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Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) Resource Centre

What will you find here? Introduction | CASL Knowledge Base | CASL Audit | CASL Audit + Opt-In Campaign

Introduction

What do you need to know to comply with the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation which is being enforced on July 1st?

The Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) comes into effect on July 1, 2014. When it does, Canada officially becomes the last G20 member to enact a federal law to curb unwanted mass emails. Despite being late to the party, CASL promises to be the toughest anti-spam law amongst all industrialized nations.

We've been working hard over the past number of months to assemble an in-depth CASL Resource Centre for small to medium sized business in addition to providing advice to marketers and start-ups.

What Is CASL?

The law means that any company communicating electronically with new, existing, or prospective customers will have to prove that they have obtained consent from these recipients to do so. According to the Government of Canada's official CASL website www.fightspam.gc.ca the new law applies to all professional individuals, businesses, or organizations that:

  • Make use of commercial electronic messages (CEM) when conducting business
  • Are involved with the alteration of transmission data
  • Produce or install computer programs

In some respects, there is very little that’s new in CASL compared to other anti-spam laws in G20 countries. Predictably, in order to comply with CASL you must include the following when sending any kind of CEM:

  1. Expressed or implied consent from the recipient to send a CEM.
  2. Clear and simple identification of yourself or of others on whose behalf the CEM is sent.
  3. A mechanism that allows recipients to unsubscribe from receiving future CEMs.

There is certainly more to CASL than the basics listed above, but this should give us a level set starting point for discussing how we should deal with CASL compliance.

Browse, Search or Add to the Honeypot CASL Knowledge Base

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