Stop the spam: kill unwanted calls, emails and letters
Email marketing needs your prior consent in the EU. Objection to direct marketing is absolute. The right sequence turns the flood into a trickle — and repeat offenders into complaints.
- Sort legal from criminal spamNewsletters from real companies: fixable with rights below. Scam blasts from rotating addresses: don’t unsubscribe (it confirms you exist) — mark as spam, block, and check suspicious ones with our scam checker.
- Use the unsubscribe — onceEU ePrivacy rules require prior opt-in consent for email/SMS marketing (Art. 13, with a narrow existing-customer exception) and every message must carry a working opt-out. One click should end it.
- Still coming? Object formallyEmail the company: “Under Art. 21(2) GDPR I object to all processing of my data for direct marketing, across all channels. Confirm within 14 days.” This objection is absolute — no balancing, no fee.
- Cut the source: erasure from marketing listsAdd Art. 17: delete me from your marketing databases and confirm which third parties received my data, informing them too (Art. 19). Data-broker lists die this way.
- Register on national do-not-call listsMost countries run statutory do-not-call registers; many now require opt-in for cold calls altogether. Registration is free and gives the telecom regulator a hook to fine callers who ignore it.
- Report the recidivistsMarketing after objection is a slam-dunk complaint: to your DPA (GDPR side) or telecom regulator (calls/SMS). Attach your objection email and the messages that followed. These fines happen constantly.
The mental model: consent-first for electronic marketing (ePrivacy Art. 13), absolute objection afterwards (GDPR Art. 21(2)), and regulators who treat “marketing after objection” as their easiest win. Postal marketing and cold calls have national wrinkles — some countries allow opt-out-based calling, more are flipping to opt-in — but the objection + deletion combination above works in every one of our 33 countries. Give it two weeks and the volume collapses; what survives is criminal spam, which you block rather than argue with.
Verified against the sources above on 18 July 2026. Information, not legal advice.