More CASL enforcement

Last week the CRTC published a CASL enforcement action wherein they fined an individual $15,000 for 10 violations of the act.

The Commission imposes an administrative monetary penalty of $15,000 on William Rapanos for 10 violations of section 6 of Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation. Specifically, Mr. Rapanos sent commercial electronic messages (i) that did not identify the sender, (ii) that did not include information that enables the recipient to readily contact the sender, (iii) without prior consent from the recipients, and (iv) that, in certain cases, did not include a functioning unsubscribe mechanism.

I do encourage folks who are concerned about CASL to read through the full article on the CRTC website. They write out how hard they tried to work with the individual in question. They really seem to have tried to do what they could to get compliance with the act without assessing a fine. As the CRTC says, the aim of penalties is to promote compliance, not to publish people who violate the act. We’ve certainly seen other CASL cases involving much more mail, that proportionally smaller penalties assessed.
One thing that I noticed in the article was the description of the individual under investigation. The CRTC walks through the discussions with him and the investigations into sending. The documented behavior is very “spammer” to me, especially the “someone is doing this to frame me” and “someone must have stolen my identity.” No one really believes that someone would steal your identity, break into your house, use your wifi and … only send spam. There’s so much more that can be done with that level of access.
None of his behavior is any surprise to any of us who have worked with spammers.

Blackboxes and unknown effects
Engagement, Engagement, Engagement

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From the archives: Taking Permission

From February 2010, Taking Permission.

Permission is always a hot topic in email marketing. Permission is key! the experts tell us. Get permission to send email! the ISPs tell us.
Marketers have responded by setting up processes to “get” permission from recipients before adding them to mailing lists. They point to their privacy polices and signup forms and say “Look! the recipient gave us permission.”
In many cases, though, the permission isn’t given to the sender, permission is taken from the recipient.
Yes, permission is being TAKEN by the sender. At the point of address collection many senders set the default to be the recipient gets mail. These processes take any notion of giving permission out of the equation. The recipient doesn’t have to give permission, permission is assumed.
This isn’t real permission. No process that requires the user to take action to stop themselves from being opted in is real permission. A default state of yes takes the actual opt-in step away from the recipient.
Permission just isn’t about saying “well, we told the user if they gave us an email address we’d send them mail and they gave us an email address anyway.” Permission is about giving the recipients a choice in what they want to receive. All too often senders take permission from recipients instead of asking for permission to be given.
Since that post was originally written, some things have changed.
CASL has come into effect. CASL prevents marketers from taking permission as egregiously as what prompted this post. Under CASL, pre-checked opt-in boxes do not count as explicit permission. The law does have a category of implicit permission, which consists of an active consumer / vendor relationship. This implicit permission is limited in scope and senders have to stop mailing 2 years after the last activity.
The other change is in Gmail filters. Whatever they’re doing these days seems to really pick out mail that doesn’t have great permission. Business models that would work a few years ago are now struggling to get to the inbox at Gmail. Many of these are non-relationship emails – one off confirmations, tickets, receipts. There isn’t much of a relationship between the sender and the recipient, so the filters are biased against the mail.
Permission is still key, but these days I’m not sure even informed permission is enough.

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What do you think about these hot button issues?

bullhornIt’s been one of those weeks where blogging is a challenge. Not because I don’t have much to say, but because I don’t have much constructive to say. Rants can be entertaining, even to write. But they’re not very helpful in terms of what do we need to change and how do we move forward.
A few different things I read or saw brought out the rants this week. Some of these are issues I don’t have answers to, and some of them are issues where I just disagree with folks, but have nothing more useful to say than, “You’re wrong.” I don’t even always have an answer to why they’re wrong, they’re just wrong.
I thought today I’d bring up the issues that made me so ranty and list the two different points of views about them and see what readers think about them. (Those of you who follow me on Facebook probably know which ones my positions are, but I’m going to try and be neutral about my specific positions.)

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Spammers, eh?

SpamBoxI’m back from a fun and successful trip to the APSIS Email Marketing Evolved conference. Of course, this means I’m digging out my mailboxes and going through mail I’ve ignored for the past week. It’s amazing how the spam builds up when I’m not tending to it every day.

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