Any help or suggestions appreciated

[wjaram]

I work for a company that provides driving records online for insurance companies. We acquire the driving records directly from the State DMV. We have developed an application that allows us to email our clients to inform them when a state DMV is down and when they come back up. Recently we have decided to re-sell this email service to our own clients. It allows our clients to create an email list and to send an email to that list. We've had this application on production for about 5 months and only recently have we been having a problem with some of our clients sending out unsolicited email. We don't have any intentions of letting anyone use our service to send spam. We have included all requirements mentioned by the can spam act but I know that this is not enough to prevent spam. We are taking a proactive approach to the spam issue and we have gone ahead and terminated our contract with those clients that sent out unsolicited email. Unfortunately, since our clients create their own lists, there is no way to verify if the addresses on those lists have actually opted in and actually requested the emails our clients send out. What can we do to prevent our clients to send out unsolicited email? Is there any way that I can verify that the email addresses on the lists are actual opt ins? If there anything similar to the national do not call registry where I can check which email addresses not to send to? We want to run an honest and legit email service but it's been very difficult for us.

Any help that anybody can give me will be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

wjaram

[Merlyn]

First of all the (I) CANSPAM act is not really good advice because it is only good with spam that has deceptive headers and such. It encourages opt-out spam. Just because it follows the CANSPAM act does not mean it isn't spam.

CANSPAM act here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S.877:

Your opt-in should be "confirmed opt-in"

it would be good for them to see the following:

http://www.mail-abuse.com/an_listmgntgdlines.html

and

http://cluelessmailers.org/info/listmanagement.html

[wjaram]

Thank you Merlyn for the links you provided. They have been very informative and we will make some changes as to how our system functions. I still have a question about the "confirmed opt-ins". Since our client provides his own list we have no way to know which emails actually closed loop confirmed. Would it be acceptable to allow our clients to send out an email to their list and include a link at the top of the email requesting for the recipient to confirm that he did validly subscribe to the list and to the email he just received. We will implement closed loop confirmation on this link. Our system will not allow our client to send any more emails to this individual unless the individual confirmed his subscription.

I hope this will be acceptable else will just have to drop this project.

Again, thank you for your assistance.

[StevenUnderwood]

What you may want to do is before the client sends ANY messages to the list, you send a "you have been subscribed to this list by xxxx" type email message that describes your service to the list and only send the real message to those addresses that confirm they want this type of message.

Some people may still report this original message, however. Sending that from a seperate server IP would make the main list immune to these reports.

[wjaram]

Thank you for the suggestions. I'll pass these along to my boss and wait on his decision.

Again, thank you all for your assistance.

[turetzsr]

I work for a company that provides driving records online for insurance companies. We acquire the driving records directly from the State DMV. We have developed an application that allows us to email our clients to inform them when a state DMV is down and when they come back up. Recently we have decided to re-sell this email service to our own clients. It allows our clients to create an email list and to send an email to that list.<snip>

23035[/snapback]

...Who is on the list -- the drivers licensed by the state DMV? If so, then please, please, please reconsider! View this as though you were one of those drivers -- would you want your name sold for such a purpose?