How do I remove myself from academic mailing lists? When I was a grad student, I participated in a bunch of conferences, and sent papers to journals and the like.

But now I'm no longer in academia. I've been out for more than three years, and I still get a few emails a week notifying me of new conferences, hotel discounts for those who register, extended deadlines and the other usual stuff.

The thing is that none of these emails offer contact information or ways to unsubscribe from the mailing list. And it's not like they're from organizations I previously interacted with, but they are certainly about my former line of research. They are probably worse than spam, because I don't even think you could report them as spam.

I removed myself from all site registrations I can remember, such as IEEE and ACM, but these keep coming and coming and coming and coming.

How can a former academic get himself removed from all these mailing lists?
Sadly, that sounds like spam, and you should treat it however you'd treat spam.

I'm not sure you should assume good faith on the part of the people sending you those e-mails.  I'm an active academic with an e-mail address accessible on my university website, and I receive:


Legitimate conference announcements over e-mail lists used by people in the area, which I could unsubscribe from if I wished.
Announcements from people who actually know me.
Unsolicited announcements from scam journals and conferences.


I receive several of the last category every week (and more, unsurprisingly, than any other category).  I do not get legitimate mass e-mails that are not in the first two categories.  It's possible that in other fields there are some legitimate announcements sent the way you describe, but I'd guess very few.

In other words: spam is spam, and you should feel no compunctions about treating it that way.