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FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

(www.ftc.gov)
1737 points pseudolus | 1 comments | 16 Oct 24 13:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.216s | source
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Uehreka ◴[16 Oct 24 15:57 UTC] No.41860626[source]▶
When people try and say that regulating stuff like this is impossible, I often think about how unreasonably great the regulations around “Unsubscribe” links in emails are.

There really seems to be no loophole or workaround despite there being huge incentive for there to be one. Every time I click an “Unsubscribe” link in an email (it seems like they’re forced to say “Unsubscribe” and not use weasel words to hide the link) I’m either immediately unsubscribed from the person who sent me the email, or I’m taken to a page which seemingly MUST have a “remove me from all emails” option.

The level of compliance (and they can’t even do malicious compliance!) with this is absurd. If these new rules work anything like that, they’ll be awesome. Clearly regulating behavior like this is indeed possible.

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justinpombrio ◴[16 Oct 24 16:43 UTC] No.41861129[source]▶
Unsubscribe links are a fantastic regulation, but there is a workaround. I must have received at least a dozen emails from Brown after graduating despite unsubscribing to every email they sent.

The trouble is they're endlessly creative about the lists they put you on. I'd get one email from "Alumni Connections" and then another from "Faculty Spotlight" and then another from "Global Outreach" and then another from "Event Invitations, 2023 series". I'm making those names up because I forget exactly what they were called, but you get the idea. I hope this was in violation of the regulation: surely you can't invent a new mailing list that didn't used to exist, add me to it, and require me to unsubscribe from it individually.

They finally stopped after I sent them an angry email.

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monksy ◴[16 Oct 24 19:58 UTC] No.41863186[source]▶
So I'm getting these emails from the KamalaHarris campaign. They're signed by the domain as well. I've never given money to the organiation, I'm not connected with their party, I've never signed up for the campaign, or interacted with them. However, I'm constantly being put on their mailing list soliciting for donations.

I've seen how the campaigns pass around email addresses without consent. (Mostly from ActBlue) So I'm concerned about validating an email address via unsubscribe.

I've reported this to abuse at sendgrid, and now sparkpostmail. They're shopping for email services.

Proof of org spamming:

Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; dkim=pass header.i=@e.kamalaharris.com header.s=ak01 header.b=kJamWIyP; spf=pass (google.com: domain of bounces@bounces.e.kamalaharris.com designates 168.203.32.245 as permitted sender) smtp.mailfrom=bounces@bounces.e.kamalaharris.com; dmarc=pass (p=REJECT sp=REJECT dis=NONE) header.from=e.kamalaharris.com

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greycol ◴[16 Oct 24 20:08 UTC] No.41863294[source]▶
Unfortunately political parties have more of a free pass on this as Republicans sued providers for their emails getting caught up in spam filters around 2022 (Who would've thought continuosly emailing people who click unsubscribe on your emails who then start reporting as spam would get you put on spam lists). Now political parties (and some bulk providers) have special tools to bypass rejection with some providers as a compromise.
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blackeyeblitzar ◴[17 Oct 24 03:23 UTC] No.41866140[source]▶
This is incorrect to my knowledge. The free pass to spam political email was an explicit carve out in the can spam act, which lets them not comply with the same regulations everyone else has to. What you’re talking about is something much more recent, about what Google does on the receiving side of email with their spam filters. That was about Google’s compliance with an order from the federal election commission because their spam filters had biases that act like campaign financing. Google’s solution had bipartisan support among the commissioners as I recall.
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1. greycol ◴[17 Oct 24 04:02 UTC] No.41866308[source]▶
I don't think anything I said is in conflict with what you've said, I'm pointing out one of the reasons the poster might still be getting spam from a mail he's reported as spam. The can spam act was more about senders requirements than email platform providers requirements for recieving (i.e. spam filtering). Yes the republicans were more affected by the spam filters but both researchers and internal communication indicated it wasn't because of any deliberate bias (just that republican emails were more likely to be like spam as far as an algorithmic interpratation goes (pure uncharitable conjecture: perhaps because one party was more likely to include a unsubscribe button even if it wasn't required by the can spam act and thus weren't reported as spam as much). Because of this they sued and google reportedly made more tools available or atleast publicised existing tools to both republicans and democrats to exclude their email campaigns from getting caught in the spam filters (tools that have also been made available to some of the larger more legitimate bulk email providers).