Anti Spam Policy

Anti Spam Policy

The CAN-SPAM Act, a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes the requirements for commercial messages,and gives recipients the right to stop emailing them, and lays out tough penalties for violations.

GDPR is a globally relevant regulation applicable to any organization that has EU area customers or even stores EU citizens’ data. GDPR has taken effect from May 25, 2018.

The CAN-SPAM Act covers all commercial messages and not just bulk email, which the law defines as “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service,” including email that promotes content on commercial websites. The law makes no exception for business-to-business email. That means all email – for example, a message to former customers announcing a new product line – must comply with the law.

As per the Act, each separate email in violation is subject to penalties of up to $41,484, so non-compliance is very expensive. But following the law isn’t difficult. The important parts of the CAN SPAM ACT are listed below:

• Don’t use false or misleading header information: Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.


• Don’t use deceptive subject lines: The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message. .


• Identify the message as an ad: The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.


• Tell your recipients where you’re located: Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.


• Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you: Your message must include a clear explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Mention details in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to read, understand and follow. 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.

Knowing whether the CAN-SPAM Act applies to your Business

The Act applies to you on the basis of the “primary purpose” of the message. To determine the primary purpose, remember that an email can contain three different types of information:

If the message contains only commercial content, its primary purpose is commercial and it must comply with the requirements of CAN-SPAM. If it contains only transactional or relationship content, its primary purpose is transactional or relationship. In that case, it may not contain false or misleading routing information, but is otherwise exempt from most provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Understanding if the message you are sending is transactional or relationship message

If The primary purpose of an email is transactional or relationship if it consists only of content that:

Combining commercial content and transactional or relationship content

It’s common to mix commercial content and transactional or relationship content. When an email contains both kinds of content, the primary purpose of the message is the deciding factor.

If a recipient reasonably interpreting the subject line would likely conclude that the message contains an advertisement or promotion for a commercial product or service or if the message’s transactional or relationship content does not appear mainly at the beginning of the message, the primary purpose of the message is commercial.

So, when a message contains both kinds of content – commercial and transactional or relationship – if the subject line would lead the recipient to think it’s a commercial message, it’s a commercial message for CAN-SPAM purposes. Similarly, if the bulk of the transactional or relationship part of the message doesn’t appear at the beginning, it’s a commercial message under the CAN-SPAM Act.

Combining a commercial message and a message with content defined as “other”

If the primary purpose of the message is commercial and the provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act apply if:

Combining the messages from more than one sender, and identifying “sender” responsible for CAN-SPAM compliance

If your email advertises or promotes the goods, services, or websites of more than one marketer, there’s a clear method for determining who’s responsible for the duties the CAN-SPAM Act imposes on “senders” of commercial email. Marketers whose goods, services, or websites are advertised or promoted in a message can designate one of the marketers as the “sender” for purposes of CAN-SPAM compliance as long as the designated sender

Meets the CAN-SPAM Act’s definition of “sender,” meaning that they initiate a commercial message advertising or promoting their own goods, services, or website; is specifically identified in the “from” line of the message; and complies with the “initiator” provisions of the Act – for example, making sure the email does not contain deceptive transmission information or a deceptive subject heading, and ensuring that the email includes a valid postal address, a working opt-out link, and proper identification of the message’s commercial or sexually explicit nature.

If the designated sender doesn’t comply with the responsibilities the law gives to initiators, all marketers in the message may be held liable as senders.

Wisestep platform only allows sending of recruitment related messages and any messages sent which are not compliant with the Terms of Usage will likely result in the account being put on hold.

The penalties for violating the CAN-SPAM Act are big

Each separate email in violation of the law is subject to penalties of up to $41,484, and more than one person may be held responsible for violations. For example, both the businesses whose product is promoted in the message and the business that originated the message may be legally responsible. Email that makes misleading claims about products or services also may be subject to laws outlawing deceptive advertising, like Section 5 of the FTC Act. The CAN-SPAM Act has certain aggravated violations that may give rise to additional fines. The law provides for criminal penalties – including imprisonment – for:

• Accessing someone else’s computer to send spam without permission.


• Using false information to register for multiple email accounts or domain names.


• Relaying or retransmitting multiple spam messages through a computer to mislead others about the origin of the message.


• Harvesting email addresses or generating them through a dictionary attack (the practice of sending email to addresses made up of random letters and numbers in the hope of reaching valid ones), and taking advantage of open relays or open proxies without permission.

Separate rules apply to sexually explicit email

FTC has issued a rule under the CAN-SPAM Act that governs these messages. Messages with sexually oriented material must include the warning

“SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT:” at the beginning of the subject line. In addition, the rule requires the electronic equivalent of a “brown paper wrapper” in the body of the message. When a recipient opens the message, the only things that may be viewable on the recipient’s screen are:

• the words “SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT”; and


• the same information required in any other commercial email: a disclosure that the message is an ad, the sender’s physical postal address, and the procedure for how recipients can opt out of receiving messages from this sender in the future.


• Harvesting email addresses or generating them through a dictionary attack (the practice of sending email to addresses made up of random letters and numbers in the hope of reaching valid ones), and taking advantage of open relays or open proxies without permission.

No graphics are allowed on the “brown paper wrapper.” This provision makes sure that recipients cannot view sexually explicit content without an affirmative act on their part – for example, scrolling down or clicking on a link. However, this requirement does not apply if the person receiving the message has already given affirmative consent to receive the sender’s sexually oriented messages.

Wisestep disallows sexually explicit emails to be sent through the platform and accounts found to be transmitting these messages are likely to be banned and their credits forfeited.