TagCAN SPAM

April 21, 2009

Buying lists and other stupid marketing tricks

By laura

3 Min read

Add comment

21April

Back in November, I commented on Zoominfo and that they were selling senders very bad lists. At that time, Zoominfo did not have my current information. They have since rectified that problem and are now selling my information to people. This morning, I received an email that said: I wanted to follow up on a previous email I sent out a couple days ago.  At Company, we offer an affordable...

March 31, 2009

Supreme Court declines to hear anti-spam case

By laura

1 Min read

Add comment

31March

Yesterday the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal for Virginia v. Jaynes. This means that the Virginia state supreme court ruling overturning the Virginia anti-spam law currently stands. Jeremy Jaynes was a well known spammer who went under the name Gavin Stubberfield. He was pretty famous in anti-spammer circles for sending horse porn spam. In 2003 he was arrested under the Virginia state...

February 9, 2009

Negative branding, part 2

By laura

4 Min read

1 comment

09February

Last week I commented on negative branding in email. One of the comments on that post was an advertisement for a company called WrapMail. In the course of attempting to determine if this was spam or a real comment, I checked out their website. While the comment itself may not be spam, and it may not be providing services to spammers, the entire business model strikes me as a delivery nightmare...

December 1, 2008

Confirmed unsubscribe

By laura

2 Min read

1 comment

01December

Whatever one might think about confirming opt-ins I think we can all agree that requiring someone to jump through hoops and confirm an unsubscription request will just annoy that person. Today I attempt to opt-out from a discussion list. It’s one I *thought* I had opted out of previously, but I could find no record of the request anywhere. OK. So I imagined unsubscribing, I’ll just...

November 24, 2008

TWSD: breaking the law

By laura

2 Min read

Add comment

24November

I tell my clients that they should comply with CAN SPAM (physical postal address and unsubscribe option) even if the mail they are sending is technically exempt. The bar for legality is so low, there is no reason not to. Sure, there is a lot of spam out there that does not comply with CAN SPAM. Everything you see from botnets and proxies is in violation, although many of those mails do actually...

October 31, 2008

Reunion.com sued under CA anti-spam law

By laura

1 Min read

Add comment

31October

Ethan Ackerman posted a rather long analysis of the class action lawsuit filed against Reunion.com over at Eric Goldman’s Technology and Law Blog. Part of the case is related to Reunion.com’s scraping of address books, something I have discussed here before. The analysis goes through the case step by step and is well worth a read. There are a lot of issues being explored, including...

October 9, 2008

FTC Opt out clarification

By laura

3 Min read

4 comments

09October

In early July, the Magilla Marketing newsletter has an article about how email preference centers may now be illegal due to the clarifications published by the FTC. Trevor Hughes of the ESPC is quoted extensively, lamenting about how marketers cannot legally interfere in the unsubscribe process. The FTC’s opt out clarification “complicates things in that it demands simplicity when simplicity may...

October 7, 2008

New email related blog

By laura

1 Min read

Add comment

07October

Mickey Chandler, of SpamSuite.com has launched a new email delivery specific blog: Spamtacular.com. He moved a number of posts from his other blog, but today has a new post up about how a prior business relationship impacts compliance with CAN SPAM. He concludes with: for most people is that prior business relationships don’t matter.  Content is still king.  If your content furthers the...

September 16, 2008

Declan weighs in on the VA law

By laura

1 Min read

Add comment

16September

Declan McCullagh writes today about the VA anti-spam law being overturned by the state supreme court. What’s notable about this law, and what made it vulnerable to First Amendment challenge, are two characteristics. The first is that it applies to the falsification of e-mail information, which could sweep in both spammers and, say, someone using a pen name or pseudonym. And we know, despite...