A reader made a wrong click that misidentified an email as spam. Now she wants to know if there’s anything more she should do.
“I hit the wrong button and put an email I subscribe to in the spam folder. Then I got this message from the site that sends the email:“We received this abuse report (below) from Comcast today. If you no longer want to receive our Daily Update email, please go to the Profile tab of the Settings screen to turn them off. Otherwise, please take action to let Comcast know that we are not spamming you. We appreciate your prompt attention to this matter.”I hit “this is not junk” to restore it. Is this an overreaction? Do I need to do anything else?
As someone who sends out newsletters, I can tell you that it isn’t an overreaction. Having a message marked as spam can cause serious problems for a sender. It sometimes leads email providers like Comcast, Outlook, Gmail, and Yahoo to block emails from your address to all of their users. The sender’s reaction is actually a very good business practice.
Marking as ‘not spam’ should be sufficient. It also wouldn’t be a bad idea to add them your approved or safe senders list. The mechanism for that varies depending on your email provider.
I know that you clicked ‘spam’ by accident but I’ll remind people to only click ‘spam’ or ‘junk’ if it’s really something unsolicited. If you signed up for emails and no longer want them, go through the proper steps to unsubscribe. And if you do find out that you’ve accidentally hit the ‘spam’ button, follow through and mark the message as ‘not spam.’