4 ms·
It's in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email addr
by lt 14y ago
It's in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act
You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request.
http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-complia...
- staunch 14y agoI would not interpret "visiting a single page" to mean one-click. Of course, I agree that one-click is the right way to do things.
- 27182818284 14y agoIt is the spirit if not the letter of the law. Nobody intended someone to use 50 AJAX steps on a single page to skirt the law.
- eli 14y agoAnd, moreover, requiring a login or any personal information to unsubscribe is specifically disallowed by the law.
- mayneack 14y agoWith the important exception of an email address. Most of the time the part that annoys me the most is entering that because at best I have to check what it was sent to (many email accounts all going into one gmail) and at worst, it wasn't sent directly to me, so I have to try harder.
- rvkennedy 14y agoI think "visiting a single page" means precisely one-click. Because once click takes you to the page. Any further action, even while you're on that same page, is an additional requirement, which is disallowed.
- jasonlotito 14y agoIt allows requiring an email address.
- hanleybrand 14y agoHow could you unsubscribe an email address without asking which one?
- jasonlotito 14y agoYou provide a special link that someone can follow that has an ID of some type associated with the email.
- larrys 14y agoYou can find practically nothing, except for some initial cases many years ago, where someone has been prosecuted for can-spam. I would imagine that like with any crime, you would have to really piss some people off to fall under this act. (Smoking marijuana is a crime as well as is driving over the speed limit and a host of other things that generally don't land you in hot water even if they are known to the authorities.)
- mikle 14y agoI love that, but unfortunately CAN-SPAM is a US law, not a universal law.
- eli 14y agoSure, but it applies to the many, many US-based tech companies. And I know Canada, Australia, and the UK have similar laws.
- mikle 14y agoThe thing is, how do you even prosecute it? Where the company is based? Where the web servers are based? Where the email servers are based? Where it was served? The email client's server location?
- pyre 14y agoAs long as the company does business in the US, you have enough of an argument to drag them into court over it. Whether or not that is worth your time (or will ultimately net you anything) is anyone's guess.
- shiftpgdn 14y agoCan you actually drag a company into court over CANSPAM? I was under the impression it was FTC fines only.
- eli 14y agoConsumers can't really take any action on their own, but ISPs can. Microsoft has been pretty active in this regard. My understanding is they use this to file charges against John Doe spammers so that they can use court procedures to track down their actual identity. IANAL.
- eli 14y agoThere are a lot of things wrong with the CAN SPAM Act, but this is not one of them. It applies to any company where the US can claim jurisdiction which, at the very least, includes every US based company. It does not matter how or where the emails are sent.
- xur17 14y agoSo, that means I shouldn't have to login to my account to unsubscribe, correct? I find this annoying as I tend to click on the unsubscribe link from my phone, and not have the login details with me. I've seen several prominent companies that do this, including Mint earlier today.
- dhimes 14y agoYou are correct.
- joonix 14y agoYes that is not permitted - they need to use encoded links in the email to identify you automatically upon click.
- eli 14y agoThe links do not need to be encoded -- they are allowed to ask for your email address -- but they can't ask for much else. And definitely not a username/password.
- e_proxus 14y agoFunny, even big sites like LinkedIn break this. Is there some exception to some types of mail, like bulk mail received after signing up with a service?