The FTC posted on its website today the long-awaited updates/stances on some proposed clarifications to CAN-SPAM. While I need to likely re-read it again to fully understand, I’ll list here some notable changes – and what impact they may have on you:

1.) They’ve gone to great lengths to further define who the “sender” is and who “initiates” the email, for the purposes of defining WHO needs to comply with CAN-SPAM (valid subject-line, valid postal address, 10-day honoring of opt-out, valid permission). This gets a bit complicated when you read it, but in short – the definitions were updated to help sort out multi-party commercial emails (e.g. when more than one company participates in an email campaign, such as participating in the content, the advertisement, and/or the list of email addresses that are used).

In short: Before, if more than one party participated, it was unclear if one or ALL of the participants needed to honor opt-outs, for example. Instead, only the “sender” needs to honor all elements of the CAN-SPAM act. The “sender” is defined as the “person” who is clearly labeled in the “FROM” of the email message. Finally, the definition of the “person” was clarified to mean “an individual, group, unincorporated association, limited or general partnership, corporation, or other business entity.”  Prior to this clarification, it was unclear of the “person” had to be a natural person, or could be a business, association, etc.

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