New Year’s Day 2012, I spent an hour or more responding to the spam emails in my inbox by unsubscribing to the lists. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but put off because I figured it was easier to just delete the email than it was to negotiate my way through the unsubscribe process. And, in the past, I’ve found it frustrating that I make valiant efforts to unsubscribe to email but I’m not actually unsubscribed. In following through on my resolution, I’ve found that not only do unsubscribe orders not work many times, but even worse- and this should make lawyers’ jaws drop in HORROR- many reputable companies who send out commercial email don’t provide the functionality on the email to unsubscribe. Or even the information necessary to unsubscribe. Not good, my friends. . . not good.Yes, of course I’m documenting this nonsense. And yes, of course, I’m going to write nasty-grams to the companies and threaten CAN-SPAM lawsuits. Just a word to those companies who send out advertisements by mail and the lawyers who advise them- you have to provide information and an ability to unsubscribe from future emails. Consider it a heads-up before you get one of my nasty-grams.
The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is a federal law that provides for $15,000 penalties against businesses who send out commercial emails that do not meet its mandates. OUCH! That’s just the fines from the government (provided, of course, the government does anything about it). However, there are means of civil redress of grievances as well. Here’s some of what the Federal Trade Commission website has to say:
"Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.
Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible."
It’s January 5, 2012 and I have now invested at least five hours of my valuable time unsubscribing from email lists. Hundreds of different sources, from E-Bay to LL-Bean, webinar providers to law book sellers. I was receiving email from Major League Baseball under two different accounts. Victoria’s Secret. K-Mart. Walmart. Neiman Marcus. Zappos. Every conceivable e-commerce site that I’ve ever purchased so much as a stick of gum from sends me regular emails. Countless information security sites and news services pared down to only the very few legal and real news sources that I actually read. I’ve unsubscribed from them all (except for Kate Spade, which is absolutely essential).
Yet, after five days of dutifully deleting my name from lists, each time I check my email, there are more. Admittedly, I get a lot of email. But it wasn’t until I embarked on the unsubscribe venture that I became aware of just how much is crap. When I say hundreds of unsubscribes, I mean hundreds. Every time I go into my email there are at least five more emails lists to unsubscribe from- and that is whittled down substantially.
The good news is that when I open my email in the morning, there aren’t a hundred and fifty emails. There are like forty or fifty, and that’s not bad. I actually read those. I’ll let you know when I’m done unsubscribing. I’m figuring it will be sometime in March or April, but not counting on it. However, five hours in, it’s worth the effort to open my inbox and see that it’s pretty clean.
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