canspam

CAN-SPAM & HIPAA Act


a) CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003)**

b) HIPAA Act (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996)**

Both the above Acts supercedes the various conflicting state laws for the regulation of email marketing.

We are completely permission-based email lists providers. All of our services are in full compliance with CAN SPAM & HIPAA laws. We can help you maintain comprehensive opt-out lists, properly identify and clean bounce-back e-mail addresses, as well as implement and manage permission and frequency rules for your e-mail database.

**Nevertheless, both the above Acts contains requirements that must be met by all mailers regardless of existence of a prior business relationship with the recipient. All companies that send commercial email must adhere to below important points :

  • Do not use subject lines or headings intended to mislead the recipient into opening the email message.
  • Use a reply address that will be active for at least 60 days following the transmission of an email message.
  • Include mailing/physical postal address in the body of each email message & include a clear notice that the message being sent is an advertisement or solicitation.
  • Include clear instructions in the body of the message detailing how to opt-out of subsequent mailings & Honor all opt-out requests within ten days and not transfer, sell, lease, or exchange the email address of any recipient that has made an opt-out request.
  • Use Text or Semi-text versions for better response rates, HTML versions will be blocked by various anti-filters.

All of the above apply to both solicited and unsolicited commercial mailings with one exception. Mail sent to recipients at their consent (opt-in newsletters, alerts, etc…) does not need to contain the disclaimer labeling the message as an advertisement or solicitation. Damages under this Act can be reduced if policies and procedures designed to prevent such violations have been established and implemented, and a violation occurred despite reasonable effort intended to maintain compliance with the aforementioned policies.

Since most legitimate email marketers honor removal requests and do not send mailings by hijacking open relay servers or write misleading subject lines, the two key issues to address before the New Year are the inclusion of a physical postal address in the message, and the inclusion of a disclaimer identifying the message as a solicitation or advertisement, should one be required.

Spamming Policy: DataStormers clients or client's users may not use our company system to send unsolicited emails (SPAM) for any purpose commercial or non-commercial. An email will be considered spam if the list member has not specifically granted permission for the list owner to send them email. If your email list is derived from harvesting, purchase (even with the original list owner's permission), or any other means other than direct subscription, any email sent to the list will be considered unsolicited (SPAM). DataStormers will investigate all complaints of unsolicited email. DataStormers reserves the right to suspend or cancel your list hosting service for any email we determine to be unsolicited. It is the list owner's responsibility to keep documentation of all opt-in email subscriptions as proof of request. If you are a list member and feel that you have received unsolicited email, please complete our complaint form.

Opt-Out Policy: All list messages must contain unsubscribe instructions in the email headers and/or the body or footer of the email message itself. Any member who requests to be removed manually from your list must be removed within 10 business days of the removal request.