MAILERS – COURT RULINGS AFFECT CAN-SPAM

The Federal Courts in Utah and California have taken the position that using hidden proxies to register your domains and conceal your true identity is a violation of the Can-Spam Act, Section 7704(a)(1)(C) and is materially misleading because a recipient cannot identify the sender from the “from” name or the publicly available whois information.

The court further stated that since all ICCAN approved domain name vendors must have a prohibition against using the domain for sending SPAM, using any ICCAN approved vendor is prohibited and therefore misleading and a violation of the Can-Spam Act.  (I think this was a very far reach for the court and would be overturned on appeal.  However, who has the money to file an appeal?)

The California Court also said that putting disclosures in images violates the Can-Spam Act’s requirement for conspicuous postings since images can be lost in transmission or lost due to technical difficulties.