The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has provided some clarification to the CAN-Spam Act, adding four rule provisions to existing requirements.
- An e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender.
- A “sender” of commercial e-mail can include an accurately-registered post office box or private mailbox established under United States Postal Service regulations to satisfy the Act’s requirement that a commercial e-mail display a “valid physical postal address.”
- A definition of the term “person” was added to clarify that CAN-SPAM’s obligations are not limited to natural persons.
- The definition of “sender” was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in a single e-mail message is responsible for complying with the Act’s opt-out requirements.
The question remains – Will the CAN-Spam Act (even with these clarifications) prevent those 100 spam gangs who send 80 percent of the world’s spam from continuing to fill inboxes with spam?
Probably not.
For more information, please read FTC updates CAN-SPAM (DMNews)
Comments
One Response to “CAN-Spam Act Updated (2008)”
If a business sends and email through a 3rd party/list rental agency, the from line is from the business itself who is responsible for honoring opt outs? The agency or the business or both? We have a business that has several hundred thousand consumers. To go through and see if the 300 opt outs from the email sent to the list rental agency happens to be in our system is a very manual, time consuming process. In the email there were two opt out links one for the business opt out and one for the agency ‘network’ opt out. Are both of these necessary?