In addition to using encryption tools, implementing and enforcing policies against suppression list abuse are important tools in a compliant marketer’s arsenal. One such example of setting guidelines and consequences for suppression list abuse comes from LashBack client PMA Media Group and their preferred partner OfferAlliance who have recently added a section to their Terms & Conditions agreement regarding suppression abuse which reads as follows:

11. Suppression Abuse
11.1 Any publisher found taking PMA Media Group’s suppression file, or that of PMA Media Group’s advertisers, will be fined $250 for each suppressed email address mailed to, will forfeit commissions, and/or have their publisher account deactivated.
Suppression abuse will not be tolerated.

We applaud PMA for taking the steps to vet affiliates and encouraging an environment of collaborative compliance between advertisers and publishers. Requiring affiliates to operate under a clear, written contract, monitoring sending behavior, rewarding performance and penalizing defectors are all integral steps marketers must take in order to prevent their suppression lists from being abused. By including stiff fines for suppression list abuse in their Terms, PMA is taking steps to proactively monitor and resolve issues in their email program. The FTC expressly mandates that mailers work to “monitor and resolve issues”, and PMA’s addition of terms is the right move for marketers and a fine example of what practicing collaborative compliance should include.

Click here to read Part One of Fighting Suppression List Abuse.

In recent months, challenges have arisen for marketers who are working feverishly to protect the integrity of their suppression files. When the FTC passed the CAN-SPAM Act, requiring mailers to share suppression files, many files were passed between advertisers and affiliates in plain text. While it is certainly a best practice for publishers to scrub a send file against an advertiser’s list, files in plain text format can quickly become targets of suppression list abuse. Sharing suppression files without any sort of encryption technology implementation places marketers in a vulnerable position.

Encryption technology such as MD5 hashing has evolved as a way to protect the consumer data contained in email suppression files. Encrypting suppression file data has also become a commonplace best practice for marketers interested in complying with email laws and protecting their brand reputation and valuable consumer data. After all, one of the easier ways to find your name on an ISP’s blacklist is by having your brand or company associated with mailing to a suppression file. The good news is, there are effective, feasible tools for securing consumer data and managing suppression lists. LashBack recommends using UnsubCentral’s solutions for suppression list management and distribution.

Protecting suppression files has never been a more pressing issue, as concerns about consumer privacy increase and the definition of personal identity information or PII broadens. In the near future, MD5 hash and encryption could very well become mandatory rather than simply best practices. The FTC is beginning to view the privacy of consumer email data in the same way it views credit card numbers and social security information, and will likely require it to be protected in the same manner.

Part Two of this post coming soon…

A ring of illegal mailers, allegedly responsible at one point for the largest volume of unsolicted mail on the internet, has recently been shut down in a joint effort by the Federal Trade Commission and New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs. The international group, which went by several names, has long been under the radars of anti-spam organizations and under investigation by the FTC with assistance from security firm Marshall Software.

Recently, a federal court in Chicago handed down a decision to freeze the assets of the group and order it to shut down. The group is currently the subject of an investigation by the FBI, who have ordered search warrants in hopes of pursuing criminal charges. In addition, New Zealand authorities have imposed fines on the mailers. The group, with international ties in China, New Zealand, India and Australia, used massive bot-nets to send the bulk mail, which has been estimated by some to account for one third of all unsolicited mail.

Most of the offers promoted replicawatches, a variety of pharmaceuticals and male enhancement solutions. The FTC argues that the group is in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act for using false and deceptive advertising practices and lacking unsubscribe options. Furthermore, the supplements they sell have been investigated by the FDA and found to contain possibly dangerous ingredients. The FTC hopes shutting the group down will decrease the amount of illegal unsolicited mail in consuer inboxes.

For more on the FTC bust read the full NY Times article by Brad Stone HERE.

In a recent case concerning unsolicited email, an attorney who has been repeatedly suing mailers filed suit against several defendants, including a prominent email ad network. The frequent plaintiff in this particular case sued over unsolicited emails containing satellite dish offers under Ohio’s consumer protection laws and the Electronic Mail Advertising Act (EMAA).

However, because Ohio’s consumer protection act contains a defense for innocent ad publishers, the court determined that the ad network was only an “information disseminator”, and therefore not liable. This particular ad network does not create the ads, nor does it actually send them out. In addition, the court found that Ohio’s EMAA is preempted by CAN-SPAM because it regulates activity that is not sufficiently fraudulent or deceptive. Therefore, the ad network was dismissed from the case.

To read more on this case from Eric Goldman, CLICK HERE.

LashBack will be sponsoring this month’s Gateway Interactive Marketing Association event at the Monarch Restaurant in Maplewood. The topic will be E-mail Marketing- The What, Why, How, When You Should Send an Email.

Expert panelists will be discussing be speaking about all aspects of email marketing programs, including testing, reporting, segmenting, demo data, and CAN-SPAM. A panelist from LashBack will discuss how to protect email reputation and improve deliverability through email compliance and best practices. Hope to see you there!

When:
Wednesday, October 15, 6-9 p.m.
6-7 Networking - Eats and Drinks
7-8 Presentation
8-9 More Networking

Where:
Monarch Restaurant
7401 Manchester Rd.
Maplewood, MO 63143

Email Compliance: The Foundation of Reputation and Deliverability

“Learn the Process, Use the Tools, Get the Answers”

Date: November 3, 2008

Time: 1pm-5pm (refreshments will be provided)

Location: eec/DMA Seminar Center, 1120 Avenue of the Americas, 13th Floor, New York, NY.

