If your inbox is out of control with hundreds of newsletters, you’re not alone. the unroll.me service was born out of this rapidly growing problem. Once you connect your gmail account, it looks for newsletters in your email to allow you to unsubscribe from them or collect them all in one summary email.
It turned out that unroll.me was also packaging some user data and selling it for profit. specifically, the new york times reports that unroll.me was selling lyft receipts emailed to uber.
Of course, you may now want to unsubscribe from unroll.me. this is how you can do it.
how to delete your unroll.me account
There are two ways to revoke unroll.me’s access to your gmail account, and doing both is not a bad idea.
to delete your unroll.me account:
- Go to unroll.me in a browser and sign in to your account.
- Next, click your username in the top right corner of the page and click settings.
- scroll down to the bottom of the page and click delete my account.
- choose a reason for deleting your account from the dropdown menu and click delete my account once again.
From within the unroll.me app on ios, delete your account by pressing the settings icon in the upper left corner, clicking preferences and selecting delete account in the same below. click delete my account and yes to confirm.
To revoke unroll.me’s access to your google account:
- go to accounts.google.com (and make sure you’re signed in to the same google account).
- under sign in & security click connected apps & sites.
- click manage apps.
- find unroll.me and click to expand.
- click remove, then click ok.
alternatives to unroll.me
unroll.me may have made it easier to manage a growing list of newsletters and email subscriptions, but it is by no means the only way to do things. Some of the best alternatives are to take care of business yourself by employing some of Google’s built-in features.
search and destroy
a tried and true method is to open gmail and search for “unsubscribe”. When searching for this term, if you open an email, unsubscribe will be highlighted, making it easier to find. Go one step further and find the brand you want to get rid of emails from and unsubscribe from (for example, “unsubscribe from linkedin”).
the problem is that this can take some time and the unsubscribe link could be anywhere in the email.
infinite gmail filters and addresses
gmail gives you the unique ability to generate new emails on the fly. just add a plus sign and a word between your username and the at symbol.
For example, when signing up for new shopping sites, you could use example+shopping@gmail.com. emails sent to this address will continue to appear in your inbox. but you can create a filter for any incoming email sent to that version of your address.
With a filter, you can have specific emails bypass the inbox altogether and be archived with the appropriate tag. you’ll still get the emails, you can read them whenever you want, and they won’t clutter up your inbox.
unsubscribe from gmail
gmail unsubscribe is an open source script that requires minimal effort on your part. With gmail unsubscribe running, when an email you want to unsubscribe from arrives in your inbox, simply file it under the unsubscribe label. The script will then parse that email for the unsubscribe link, follow that link, and attempt to unsubscribe from the newsletter. then a record for that email is added to a google sheets document, telling you whether or not you have unsubscribed.
To install, simply make a copy of this google sheet in your drive account. In the sheet, click unsubscribe from gmail, which is located just to the right of help in the menu bar. from the dropdown menu, select configure. give the script access to your gmail account, choose a label (default is unsubscribe), and click save settings.
As with any service you give your Google account access to, you run the same risk of your data being sold to companies. gmail unsubscribe promises not to collect your emails or sell your data to uber.