RE: SPAM Laws

["Devin Rambo" <drambo () vediorps com>]

There are others who probably have more insight as to the applicability of
spam laws, but I do want to point out that if you send an email blast out to
that many recipients, you will undoubtedly be reported as a spammer to
various blacklists and reporting agencies, especially considering that it
has been an extended period of time since all those people opted in to
receiving email from you. 

My users have on occasion asked to do something similar. On such occasions,
we use an email service that sends the emails out through for us their
servers, and they include information about how they'd opted in and very
importantly, how to opt out if they should wish to do so. You may still get
some people who report the messages as spam, but your ability to do business
is not hindered because your corporate email server is blacklisted.

Bottom line: never send an email blast like that out through your corporate
email server, legal or not. Use a third-party service instead. They will
probably be able to give you some answer as to what the law is and how it
affects you as well.

Devin

-----Original Message-----
From: listbounce () securityfocus com [mailto:listbounce () securityfocus com] On
Behalf Of Iruy Nairda
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 6:33 PM
To: security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: SPAM Laws

Hi all,

A client requiered us to send a mail message to about 5000 recipients, all
of them located in the United States. It's important to say that the
recipients themselves accepted to be included in the mailinglist the last
year, but it has been a year without sending any mail to them.

I was asked to review the SPAM Laws that apply in the States, to be sure
that we don't inflict any law. (I'm currently reading the "CAN-SPAM Act of
2003".) The idea is to append some sort of text to the messages, to reduce
the possibility of being tagged as spamers.

So, anyone has done something similar??

Thanks.