This seminar is part of a ground-breaking series of email compliance-focused events. This specific seminar will cover LashBack and UnsubCentral processes and deliverables within a framework of educating participants as to the need for comprehensive compliance processes as a foundation to successful email marketing and email reputation protection.

Participants will learn the 10 guidelines of CAN-SPAM compliance with drill down on unsubscribe compliance, unsubscribe processes including suppression list best practices, the new FTC unsubscribe rule, and compliance’s overall impact on reputation and deliverability.

Speakers:

To register at the DMA website, click here.

The growth of social networks has not been limited to the adult world of MySpace and Facebook; it has also been widely reported that the number of children visiting virtual world sites will double nearly in the next few years. More than 100 sites for children have been launched since 2005 and range from sites where children adopt and care for virtual pets to interactive social sites which allow communication via chat or blog. ENISA, the European Network and Information Security Agency has recently published a whitepaper entitled: Children on virtual worlds; what parents should know. The report outlines what caregivers should expect from the different types of browser based gaming sites available to children 7 years old and younger as well as tweens, or children between the ages of 8 and 12.

In addition to providing general classifications of the behavior that children exhibit in virtual worlds, ENISA maps out how to control and monitor a child’s online presence in order to protect them from unwanted targeted advertising, access to adult sites, identity theft and other potential abuse. The whitepaper lists 25 tips for parents on how to best ensure a positive, enriching online gaming experience while maintaining the utmost concern for safety and privacy.

Mailing to suppression files has been a problem since the inception of the CAN-SPAM Act. However, a more insidious issue that LashBack has seen recently is the rise in opt-in fraud. Email addresses are being harvested from suppression files and signed up directly on opt-in sites with false identification information. In response, LashBack has launched a new beta service called DataSource Validator.

The beta service, available to all LashBack clients, allows for submission of an MD5 Hash of opt-in email addresses and their respective opt-in IPs. DataSource Validator checks files for our list of seed email addresses which should never be opted in. In addition, it cross-checks against any IPs that have attempted to opt-in our seeds in the past. The goal of the new service is to alert marketers when they are receiving bad data from a particular opt-in source and allow them to take appropriate action.

LashBack has since rolled out the API to support batch processing of a lead file for lead source validation. Consequently, instead of having to submit each address line by line to inspect it for a suspicious opt-in IP, our clients can now submit entire lead files to be checked for bad data. In addition to being able to access this function programatically, clients can also process leads manually from existing UnsubMonitor accounts.

We urge any clients collecting new data to try this service. Bad data from opt-in fraud is costing marketers payouts for false opt-ins and resulting in higher complaint rates from consumers who have had their addresses fraudulently opted in. To pinpoint the origins of fraudulent data sources that may be tarnishing your list, please view our newest white paper entitled DataSource Validator.

LashBack client Publishers Clearing House(PCH) has embraced the service in an effort to monitor the quality of their lists to proactively promote collaborative compliance and report fraudulent data, protecting consumers and advertisers alike. Sal Tripi, PCH Director of Operations stated, “PCH is eternally vigilant of our brand, our consumer and our advertising customer’s experience with us. When this recent problem surfaced, we knew we had to act fast. Our advertisers and internal marketing partners expect quality. We knew this threat was real based on an alert from LashBack.” Read the full PCH press release on DataSource Validator here.

View LashBack’s Affiliate Summit presentation featuring speakers, CAN-SPAM compliance attorney Linda Goodman of the Goodman Law Firm and LashBack Director of Marketing James O’Brien.

Watch as leading compliance lawyer Linda Goodman speaks on the practicalities of compliance for marketers and discusses the legal liabilites of advertisers, networks, publishers and affiliates. In addition, James O’Brien covers the nine enforceable points of the CAN-SPAM Act as they relate to different business models and discusses practical collaborative compliance solutions for online marketers.

View this video and other helpful performance marketing videos on the Affiliate Summit site. For this video, choose session 3d: Practical Solutions to Internet Marketing Legal Compliance.

*Registration on the Affiliate Summit website is required to view videos.

Assembly Bill 2950, aimed at giving consumers and district attorneys the right to sue the senders of commercial email, was vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger yesterday. The bill, authored by Assembly member Jared Huffman, had already passed through the California Assembly, a legislative body that is known for having some of the toughest commercial email laws in the country.

Bill 2950 called for three major provisions, including allowing city attorneys and district attorneys to bring action against mailers, allowing consumers to sue mailers in the counties where mail was received, and making it illegal to advertise using an email address without first obtaining permission from the owner. The bill would have allowed consumers to sue marketers for up to $1 million if false or deceptive subject lines were used. Legitimate marketers may well have faced considerable scrutiny and short-term losses if the bill had been signed into law.

The following statement was given by the Governor along with the unsigned bill:

“To the members of the California State Assembly:

I am returning Assembly Bill 2950 without my signature. In 2005, the Federal Communications Commission adopted rules that prohibit sending unwanted commercial email messages to wireless devices without prior permission. In addition, California’s anti-spam laws are among the toughest in the nation. Given these circumstances, AB 2950 appears to be unnecessary and may possibly invite excessive litigation for a nuissance that does not result in any damages or losses.

For these reasons I am unable to sign this bill.”

In 2004, California became the first state to pass legislation concerning unsolicted commercial email, but was preempted by the Federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2004.