Ask HN: How to implement a national "do not email" list

1 tonymet 6 5/19/2025, 12:28:36 AM

Follow-up marketing emails have become obnoxious. Every point of sale (especially brick and mortar) sends a marketing follow up, and it’s not clear how to opt out during the transaction.

Restaurants, bars, parking apps, ticketing apps , first parties, third parties are all “spamming” with promos, surveys.

Since cash is not an option, a single night on the town results in 6-12 emails the following day.

Since no one is addressing the network affects, nor tracking the violations to the CAN-SPAM act

my question for HN community is:

How would you create a national do-not-email list to opt out of automatic marketing enrollment during the point of sale.

Comments (6)

apothegm · 9h ago

Just like the national do not call list it would become an immediate source for those who don’t care to follow the law, namely phishers and other scammers.

tonymet · 7h ago

I agree , but you could use a vendor specific hash and log the read operation .

toomuchtodo · 10h ago

With a federal law or regulatory rule (FTC). Failing that, more aggressive spam filtering.

tonymet · 10h ago

The issue is false-positives. I do need transaction confirmations, receipts. So spam filtering won’t work in this case.

CAN-SPAM should cover this case. Vendors are supposed to be obtaining consent.

toomuchtodo · 10h ago

Have you reported any of these emails under CAN-SPAM?

tonymet · 7h ago

Yes with no real outcome