A new unsubscribe button in Google Messages should help curb spam

Google Messages is enhancing its capabilities with the introduction of a new “Unsubscribe” feature designed to provide users with more control over unwanted messages from businesses. Hopefully, this helpful feature will help to mitigate the barrage of promotional content and other non-essential messages most of us have delivered via SMS, MMS, and RCS on a daily basis.

The new “Unsubscribe” button is showing up already, and it shows up conveniently within the standard flow of the messaging interface, appearing either at the bottom of the chat window, just above the text input field, or accessible through the conversation’s 3-dot overflow menu.

When you see this pop-up, you’ll be prompted with a slide-up sheet requesting the reason for unsubscribing. There are a handful of options, but selecting “Spam” will present an additional option to “Report this sender,” helping out everyone by reporting potentially malicious or unsolicited content to help the system to be more beneficial to everyone.

Extras behind the scenes

Behind the scenes, hitting the “Unsubscribe” button triggers Google Messages to send a “STOP” command to the originating business’s number. Following this action, you should no longer receive non-essential communications from that particular sender. However, you may still receive essential, requested messages such as one-time passwords, boarding passes explicitly requested from the business, or confirmations regarding their unsubscribe request.

And, if you find that you too-quickly chose to unsubscribe to a business, a “Subscribe” option will be available within the conversation’s 3-dot overflow menu. How all this will actually work remains to be seen. I’m hopeful, though, that this will at least begin to tame the ridiculous number of unsolicited messages I get via SMS/MMS/RCS, though, even if it doesn’t completely remove them all.

Regional availability

For Rich Communication Services (RCS) Business messages, the “Unsubscribe” option will be available to users in the United States, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Mexico, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Additionally, for traditional Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) messages originating from short codes (five to six-digit numbers) and alphanumeric senders within the United States, this feature will also be present.