The Federal Trade Commission revised the CAN SPAM Act earlier this week; adding four new rule provisions.

The new provisions are (my understanding anyway):

(1) All that anyone should need to provide in order to opt out of commercial email communications is their email address. There should not be any need to jump through any hoops; e.g. logging in to an account or needing to provide other additional information in order to be removed from a list. The opt out process should be simple, either a reply e-mail message or visiting a single page with an opt out form.

(2) Where there are multiple advertisers in a commercial email; only one need assume the responsibility of meeting the CAN-SPAM requirements for the mailing.

(3) A sender can use a legitimate post office box or private mailbox to satisfy the “valid physical postal address” requirement.

(4) The term “person” was clarified to include individual, group, unincorporated association, limited or general partnership, corporation, or other business entity

I’m glad to see point (1) in particular. There’s nothing more annoying than trying to opt-out from a commercial mailing only to be faced with filling out multiple form fields in order to get my email address removed. I’ve never really seen the sense in it - the person wants off; likely they aren’t in the most receptive frame of mind at the time, why annoy them further? Sometimes marketers overlook that fact that unsubscribes can be a good thing.

The full FTC press release about the changes can be viewed here

Related:

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