Candid answers to CAN-SPAM questions

If you send commercial e-mail -- or have others send it for you -- are you complying with the CAN-SPAM Act and the Federal Trade Commission's CAN-SPAM Rule? FTC attorney Christopher Brown answers some of the CAN-SPAM questions businesses are asking. Some have heard that the CAN-SPAM Act requires senders to identify each commercial e-mail message as an advertisement. Does one have to use specific wording? Does one have to include it in the subject line?

Brown says, "The CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t require senders to identify the message as an advertisement in the subject line. Initiators of commercial email only have to identify the message as an ad in a way that is “clear and conspicuous.” The law gives you flexibility in how to do that effectively, but remember that deceptive subject lines are illegal. Before the federal CAN-SPAM Act was passed in 2003, some states required unsolicited commercial e-mail to include a label like “ADV” in the subject line. But Congress pre-empted those laws with CAN-SPAM. Here's another important point about subject lines. In the case of commercial e-mail that contains sexually oriented material, the CAN-SPAM Act’s Adult Labeling Rule requires the phrase “SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT:” to appear in all caps as the first 19 characters in the subject line."