VinceZ | Suppression Files

Suppression Files

Managing Opt-Out's

In a law rife with grey areas, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, one of the greyest is the requirements surrounding the handling of opt-outs, and the related creation of suppression (”do not email”) lists. This is a responsbility which falls squarely on the shoulders of the marketers..er, the postmaster..no, wait, the IT folks. Or is it the CTO?

At issue, among other things, is what exactly are the requirements for the handling of an email address once its owner has requested to be unsubscribed from a particular mailing? It is unclear whether you must remove the email address from all of your mailing lists, or just the one which generated the unsubscribe request. And are you obligated to pass on that request to affiliates whom might otherwise email the user about your product or services (in keeping with the CAN-SPAM requirement that makes it illegal for “any person acting on behalf of the sender to initiate the transmission to the recipient, more than 10 business days after the receipt of such request, of a commercial electronic mail message” and “for any person acting on behalf of the sender to assist in initiating the transmission to the recipient, through the provision or selection of addresses to which the message will be sent, of a commercial electronic mail message”?

CAN-SPAM Suppression

A Suppression List is a list of suppressed e-mail addresses used by e-mail senders to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2004. CAN-SPAM requires that senders of commercial emails provide a functioning opt-out mechanism by which email recipients can unsubscribe their email address from future email messages. The unsubscribed email addresses are placed into a "suppression list" which is used to "suppress" future email messages to that email address.

Abuse

A suppression list contains valid email addresses. Suppression list abuse occurs when a third party takes a suppression list and emails messages to the email addresses in the list. The original sender of the email messages who provided the opt-out mechanism may be liable for suppression list abuse.

Protection and tracking

A variety of technological means are used to protect suppression lists and track suppression list abuse. These include neutral third party scrubbing of email lists, distribution of MD5 secure hash suppression lists and distribution of "seeded" email lists.