Conventional wisdom is that you should never click on the "remove" link in spam because it will only result in more spam. However, if you follow these guidelines, you can reduce the amount of unwanted email by clicking on some "remove" links.

Place the mouse on the "remove" link without clicking it. The status line of your email program should display the domain name in the link. The domain name is the word, sometimes with dashes, before the ".com" or ".net".

1. If email is from a legitimate company, especially one that you recognize, it should be safe to click. Legitimate companies like LL Bean, Sprint, American Airlines, etc. are not going to send you unwanted email.
2. Lookup the domain name in the "remove" link at www.whois.net. It will list the name and address of the owner and, most important, the date when the domain was originally created.
3. If the owner is an individual and not a company, it is almost certainly spam, do not click the link.
4. If the domain was originally created within the last two years, do not click the link.
5. If the owner's full address and phone number are not listed, do not click the link.
6. If the owner is not in the US, Canada or other modern country, do not click the link.
7. Otherwise, if the Whois information is complete, it should be safe to click the "remove" link.

Probably the most important piece of information in the Whois information is the age of the domain name. Almost no spamming domains in the US/Canada are more than three years old and almost all established, legitimate companies registered their domain name more than five years ago. A spammer typically uses a domain name for only a few months.

(We similarly study the Whois information to determine which domains to add to our URL filtering. We are not aware of any domain name which was registered more than five years ago which is blocked by our service.)

In summary, if the email is from a legitimate company, especially one you recognize, you should follow their instructions to remove yourself from their mailings.