Gmail adds new Un-subscribe button

Keeping our inboxes free from spam can sometimes seem like a never ending battle as we continue to receive newsletters and marketing content that we never requested. Often these emails contain a link to unsubscribe from the service that has sent you the unsolicited mail, however this doesn't always work and isn’t an ideal solution.

Thankfully email services are getting better at weeding out the amount of spam that reaches our inboxes, but the problem is far from over. Google has been a pioneer when it comes making email better and it's latest addition to Gmail is likely to be welcomed by many, including businesses that have fallen victim to being incorrectly marked as spam. Google has added an unsubscribe button allowing Gmail users to easily unsubscribe from mailing lists when they receive a marketing email.

In the past when a user doesn't want to receive marketing material from certain companies they have marked the email as spam which can then cause issues for the company that sent it. If too many people mark something as spam incorrectly it can have a negative affect when that company try’s to email users that actually do want to receive the content.

Google’s new unsubscribe feature will make it much easier to avoid unsolicited email in the future and without having to visit the website sending the email and trying to locate their ‘hard to find’ unsubscribe link. Google said it has already started rolling out this new feature and that you should see the option in your inbox very soon.

Whilst we are never likely to be completely spam free as those determined enough to evade spam filters will continue to work to do so. However this move by Google is certainly a step in the right direction and should alleviate the confusion between what is unwanted email and what is actually spam.  

 

iMessage Spam Exploit Rears Its Ugly Head

Apple’s iMessage system is being exploited by a supposed AppleScript that has the potential to flood up a user’s account and crash the service. A report by The Next Web says the denial of service lock up is being targeted at a group of small developers right now, but paints a larger potential to reach a wider userbase.

Right now, the incident seems confined to the jailbreak community (any device, jailbroken or otherwise, can be a target). The AppleScript, as demonstrated by app developer iH8sn0w, is capable of flooding a person’s iMessage account so severely that the app could crash. Or, at the very least, messages could come so frequently that it would make the experience very limited because of the amount of notifications.

“What’s happening is a simple flood: Apple doesn’t seem to limit how fast messages can be sent, so the attacker is able to send thousands of messages very quickly,” said iOS developer Grant Paul. Paul also explains that users can send complex message using unicode characters to crash the app to crash and unable to reopen.

While this issue is so far only confined to a small number of users, the potential to be used more widely is there. Right now, there’s no way to block a specific iMessage sender, so if someone knows your account info, you’re open to attack. Of course, you can disable your iMessage number and handle, but that’s not exactly the solution people will be ok with in the long run.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]