Laws & Regulations

Email is subject to laws and regulations; it is your responsibility as a sender to know which ones apply to you, what is covered, and what the penalties are. This page contains a few of the more common regulations, as well as links to official texts and breakdowns.

The content on this page is NOT legal advice.

Please refer directly to the official documentation for each regulation, and ensure that you look up any additional laws and regulations for your location and the location of your contacts.

CAN-SPAM

Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act
2003

🔗 Official Text | Plain Language Breakdown

Applies to contacts in the United States of America

• Don’t use false or misleading header information.

• Don’t use deceptive subject lines.

• Identify the message as an ad.

• Tell recipients where you’re located.

• Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future marketing email from you.

• Remember that subscribers and members can opt out of marketing emails, too.

• Honor opt-out requests promptly.

• Monitor what others are doing on your behalf.

Breakdown:

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CCPA

California Consumer Privacy Act
2018

🔗 Official Text | Plain Language Breakdown

Applies to residents of California in the United States of America

• The right to know about the personal information a business collects about them and how it is used and shared

• The right to delete personal information collected from them (with some exceptions)

• The right to opt-out of the sale or sharing of their personal information including via the GPC

• The right to non-discrimination for exercising their CCPA rights.

Breakdown:

• The right to correct inaccurate personal information that a business has about them; and

• The right to limit the use and disclosure of sensitive personal information collected about them.

Additional rights added by CPRA as of 2023:

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CASL

Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation
2014

🔗 Official Text | Plain Language Breakdown

Applies to contacts in Canada

• sending you commercial electronic messages without your consent, including email, social media and text messages

• altering the transmission data in an electronic message so the message is sent to a different destination without your express consent

• installing software on your electronic devices without your consent (including, in some cases, updates and upgrades, even if you were the one who installed the original software)

• using false or misleading representations to promote products or services online

• collecting personal information by accessing a computer system or electronic device illegally

• harvesting addresses (collecting and/or using email or other electronic addresses without permission)

Prohibits senders from:

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GDPR

General Data Protection Regulation
2016

🔗 Official Text | Plain Language Breakdown

Applies to contacts in the European Union or European Economic Area

1. Lawfulness, fairness and transparency — Processing must be lawful, fair, and transparent to the data subject.

2. Purpose limitation — You must process data for the legitimate purposes specified explicitly to the data subject when you collected it.

3. Data minimization — You should collect and process only as much data as absolutely necessary for the purposes specified.

4. Accuracy — You must keep personal data accurate and up to date.

5. Storage limitation — You may only store personally identifying data for as long as necessary for the specified purpose.

6. Integrity and confidentiality — Processing must be done in such a way as to ensure appropriate security, integrity, and confidentiality (e.g. by using encryption).

7. Accountability — The data controller is responsible for being able to demonstrate GDPR compliance with all of these principles.

Breakdown:

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Other Regulations

• PECR
  (Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations) [2003]
  United Kingdom
  🔗 Official Text | Plain Language Breakdown
  

• Spam Act; Spam Regulations
  2003; 2021
  Australia
  🔗 Official Text | Plain Language Breakdown

This section is not all-encompassing. Let me know of other regulations to include via the form in the footer below.

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