New Opt-Out Clause Makes CAN-SPAM Worse

snydeq writes "Three years of mulling, and the FTC has made the CAN-SPAM Act worse, writes Gripe Line's Ed Foster. Chief among the offenses in the FTC's updated rules is an even worse approach to opt-out procedures. In the future, in scenarios where multiple marketers use a single email message to spam you, 'only one of the senders — the one in the From: field — need be designated the official sender who is responsible for honoring opt-outs,' Foster writes. Translation? 'Other "marketers" who used that spam message, not to mention the spamming service that actually provided the email address list, don't need to honor opt-outs. So try as you might to get yourself off a list, the real spammer can just keep changing the designated sender in the From: field and legally keep on spamming you.' The irony of the CAN-SPAM moniker gets thicker."

Comments

Re:I don't see why this is all such a problem.

[vux984]

This can work. After all, most spammers comply with the rest of the act and are legitimate, honest and upright business owners, right?

Your being sarcastic, but you are more right than you think.

The CAN SPAM act isn't REALLY directed at the "Get V1-a--g-ri-alis". Those guys don't provide any sort of optout anyway. The CAN-SPAM act really just regulates legitimate newsletters and their behaviour, and this little tweak makes life a little easier for them.

The idea here if I read it right, seems to be that if I send out legitimate newsletter and company-X advertises in it, and then you opt out of my newsletter, under the old can-spam rules if company-X advertises in another newsletter that you receive, you could complain that you opted out, and charge them with spamming... which is really a bit absurd. Its like cancelling your subscription to forbes and then being offended the same ads for Lexus showed up in your subscription to Times!

As you observed the "real" spammers don't give a crap about CANSPAM. This doesn't affect them, because CANSPAM never really affected them. So opening this 'loophole' is primarily about making it easier for legitimate newsletters to operate.

You Have this Completely Wrong

[Talaria]

You have this completely wrong, although this is *such* a confusing clause, that nobody could blame you.

First let me qualify by saying that I am not only a lawyer in the Internet and anti-spam industry, but I helped author the "affiliate spam" section of CAN-SPAM, to which this clause is a natural extension. We are also fresh from a teleseminar which we provided on this very subject.

The following is an excerpt from our CAN-SPAM compliance page, which is at http://www.isipp.com/can-spam.php:

In large part, this requirement is an effort to hold affiliate programs responsible for how their affiliates promote them. If the affiliate is honest about who they are, and their "From address", and if they put something in the email about themselves, then the user will be able to unsubscribe from the affiliate's list. But if the affiliate is dishonest, and hides their true identity, then the affiliate program for the product featured in the email (which will be the product being sold under the affiliate program) becomes responsible. In other words, if you are advertised in the affiliate's email, and the affiliate cloaks who they are, you become responsible. By shifting responsiblity for mislabled email to the companies being advertised in the email, there is an incentive for affiliate program managers to more tightly police their affiliates.

Anne P. Mitchell, Esq.
CEO/President
Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy
http://www.isipp.com/

Re:SPAMMERS WRITE CAN-SPAM ACT

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

Links please.

Here's a press release about his affiliation with his son's company. Here is a speaker bio of Steven Richter, and here is the Wikipedia entry confirming the statements in the GP post. While I agree that it is nice to document one's assertions, it is pretty easy to fact check stuff like this.