Laura of Word to the Wise has an excellent post up on How not to handle unsubscribes regarding her experience trying (and failing) to be unsubscribed from Paypal’s lists.1
The only thing she left out was this quote:
For example, DMA argued that ‘‘tracking by account information also makes it easier to honor opt-out requests for customers regardless of what they change their email address to.’’ The Commission does not find this argument persuasive, because, as the Commission stated in the NPRM, ‘‘according to CAN-SPAM, opt-out requests are specific to a recipient’s email address, not his or her name,’’ and, in this case, certainly not to his or her account information.2
Demanding a link to some account is a big no-no under CAN-SPAM.
Sender beware.
Footnotes
- Laura Atkins, How Not to Handle Unsubscribes, Word to the Wise (Jun. 24, 2008), https://wordtothewise.com/2008/06/how-not-to-handle-unsubscribes/ (last visited Jun 24, 2008). ↩︎
- Definitions and Implementation Under the CAN-SPAM Act; Final Rule, 16 Fed. Reg. 29654, 29675 (2008), https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/federal_register_notices/definitions-and-implementation-under-can-spam-act-16-cfr-part-316/080521canspamact.pdf. ↩︎
About the Author
Mickey Chandler is a Consultant & Attorney with over 28 years of experience in Email Deliverability & Privacy Law. He has a strong background in email authentication infrastructure (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), ISP and mailbox provider relations, anti-spam policy and compliance, CAN-SPAM and state anti-spam law gained through overseeing the Abuse & Compliance team at Salesforce Marketing Cloud, originating the ISP relations role at Informz (now part of Higher Logic), and working in the fight against spam since 1997. He holds a B.A. in Government, a B.S. in Computer Information Systems, and a J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center. He is a certified CIPP/US professional and a certified CIPM professional.
