Thunderbird: Unsubscribe Mailing Lists

Unsubscribe From Mailing Lists is a free extension for the Thunderbird email client that enables easier newsletter unsubscribing options.

Thunderbird day today? Not sure about that but today is the day where two interesting new add-ons have been published on the Thunderbird website.

Update: Unsubscribe from Mailing Lists has been removed by its author; it is no longer available. There is no comparable add-on available for Thunderbird at this point in time.

The first was the add-on that increased the mass mailing functionality in the web browser. The Unsubscribe From Mailing Lists add-on however enables you to unsubscribe from select newsletters comfortably.

It provides an option to unsubscribe from mailing lists from within the email client. A feature similar to the one that Gmail is offering to its users for some time now.

Unsubscribe From Mailing Lists

The process is simple. The Thunderbird add-on displays an option to unsubscribe from supported mailing lists automatically in the header of emails that are received by accounts managed in the desktop email client.

You need to click on the unsubscribe link in the header to initiate the process of unsubscribing from the mailing lists.

This will display a prompt informing you that the add-on will open a new email message which, when sent by the user, will unsubscribe the email address from the mailing list.

The email usually consists of the email address of the service the newsletter came from and the subject unsubscribe in the email subject with no body text at all.

The unsubscribe link is only displayed for mailing lists that use the Inxmail email marketing service which is used by global brands such as Coca Cola.

This limits the usefulness of the extension somewhat considering that companies may use other mass mailing services for their newsletters. It won't work for instance for most newsletters that include an unsubscribe link that you need to click on to unsubscribe on a website.

Tip: make sure you check the source of the newsletter or email first before you try to unsubscribe from it. Spammers may use the information, that the email account is active since they have received a reply, to fire even more spam your way.

Still, it may be useful to users who get the supported type of newsletters regularly and want a faster way of unsubscribing from them.

The add-on is compatible with Thunderbird 2 and Thunderbird 3 up to beta 3 which excludes the latest release of Thunderbird 3 beta.

The add-on can however be forced to be compatible with the Nightly Tester Tools. A download is available at the Thunderbird website over at Mozilla.

Update: Unsubscribe from Mailing List is compatible with all recent versions of Thunderbird as well. It was tested on a system running Thunderbird 31.

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