AY Mail and CAN-SPAM Act

On January 1, 2004, a new law took effect - "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003" or CAN-SPAM Act.

The CAN-SPAM Act is directed against "spam" (unsolicited commercial email), but it is still very advisable to take precautious measures in order to protect yourself and your business in case of the complains from your recipients.

The act affects delivery of commercial and promotional email. If your messages are of "transactional or relationship" nature, they are exempt. However, if your message contains advertisement of some sort, it can easily fall under influence of the CAN-SPAM Act.

CAN-SPAM Act requires you to:

Have correct headers. Your "From" and routing information must point to you and your computer or your ISP's SMTP server.

Have a subject line that reflects content of your message. Deceptive subject lines are prohibited.

Give your recipients an opt-out method. You must provide clear and easy way for them to cancel any future correspondence from you.

Identify a commercial email as advertisement and include your physical postal address in the message.

Commercial email will not count as illegal if your recipients consented to receive that information and that consent is affirmative.

Third parties that you may use to handle your sendings will not be held liable if violation of the law occurs, it is your responsibility.

AY Mail will help you to comply with new law.

AY Mail does not put any false or misleading information in email headers. Recipients will be able to use headers to track you down. However, to comply with CAN-SPAM Act, you must enter correct "From" address and correct subject line on the Message tab.

The CAN-SPAM act requires you to give your recipients an opt-out method. To comply with this requirement, it is enough to use a valid "From" address, so that you could receive opt-out requests and handle them manually. AY Mail 2 Professional and Corporate Editions give you a way to create an automatic Unsubscribe link so that you don't need to worry about opt-out requests.

If you're running a newsletter, you must have a proof that your subscribers asked for the information you send. In this case, even if one of your subscribers files a complain against you, you will not be charged. With AY Mail, you can built a subscription form on your website and you can set it up to send your subscribers validation letters prior to accepting the subscriptions (this is called double opt-in). This ensures that your subscribers are genuine.

With AY Mail, you have everything under control, and you don't have to relay to third parties providing email service for a fee. This way, you do not give your data to service companies and eliminate chance of them screwing something up and sending letters that do not comply with CAN-SPAM Act on your behalf.

For more information on CAN-SPAM Act visit Federal Trade Commission website.