Email Span

[justjeni]

Does anyone know if it is true that as long as you have a way for people to "remove" from an email list you use to advertise a site, it is a legal email? A friend of mine...yes it was really a friend!...kept email addresses from forwards she got and used them to send out an advert for her site and the email account was shut down, no explanation. She said there is a law that states as long as you allow a person to remove themselves from your list, it is not considered spam. I told her it must still be if her email account was pulled. Anyone know the protocol on this?

[Jason]

I'm going to do some research on this, but as I understand it, it is not illegal if you have a way to opt-out. All this means is that it will keep you out of jail, however, ISPs tend to have their own policies about unsolicited mail, legal or not. If their policies are violated, they will delete you without warning. This is the method that we adopted for httpcity (everytime someone spams their site, we get a dozen netcop reports from angry netizens).

[Jason]

Ok, here ya go:

From:
http://spamlaws.com/federal/summ107.html#hr95

H.R. 95 would require unsolicited commercial e-mail messages to be labelled and to include opt-out instructions, and would prohibit false routing information in such messages. It would prohibit the use of a provider's facilities to send unsolicited commercial e-mail in violation of the provider's policies, if the policies are clearly posted on a web site at the domain name included in the recipient's e-mail address or are made available by an FTC-approved standard method (presumably, via the provider's SMTP server).

H.R. 95, as introduced in January 2001, is identical to H.R. 3113 from the 106th Congress, in the form that bill was passed by the House of Representatives. The House Committee on Commerce published a report on H.R. 3113 in June 2000.

Feel free to surf around spamlaws.com for any further info.

[justjeni]

So in a way she was right, but perhaps the email program or provider, whichever, had their own rules and she didn't comply, I get it. Thanks for that link - that will help as I was considering doing some email advertising, but do not wish to do anything that would make my name/site look bad and spam is one thing I definitely do not wish to be accused of!
I sincerely appreciate the tips and the link!