If you’re logged in, and you look at the top of this post, you see
Click on the Subscribe link and you’ll be “subscribed” to the Topic — you’ll receive email notifications of new activity within the Topic. (Right now the Subscribe link also appears at the top of some forums. It doesn’t work. You can only subscribe to Topics. The site devs are hunting it down.)
MVP @Kirsty filled in the flip side:
There are two ways to unsubscribe. The easiest is to click on the UnSubscribe link on the top of the topic page:
The other is through your profile – click on your user name (the hyperlink in the left of any of your posts), select Subscriptions from the menu on the left, and click the pink X button next to any topic you wish to unsubscribe to.
The Notify me of follow-up replies via email can also be selected/deselected on any post.