Back in May of this year, I wrote about the new final ruling regarding the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 which clarified the legal unsubscribe methods for commercial e-mail. The changes took effect last week on June 26, 2008 and it’s very important that those sending commercial e-mail make sure that they’re still in compliance with the ever changing law. Each violation can result in $11,000 in fines.

The recent final ruling made clear the following:

“an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender;”

We are still seeing many unsubscribe links in commerical e-mail from well known companies that take you to a login page where one must log in to make changes to their e-mail subscriptions. These are now illegal for commercial e-mail.

Note that transactional e-mail messages to your clients where you have an existing ongoing relationship do not require an unsubscribe method at all. The law is very specific on what can be considered transactional information, but in general it is only e-mail regarding a transaction that the recipient initiated. Please consult section 316.3 (c) of the final ruling and your attorney for more information.