New Etsy.com CEO breaks CAN-SPAM law on first email. Great | Hacker News Reader

New Etsy.com CEO breaks CAN-SPAM law on first email. Great

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59 pointssomid337 comments

It breaks CAN-SPAM because there is no unsubscribe link, on reply "unsubscribe" the system does not remove the user. Email is not transactional, last time I logged into Etsy was years ago.

This is just a terrible way to introduce yourself. They clearly were aware of the law because they include their address(es) in the footer. An honest mistake would have been if the footer was missing. But the footer is clearly there.

I'm sure it was an accident. But if you have an active account on the site, I think it's reasonable to assume you have some level of relationship with the site.

I don't have an active account. I've never bought anything on Etsy, and last time I ever used them was years ago.

you signed up for an etsy account?

Years ago, and never ordered anything. Last time I logged in was yeeears ago.

you signed up for an account

Yes, a bit annoying. But sometimes you can give people a little break, delete the email, and move on. Unfortunately, expecting one's inbox to be as pristine as a sacred temple is no longer realistic.

You may not believe it to be realistic but it is by law protected.

I think it's considered transactional/relationship, so exempt from CAN-SPAM

"Transactional or relationship content – which facilitates an already agreed-upon transaction or updates a customer about an ongoing transaction;"

From ftc website. This doesn't seem to fall under that category.

Edit: More from site. A. The primary purpose of an email is transactional or relationship if it consists only of content that:

facilitates or confirms a commercial transaction that the recipient already has agreed to;

gives warranty, recall, safety, or security information about a product or service;

gives information about a change in terms or features or account balance information regarding a membership, subscription, account, loan or other ongoing commercial relationship;

provides information about an employment relationship or employee benefits; or

delivers goods or services as part of a transaction that the recipient already has agreed to.

If you're a member of Etsy, then you have an ongoing commercial relationship with the site and this is an update on that relationship.

People also generally interpret "deliver goods or services as part of a transaction" pretty broadly especially if the user agreed to receive emails from you when they signed up.

Because they had a change of staff member? Really... who cares, that doesn't give them an excuse to spam people about it.

That example definitely seems like marketing, or at least brand-building and not relevant to anything the recipient requested.

For me, his email came from "Etsy <emails@mail.etsy.com>" and the included reply-to was "Etsy <donotreply@etsy.com>".

That's clearly an indication of literally no relationship, assuming you're meaning a two way one.

If you're meaning a one way relationship though, then sure. ;)

As a data point, I also immediately considered it spam and it futher reduced my (already fairly low) impression of Etsy.

Though a stretch...announcing the leadership change could fall under:

"gives information about a change in terms or features or account balance information regarding a membership, subscription, account, loan or other ongoing commercial relationship" from https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can...

But it also mixes in commercial bits, which makes it less acceptable...

Seems like an honest mistake, but I am a bit surprised whatever system they have in place for email doesn't do this automatically.

Precisely. I believe it was on purpose.

It speaks of a dysfunctional organisation IMO. Surely the CEO didn't send this out without it passing through an editing process and through some IT people (if they did then that may be worse). Why didn't they flag the issue? Are they incompetent; too afraid??

Regardless of whether there's a strict requirement to meet CAN-SPAM _all_ company emails should be following the spirit of that regulation, even those sent out in less regulated jurisdictions.

I hate reactions like this. You've deduced that Etsy.com is likely a "dysfunctional organisation" for the mistake of missing an "Unsubscribe" link in a single email. If that's all it takes, we certainly live in an incredibly dysfunctional world (which is sort of true, I guess).

Way too often I see people in this industry pretend as though everyone else is expected to conform to the strictest of standards yet the same rules never seem to apply to our own self-created fires. "Google Apps is down! Clearly Google has some quality control issues!" Or maybe a well-intentioned human made a small unhandled error.

The are a few possible scenarios but none of them look good to me: how do you think it's possible for a CEO to send out emails without, presumably, them being checked for legislative compliance.

Like Etsy don't have an email template? Or don't have anyone in ITS who knows about CAN-SPAM? Or the boss over-ruled them? Or the org didn't care about spam? Or everyone was too afraid to mention it? Or ...

You can say "they just left it out", but how? If Etsy was a startup or 3 person business then, OK, it's a reasonable excuse. (Etsy have more than 600 employees according to Google search.)

Yes errors happen, this one looks bad for the organisation to me.

You hate spam and you publish your email address in a post that you submit to a high-traffic website?

HAHA! Response, OP?

Im more interested in whether or not this breaks the law of things rather than who has access to my personal email. It baffles me that they have a footer with addresses but no unsubscribe.

This is a slippery slope, what if every company starts doing this.

To me this ranks pretty damn low on the list of email offenders.

It's Cinco de Mayo, someid3... Have a margarita and relax!

IANAL but fairly certain that's transactional, not a commercial message

NAL either, but is it truly transactional if the apparent sender is a donotreply?

I don't see why the value of the Reply-To address would affect that.

Because you can also unsubscribe by replying "unsubscribe if there is no link. Part of CAN-SPAM.

CAN-SPAM likely doesn't apply to the message in the first place, but even if it did it does not specifically require that you can unsubscribe by replying. That's just an example of one method they can provide.

True. I was testing. They provide no method to unsubscribe.

Transaction would seem to imply a two way communication.

trans·ac·tion

an exchange or interaction between people.

I think you're correct--someone else in the comments pasted the FTC's definition of "transactional," and the transaction in question may be an already initiated commercial transaction, not an interactive transaction between two parties on email like I had thought.

Don't most transactional emails come from a noreply@? Things like "you bought a ticket" or "your package has shipped" or "we'd love your feedback on your recent purchase" are all transactional emails typically sent by robots.

Ha, of course this makes the homepage of HN. It's interesting to see what kind of mistakes create outrage in this community.

True, but what if now every CEO of every company you have registered with follows suit and you get 100s of emails with no unsubscribe.

Yes, that would be terrible. It would be even worse if every CEO replicated every mistake done by all other CEOs = theta(n^2) mistakes

does CAN-SPAM apply to recruiter emails?

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