe unsubscribe unsubscribe. For the last couple of weeks, every day I've unsubscribed to dozens. The rate of these annoying spams seems to be diminishing but it's by no means over.

What I've learned is that each time I unsubscribe, I get one of about a dozen by now familiar responses: either a web page message that I've been unsubscribed, a request to verify my un-subscription request, or one of several cookie cutter pages asking "why are you unsubscribing?" with the same 5 choices. Most senders stop after I unsubscribe, but a few assholes seem to ignore multiple requests.

I've learned to recognize the unsubscribe link in multiple languages in multiple alphabets. (Google translate is most helpful in this.)

If anyone knows more about this type of hack, I'd be interested in knowing.