Showing posts with the label law

RNC v. Google Ninth Circuit appeal fails

Eric Goldman, writing for his Technology & Marketing Law Blog, has just shared an update in the RNC v. Google saga , this time the Ninth Circuit wastes very little time shutting the whole thing down. If you remember the earlier round, the Republican National Committee claim…

Texas SMS requirements: Talking SB140 with Mickey Chandler

Life (and compliance) can get tricky sometimes for marketers, and here is a perfect example. Texas recently amended SMS marketing requirements in a potentially scary way; the updated compliance requirements even mandate registering with the state and securing a $10,000 bond. Bu…

FTC fines Verkada over CAN-SPAM violations

The US Federal Trade Commission very recently announced that they’re imposing a $2.95 million fine against security camera firm Verkada for, among other things, violating CAN-SPAM , the US Federal anti-spam law. The FTC notes that this is the largest ever CAN-SPAM fine that th…

Email privacy and policy compliance: Focus on Spamtacular and Mickey Chandler

As you may or may not know, my friend Mickey Chandler , whom I’ve interviewed for this blog previously, recently completed law school and passed the bar in Texas. And now he has gone on to re-launch his consulting career , and to renew his focus on his Spamtacular blog, where…

RNC v. Google: A Google win, but a terrible ruling

As reported by Reuters and many others: "A U.S. judge has thrown out a Republican National Committee lawsuit accusing Alphabet's Google of intentionally misdirecting the political party's email messages to users' spam folders." Hurray, Google's still …

Court rules Jay Fink free to help you fight spam

As reported previously , the State of California tried to tell Jay Fink that he needed a Private Investigator's license to be able to legally review and investigate spam emails on behalf of others. Not so fast, as "U.S. District Judge Rita Lin has permanently enjoined …

Remembering Holomaxx

Hard to believe that it's been nearly fourteen years since Holomaxx sued various spam filterers and internet service providers , alleging that their mail was being unfairly filtered or rejected, given that the mail complied with CAN-SPAM. When you ask one of us deliverabili…

Australian spam penalty: Luxottica pays $1.5m

In April, the Australian Communications and Media Authority reported that eyewear manufacturer and retailer Luxottica "has paid a $1,512,500 penalty for sending more than 200,000 marketing messages in breach of Australian spam laws." At issue here were both sending m…

Does a spam investigator need a license?

Joel "Jay" Fink’s business is at risk – that business being a wonderfully niche endeavor involving a hunt through your spam archive looking for things that may be legally actionable against the spam sender – it sounds like my dream job, honestly. Anyway, the risk come…

DELIVTERMS: CASL

It seems like a good day to decode another deliverability acronym. It's DELIVTERMS! The annoyingly random ongoing feature from Spam Resource, where we explain all those confusing deliverability terms. Today we're talking about CASL, which stands for " Canada's …

Eric Goldman: RNC v. Google and Section 230

Eric Goldman is Associate Dean of Research, Professor of Law and Co-Director, High Tech Law Institute, at Santa Clara University. And he blogs about legal stuff, often stuff relating to the internet and privacy. I find his blog a must read. So he's a good guy to turn to whe…

More analysis on the RNC spam lawsuit against Google

Mike Masnick from Techdirt's got a scathing breakdown of how the judge just wasn't buying what the RNC was selling ; derisively detailing their failure to prove Google bias against right-wing political senders. It's definitely worth a read. He closes with saying tha…

FTC Assesses Primary Purpose of Emails in CAN SPAM Enforcement

As mentioned earlier , the FTC recently announced a proposed settlement with Experian, taking action against them for allegedly sending commercial emails while claiming those emails were transactional in nature. Meaning that users effectively couldn't opt-out from email mes…

RNC vs Google: Republicans lose this round

Remember that the RNC had sued Google , alleging that RNC emails were being unfairly dropped into Gmail spam folders due to political animus on the part of Google? Well, so far, things aren't going in the RNC's favor. Judge Daniel Calabretta said that while it was a &q…

UK/EU GDPR: What is valid consent?

Previously I've talked about the affirmative consent standard found in the US federal anti-spam law (CAN-SPAM). I've found it very useful test when trying to understand if a process is appropriately opt-in our not. Wondering if GDPR has something similar? It does. For …

Friday fun: Electronic mail fraud and more

There's a term you don't hear every day: electronic mail fraud. Apparently it's just one of a litany of charges brought against four employees of a company called Adconion. Per Brian Krebs : "The government alleged that between December 2010 and September 2014…

What constitutes a transactional message?

"Is this message transactional, or is it commercial?" That's a question I get asked quite regularly as a deliverability consultant. Note that I am not a lawyer, so I can't give you legal advice. I can, however, provide my layman's interpretation and encou…

Do I have to label my marketing mail as an advertisement?

I saw somebody ask recently how best to label their email marketing messages as an advertisement. Their intent was to comply with CAN-SPAM, the US federal anti-spam law. Though I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, allow me to clarify it with my layman's pants on,…