CRTC fines Rogers Media $200,000 for violating Canada’s anti-spam law

Today, the CRTC announced that Rogers Media, a division of Rogers Communications, has been fined $200,000 for violating Canada’s anti-spam law.

The CASL went into effect in Canada on July 1st, 2014, and ensures all electronic messages, such as email and text messages, that organizations send out for promotional activity follow correct and lawful procedures. In the case of Rogers, the CRTC’s investigation found that Rogers failed to comply with the requirements between July 2014 and July 2015, noting that its unsubscribe mechanism “did not function properly or which could not be readily performed by the recipient.”

The CRTC also found the email address associated with the unsubscribe button “was allegedly not valid for the required minimum of 60 days,” and that Rogers also failed to remove customers from its database after a request was made to stop future emails.

Rogers Media has now agreed to comply with the Canada anti-spam legislation and will take steps to improve its existing compliance program.

Manon Bombardier, CRTC Chief Compliance and Enforcement Officer, stated, “companies must respect the choices of Canadians who do not wish to receive commercial emails, and must make it easy for them to unsubscribe from their mailing lists. We are satisfied that Rogers Media Inc. made the necessary changes to comply with Canada’s anti-spam law. Today’s announcement is a direct result of the information provided by Canadians and we continue to encourage them to report suspected violations to the Spam Reporting Centre.”

[source] CRTC [/source]