The FTC has approved four new rule provisions under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.  These provisions clarify some of the existing rules, and create better definitions for mailers.  If you are following the industry best practices already, these changes shouldn’t have much of an impact on your program.  The new provisions will become effective 45 days after it is published, which will happen in the next few days.

Highlights:

Unsubscribe - Must be handled in one of two ways.  The recipient must be able to reply directly to the email to unsubscribe.  There must be a link in the email that leads directly to the unsubscribe page.  The only piece of information that can be required is an email address.  Many companies require a password to login to change email preferences.  This will now be illegal.  This will by far have the biggest impact of the new provisions.

Address - You can now use a P.O. Box as long as it is registered with the USPS as a legitimate postal address.

Definition of Person - A “person” can now mean a company, association, or nonprofit group.  There was some hope that nonprofits would be excluded from the act, they were not.

Definition of Sender - We’ve now defined sender for emails with multiple advertisers.  A sender is the owner of the opt-out mechanism, and the sender defined in the from-address.

Press Release:

The Federal Trade Commission has approved four new rule provisions under the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (CAN-SPAM or the Act). The provisions are intended to clarify the Act’s requirements. The provisions and the Commission’s Statement of Basis and Purpose (SBP) will be published in the Federal Register shortly.

The new rule provisions address four topics: (1) 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; (2) 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; (3) 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”; and (4) a definition of the term “person” was added to clarify that CAN-SPAM’s obligations are not limited to natural persons.

Full text can be found here:
http://www.ftc.gov/os/2008/05/R411008frn.pdf

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