Is Giuliani Violating the CAN-SPAM Act?
By Michael Whitney, 11/21/2007 - 2:10pm

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[Cross-posted at michaelwhitney.net.]

If you're on Rudy Giuliani's email list, be warned that you're likely in it for the long haul.  If you click on the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of any of Giuliani's emails, you're brought to JoinRudy2008.com, his campaign's website.  There appears to be no other way to opt-out of Rudy's emails, save for replying to the emails with removal requests.  Aside from annoying, there is the chance that Giuliani's emails are illegal under the CAN-SPAM Act, the federal law regulating unsolicited email communications.  Let's take a look at the letter of the law.

According to good old Wikipedia, commercial emails must meet several criteria to be compliant, including making options available for unsubscribing:


Unsubscribe Compliance:

  • A visible and operable unsubscribe mechanism is present in all emails.
  • Consumer opt-out requests are honored within 10 days.
  • Opt-out lists also known as suppression lists are only used for compliance purposes.


At first blush, Giuliani is in clear violation for not having an "operable unsubscribe mechanism" in his emails.  However, the Federal Trade Commission, the agency that enforces CAN-SPAM, provides for a few more options for unsubscribe compliance,:, including using a Reply-to email address to collect unsubscribe requests.


You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based
response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send
future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the
requests. You may create a "menu" of choices to allow a recipient to
opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option
to end any commercial messages from the sender.


Unfortunately, because Giuliani's emails are not explicitly offering a commercial service, his campaign is likely exempt from CAN-SPAM compliance as a political organization.  (Religious organizations and "national security" messages are also exempt.)  But just because his campaign doesn't explicitly violate the law, it is still a bad practice to not give email subscribers a way out.

While loyal Rudy supporters are likely happy to receive Rudy's emails for all of eternity, people who subscribed to the list to learn about the candidate or to otherwise observe do not have a direct way to unsubscribe.

This is something that the Giuliani campaign needs to fix by the next time it sends out an email, and it's something the other campaigns should test so as to not fall into the same trap as Rudy.

Michael Whitney is a progressive "interwebologist" who works for a labor rights nonprofit, but any views and opinions in this post are his alone, and cannot be attributed to anyone else.

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Probably a bug in the template

I bet it turns out that this was just a bug in the template setup -- a link that was left with a default target during development and not filled in with the correct address later, for instance. Still, definitely bad list-management practice. More here.

Colin Delany
e.politics
http://www.epolitics.com

By Colin Delany at Wed, 11/21/2007 - 3:15pm | login or register to post comments

Huh?

What happens if I click the link? Are you saying I'm not unsubscribed?

The Giuliani email I got this morning had an unsubscribe link that pointed to a personalized URL on giuliani.lyris.net -- the campaign's email vendor. By all appearances this is a proper unsubscribe link and provides a mechanism for the user to opt out.

I don't want to unsubscribe (because it can be a b*tch to get back on at the same address with some of these systems) so I haven't gone through the process. But I'm not sure what the point of this post is.

Is the "click here to unsubscribe" language (that everyone uses) suddenly now invalid?

By Patrick Ruffini at Wed, 11/21/2007 - 3:34pm | login or register to post comments

A couple of things.

I think a little bit more context is necessary - I apologize for not providing more in the initial post.

First, the person who first discovered this problem has repeatedly tried to unsubscribe from Giuliani's emails without success - both through that unsubscribe link, by replying to the emails, and by calling the offices - to no avail. She is still on the list.

Second, just because you see a Lyris link doesn't mean that you're going to where you're supposed to go. All email marketing applications - from lyrics to Convio to Constant Contact - offer clickthrough tracking for links in emails. The links are tracked by changing all of the URLs you make in a message to first hit a page set up by the company that tracks how many hits the page has, and then forwards you on to the actual page.

So even though it looks like a normal link an email, it's actually just tracking the clicks without doing what it's supposed to do. You can check this out with any of the candidates - all links on Joe Biden's emails first go to a Get Active page (http://ga3.org..., etc.), for example, before forwarding on to Biden's website.

I think Colin's correct that this is a problem with the email template that has to be corrected, and not a malicious plot by the Giuliani campaign to trap email recipients forever. It is disconcerting that it is not a more obvious process to get out of the email list.

By Michael Whitney at Wed, 11/21/2007 - 5:11pm | login or register to post comments

Getting to the bottom of this

After quickly reviewing Giuliani's last four emails, it looks like the problem Michael described occurred with the three "On the air:" messages, where the unsubscribe link was exactly the same as the joinrudy2008.com link in the footer. So that definitely was just a template error as Colin surmised.

The newest message from today, "Happy Thanksgiving", did have the correct link to the Lyris unsubscribe page (it makes you click on another button to confirm) as Patrick stated. I clicked on it, confirmed, and got a confirmation email. So we'll see if I get truly unsubscribed, but due to being hosted by Lyris I see no reason as to why that wouldn't work correctly.

Giuliani's emails have been pretty good technically, unlike those from Fred Thompson's staff, who continue to compose their email in Microsoft Word/Outlook 2007 even after this little tift.

By Luigi Montanez at Wed, 11/21/2007 - 9:39pm | login or register to post comments

It's illegal

I've gotten numerous unsolicited e-mails from Giuliani's campaign with NO opt out option. I got another one today. They are required by LAW to have an opt out option, as per CAN SPAM. Don't know why they would not do this, but someone should make a stink about it. The only reason they got my e-mail is because I sent them a message a year or so ago that was far from supportive of Mr. Giuliani. Why they would choose to then add me to their spam list is a mystery.

By brianmcgann at Mon, 01/07/2008 - 6:06pm | login or register to post comments



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