FTC Approves New Rule Provision Under The CAN-SPAM Act

The FTC has approved new provisions for the CAN-SPAM act. You can read all about it here and download the actual document here. Below is a repeat of the main thrust of the changes from the FTC site. But first a comment on two items in the text. The first is the notion of who is the Sender when an email contains multiple messages from different brands. To cut a long story short it's the from address that is the Sender . So if brand A,B,C are in the message and it's from Brand A then Brand A is the Sender. The second is what is meant by the term Person. Interestingly, a non profit group tried to change this term so that effectively non profits would not be subject to CAN SPAM. Very pleased to see they failed in that regard.

Here's the FTC excerpt:
(1) an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender;

(2) the definition of “sender” was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in a single e-mail message is responsible for complying with the Act’s opt-out requirements;

(3) a “sender” of commercial e-mail can include an accurately-registered post office box or private mailbox established under United States Postal Service regulations to satisfy the Act’s requirement that a commercial e-mail display a “valid physical postal address”;

(4) a definition of the term “person” was added to clarify that CAN-SPAM’s obligations are not limited to natural persons.