Do You Know If This Is Legal With Mailing Lists?

[jimb]

Hi Everyone,

I was just wondering if anyone around here knew the CANSPAM Laws well enough to tell me if this was legal or not:

Can you have a place to input your email address to a mailing list and have a checkbox of Terms of Service that basically states that upon submitting your email address to the mailing list you can NEVER unsubscribe.

Is that legal? If you tell the user upfront that they can never unsubscribe and they are now legally bound to receive this email for the life of their email address?

Thanks!

Jim

[kernelpanic]

Not legal, by a long mile.

[jimb]

Originally Posted by kernelpanic

Not legal, by a long mile.

I thought so, thanks!

Jim

[SmokeyTheBear]

you can write anything in a tos , doesnt mean it will stand up int he courts..

Ever seen those signs at amusement parks saying " we are NOT liable use at your own risk etc etc " but people still sue amusement parks all the time..

[kernelpanic]

If you're that concerned about it, why don't you set up a shell organization, some bulletproof landing pages, and keep mailing anyway?

[Your Mothers Secret]

test it on hotmail.com and msn.com and let us know what happens

[jimb]

Originally Posted by kernelpanic

If you're that concerned about it, why don't you set up a shell organization, some bulletproof landing pages, and keep mailing anyway?

Thats a good idea!

Jim

[jimb]

Originally Posted by Your Mothers Secret

test it on hotmail.com and msn.com and let us know what happens

LOL

Jim

[SmokeyTheBear]

the way they get around this is to simply sell their lists to themselves under diff company names..

So COMPANY#1 has to honour the request from SURFER#1 to be removed but there no law against selling the list before the name was removed to COMPANY#2

[Haydos]

Originally Posted by jimb

Hi Everyone,

I was just wondering if anyone around here knew the CANSPAM Laws well enough to tell me if this was legal or not:

Can you have a place to input your email address to a mailing list and have a checkbox of Terms of Service that basically states that upon submitting your email address to the mailing list you can NEVER unsubscribe.

Is that legal? If you tell the user upfront that they can never unsubscribe and they are now legally bound to receive this email for the life of their email address?

Thanks!

Jim

What the Law Requires

It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests. You may create a "menu" of choices to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to end any commercial messages from the sender.

[Haydos]

Originally Posted by SmokeyTheBear

the way they get around this is to simply sell their lists to themselves under diff company names..

So COMPANY#1 has to honour the request from SURFER#1 to be removed but there no law against selling the list before the name was removed to COMPANY#2

Even this is a little prohibitive

"Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your commercial email. When you receive an opt-out request, the law gives you 10 business days to stop sending email to the requestor's email address. You cannot help another entity send email to that address, or have another entity send email on your behalf to that address. Finally, it's illegal for you to sell or transfer the email addresses of people who choose not to receive your email, even in the form of a mailing list, unless you transfer the addresses so another entity can comply with the law."

Interesting point that you have 10 more days to 'email' a user who has opted out.....!!!

[SmokeyTheBear]

Originally Posted by Haydos

Even this is a little prohibitive

"Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your commercial email. When you receive an opt-out request, the law gives you 10 business days to stop sending email to the requestor's email address. You cannot help another entity send email to that address, or have another entity send email on your behalf to that address. Finally, it's illegal for you to sell or transfer the email addresses of people who choose not to receive your email, even in the form of a mailing list, unless you transfer the addresses so another entity can comply with the law."

Interesting point that you have 10 more days to 'email' a user who has opted out.....!!!

the way they get around this is by selling the lists BEFORE they have opted out..

You basically make 10 dummy corporations.. each has a copy of the full list.. after the first company has mailed the shit out of the lists and gotten complaints they simply use the next company to mail those users and do an OPPOSITE scrub , scrubbing only valid people fromt he first list ( thus everyone left overis people who opted out )