TagCAN SPAM

December 9, 2019

It’s not marketing… it’s harassment

By laura

2 Min read

3 comments

09December

Many years ago, we bought a VMWare license to manage the various virtual machines running our business infrastructure. As part of our move to Dublin, we decommissioned our cabinet and moved all of services into various bits of the cloud. This meant that when our VMWare support contract came up for renewal we declined the renewal. Despite no longer being customers and unsubscribing from email...

November 6, 2019

CAN SPAM says I can!

By laura

2 Min read

Add comment

06November

Saw a new disclaimer on mail sent to an address harvested off our website today: disclaimer: This is an advertisement and a promotional mail-in adherence to the guidelines of CAN-SPAM act 2003. We have clearly mentioned the source id of this mail, also clearly mentioned the subject line, and they are in no way misleading in any form. We have found your email address through our own efforts on the...

September 6, 2019

Update on Tulsi Gabbard sues Google

By laura

2 Min read

2 comments

06September

Back in July the Tulsi Gabbard campaign sued Google for deactivating their “advertising account” on the night of the first Democratic debate. I’ve been waiting for the Google response, which was due to be filed today. I checked today and found a new filing. Apparently counsel for both sides got together recently and decided that Tulsi’s campaign was going to submit an...

February 1, 2019

One subscription should equal one unsubscription

By laura

2 Min read

5 comments

01February

One of the side effects of using tagged addresses to sign up for things is seeing exactly what companies do with your data once they get it. For instance, 3 years ago I downloaded a white paper or something from an ESP. That white paper was apparently co-branded and the other company got my email address from the ESP. They’re now sending mail to that address. I unsubscribed from the ESP...

October 29, 2018

Transactional mail can be spam

By laura

2 Min read

Add comment

29October

Marketers have a thing about transactional mail. In the US, transactional mail is exempt from many of the CAN SPAM regulations. If they label a mail transactional, then they can send it even when the recipient has opted-out! The smart marketer looks for opportunities to send transactional mail so they can bother spam get their brand in front of people who’ve opted out. Enter the...

July 18, 2018

Unsubscribe means unsubscribe

By laura

2 Min read

Add comment

18July

But, unfortunately, some senders don’t actually think unsubscribe means stop sending mail. Today, for instance, the nice folks at The Container Store sent me an email with an “important update to my POP! account” Yes, that’s an address I gave them. But I don’t have any record of setting up an account. I was on their mailing list for all of 4 emails back in November...

May 15, 2018

Want some history?

By laura

5 Min read

Add comment

15May

I was doing some research today for an article I’m working on. The research led me to a San Francisco Law Review article from 2001 written by David E. Sorkin. Technical and Legal Approaches to Unsolicited Electronic Mail (.pdf link). The text itself is a little outdated, although not as much as I expected. There’s quite a good discussion of various ways to control spam, most of which...

April 30, 2018

Affiliate marketing overview

By laura

4 Min read

1 comment

30April

Most retailers have realized that sending unsolicited email is bad for their overall deliverability. Still, the idea they can send mail to people who never heard of them is seductive. Enter affiliate email. That magical place where companies hire an agency, or a contractor, or some other third party to send email advertising their new product. Their mail and company reputation is protected...

February 13, 2018

Following CAN SPAM isn't enough to reach the inbox

By laura

2 Min read

1 comment

13February

One of the top entries on the list of things deliverability folks hear all the time is, “But my mail is all CAN SPAM compliant!” The thing is… no one handling inbound mail really cares. Seriously. CAN SPAM is a law that is little more than don’t lie, don’t hide, and heed the no. Even more importantly, the law itself states that there is no obligation for ISPs to...

January 11, 2018

That's not how you do it…

By laura

3 Min read

1 comment

11January

Got an email this morning from a company advertising their newest webinar “The Two Pillars of Effective Large-Scale Email: Security and Deliverability.” The message came to a tagged address, so clearly I’d given them one at some point. But I didn’t recognize the name or company or anything. I did a search to seen when I may have interacted with this company in the past...