Internet and e-mail policy and practice
including Notes on Internet E-mail


2008
Months
Feb

Click the comments link on any story to see comments or add your own.


Subscribe to this blog


RSS feed


Home :: Email

16 Feb 2008

We're CAN SPAM compliant! Whoopee. Email

Recently, several of my friends have been writing about mailers who boast that they're compliant with CAN SPAM. Here's our distilled advice in one handy word: don't.

A mailer boasting that he's compliant with CAN SPAM is about as impressive as an employer boasting that he pays minimum wage. Of course, he complies with CAN SPAM, it's the law. If he sent mail that violated CAN SPAM, every message he sent would entitle the recipient to sue for up to $250, along with a variety of other penalties potentially including five years in the slammer. It's not really surprising a mailer wouldn't admit to breaking the law.

CAN SPAM basically applies the very weak rules for paper junk mail to e-mail: no fraudulent claims, and recipients have to be able to opt out eventually, after an absurdly long two week window. It most definitely does not define "spam", for any version of spam. Every ISP, ESP, and backbone network in the country has much stronger opt-in rules for their customers, so when you say you're CAN SPAM compliant, you're saying you're not a mailer they want to serve.


  posted at: 14:12 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments
Stable link is https://jl.ly/Email/compliant.html

Topics


My other sites

Who is this guy?

Airline ticket info

Taughannock Networks

Other blogs

CAUCE
It turns out you don’t need a license to hunt for spam.
4 days ago

A keen grasp of the obvious
Italian Apple Cake
562 days ago

Related sites

Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail

Network Abuse Clearinghouse

My Mastodon feed



© 2005-2020 John R. Levine.
CAN SPAM address harvesting notice: the operator of this website will not give, sell, or otherwise transfer addresses maintained by this website to any other party for the purposes of initiating, or enabling others to initiate, electronic mail messages.