Yesmail agrees to pay CAN-SPAM penalty

E-mail service provider Yesmail Inc., an infoUSA company, has agreed to pay a $50,717 civil penalty to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it violated the CAN-SPAM Act. Yesmail believes that the problems that caused the fine were the result of technical errors that it resolved in a timely fashion and that are exempted under the CAN-SPAM legislation. But it says it chose to pay the fine rather than incur the costs of disputing the charges.

The FTC charged Yesmail with sending e-mails on behalf of clients more than 10 business days after recipients had asked it to stop. The CAN-SPAM Act requires commercial e-mailers to give recipients an opt-out method and honor such requests within 10 business days.

The FTC alleges that Yesmail’s spam filtering software filtered out certain “reply to” or unsubscribe requests from recipients as spam, which resulted in Yesmail failing to honor thousands of unsubscribe requests within the 10-day requirement.

In a statement, Yesmail says it believes the problems with its spam filter should have fallen under a provision of the CAN-SPAM Act that exempts violations caused by technical errors that are resolved in a timely fashion once detected.

“Yesmail believes that this issue clearly falls under the exception,” the statement says. “Ultimately, when faced with the costs of contesting the FTC regarding this issue, the prudent course of action was to resolve the issue” by paying the fine.

Yesmail added that the incidents occurred in 2004 and that it has since implemented extensive internal safeguards to prevent similar problems.

The FTC announced the settlement earlier this week.