| FTC Updates CAN-SPAM - Effective July 7th 2008 |
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| Blog | |
| Written by Stefan Pollard | |
| Sunday, 01 June 2008 | |
 As mentioned by my colleague in an earlier post, The U.S. Federal Trade Commission recently updated the 2004 CAN-SPAM Act with four major clarifications, which go into effect July 7, 2008: 1. You can't require a subscriber to pay a fee, provide information other than the email address and opt-out preferences, or do anything else other than sending a reply email or visiting a single Web page. If you have a one-click unsubscribe process, you are OK here. However, if you require subscribers to use a password to access an opt-out page or click a confirmation link to process the request, you should make changes. If you don’t accept replies to your sending address, you should make changes and monitor for unsubscribe requests as well. 2. The clarification of who the official sender is of a message with more than one advertiser allows the advertisers to decide among themselves who is the sender. Common sense dictates that whoever is listed in the friendly from address and is responsible for transmission to the list is the sender. The modification makes it clear that only the sender is responsible for processing opt-outs and has to provide an address. Previously, the law implied that all advertisers might have had to provide opt-outs and addresses. Note: if the sender fails to honor its responsibility, all advertisers in the message can be held accountable. 3. A sender can use a U.S. Postal Service post-office box or private mailbox address as a legal address to satisfy the CAN-SPAM requirement of a "valid physical postal address." Thus, if you run a small business out of your home and use a P.O. box or service like Mail Boxes Etc. to collect and send mail, you can use that address instead of your home address. DMA members are still required to use a physical street address per membership rules. 4. The definition of "person" to refer to the email sender was modified to clarify that CAN-SPAM applies to businesses or automated mailing services as well as natural persons. Also, the FTC didn't shorten the time you have to remove an unsubscriber from your list, as some had expected. It remains at 10 days, but we still suggest you remove the address immediately upon request to avoid annoying recipients and exposing yourself to spam complaints. Comments (2)
Direct Response Copywriter written by Trevor Levine, July 9, 2008
Stefan, thanks for your article on the CAN SPAM Act. I have a question.
As a business owners, am I allowed to visit websites of my prospects, one at a time, find their email addresses, and then email them each a relevant email message? (even though they never gave me express permission to do so?) If so, then am I allowed to email my message to two or more of these prospects at the same time (as long as it's relevant to both of them)? If so, then where is the line between doing what I've described versus "harvesting" or "scraping" addresses? report abuse
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While I'm not a lawyer, and don't pretend to play one, I will provide my understanding of harvesting as it pertains to CAN-SPAM.
Harvesting is the act of collecting publicly displayed email address from Web sites or Web services.
Here's the catch, email addresses from Web sites or Web services that have published a notice prohibiting the transfer of email addresses for the purpose of sending email may not be "harvested", not even manually. Most programs don't take the time to check privacy policies or terms of service to differentiate.
Were you to perform this behavior manually by visiting selected Web sites, and using the public displayed address to send unsolicited messages (while following the rest of the CAN-SPAM requirements) and verify the lack of prohibited notice above, I don't believe it would violate the law.
Sending individually or in bulk does not make a difference. Relevance determines likelihood of complaints, not legal compliance.