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Ancestry.com complies with CRTC’s anti-spam requirements, avoids monetary penalties

The website was in trouble for failing to provide a functional unsubscribe option in emails

For-profit genealogy company Ancestry.com has complied with the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission’s (CRTC) anti-spam legislation (CASL), and has revised the unsubscribe mechanism within emails sent to customers.

According to the CRTC, Ancestry.com sent two kinds of emails to customers between July 1st, 2015 and January 1st, 2017: “promotional offers and messages related to products for which clients have subscribed.”

Both kinds of emails had their own individual unsubscribe mechanism, which led some customers to complain that it wasn’t possible to blanket unsubscribe from all messages — something that would violate the CRTC’s Electronic Commerce Protection Regulations legislation.

However, as of April 24th, 2018, Ancestry.com has undertaken the necessary steps to rectify the issue, going so far as to implement an internal program to ensure that the company complies with the appropriate legislation.

“This undertaking fully settles all alleged or potential responsibility of Ancestry regarding all commercial electronic messages sent by Ancestry or on its behalf between 1 July 2015 and the date of this undertaking,” reads an excerpt from the CRTC’s filing.

It’s important to note that the Commission was in contact with Ancestry Ireland Unlimited Company — Ancestry.com’s Irish office.

Source: CRTC

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