On April 6, 2006, the FTC entered judgement against OptIn Global, which advertised, inter alia, home mortgages via e-mail, in violation of the Federal CAN-SPAM Act. Under the Act, companies may not send e-mails that are primarily advertisements unless the e-mail contains an opt-out provision, and truthfully informs the e-mail recipient who is sending the communication and for what purpose.

The judgment calls for OptIn to return the roughly half million in revenue that it made running the advertisements, and adds a penalty of $2.4 million, effectively gutting the company. Finally, it imposes on the company and its affiliated companies (of which there are at least 12 DBAs) specific duties should it advertise in the future, that go beyond the provisions of CAN-SPAM, making it so they Can’t Spam any longer.

Practice Pointer: The Federal CAN-SPAM Act lays out specific guidelines for commercial advertising that must be adhered to in sending e-mail communications that are primarily commercial in nature. Most notably, those guidelines state that the email must:

This entry was posted by Tsan Abrahamson on Thursday, April 6th, 2006 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.