Does CAN SPAM apply to individual prospecting emails

Two different people on two different mailing lists asked very similar questions recently. Are people who send individual prospecting emails required to comply with CAN SPAM.
My opinion (not a lawyer, don’t play one on TV, didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn last night) is that CAN SPAM does not mention anything about volume, and any individual unsolicited email that has a “primary purpose” of advertising is required to include a physical postal address and a way to unsubscribe.
My other take on it is for individual prospecting emails failing to comply with CAN SPAM is like speeding. It’s illegal, and you can get in legal trouble by doing it, but everyone does it and few people get caught.

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Spammers are funny

Dear Spammer,
If you are going to send me an email that claims it complies with the Federal CAN SPAM act of 2003, it would be helpful if the mail actually complies with CAN SPAM.
In this case, however, you are sending to an address you’ve harvested off my website. The mail you are sending does not contain a physical postal email address. You’re also forging headers. Both of those things are violations of CAN SPAM. Given you have also harvested the laura-questions@ email from this website, that is treble damages.
Oh, and while we’re at it, you might want to consider your current disclaimer.

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VerticalResponse acquired

The acquisition of email service providers continues. Last week Deluxe (yes, the check printing people) acquired Vertical Response. This appears to be positioning themselves to improve their collection of business services to include email marketing.

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Logging in to unsubscribe

I have been talking with a company about their unsubscribe process and their placement of all email preferences behind an account login. In the process, I found a number of extremely useful links about the requirements.
The short version is: under the 2008 FTC rulemaking senders cannot require any information other than an email address and an email preference to opt-out of mail. That means senders can’t charge a fee, they can’t ask for personal information and they can’t require a password or a login to unsubscribe.
I’ve talked about requiring a login to unsubscribe in the past here on the Word to the Wise blog.
Let them go
Questions about CAN SPAM
One click, two click, red click, blue click
How not to handle unsubscribes
I’m not the only person, though, that’s written about this.
The FTC has written about it in the FTC CAN SPAM Compliance Guide for business

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