6 Pitfalls That Can Make Your Marketing Illegal

• No online advertisement or claim can be deceptive;
• Marketers must be careful not to be materially misleading, or else they will get into trouble with the FTC; and
• Clear and conspicuous disclosures either in your ad or on your website.

3. The CAN-SPAM Act
In 2004, the CAN-SPAM Act took effect. The law involves certain proscribed practices including fraudulent transmission data and harvesting of email addresses. Some additional ways to avoid violating the Act include:

• Don't send messages through an open relay;
• Don't use misleading sender or subject lines;
• Add your postal address to an email;
• Include a clear and conspicuous unsubscribe mechanism in every email;
• Implement a process for handling unsubscribes, making sure to honor the request within 10 days; and
  
• Remove all sexually suggestive materials from your emails.

4. COPPA
In 1998 Congress enacted COPPA. The goal is to place parents in control of what kind of information is collected from young children online. Marketers need to be fully cognizant of COPPA and how to stay in compliance with the Act.

• Post a clear and comprehensive online privacy policy describing their information practices for personal information collected online from children;
• Provide direct notice to parents and obtain verifiable parental consent, with limited exceptions, before collecting personal information online from children;
• Give parents the choice of consenting to the operator's collection and internal use of a child's information, but prohibiting the operator from disclosing that information to third parties (unless disclosure is integral to the site or service, in which case, this must be made clear to parents);
• Provide parents access to their child's personal information to review and/or have the information deleted;
• Give parents the opportunity to prevent further use or online collection of a child's personal information;
• Maintain the confidentiality, security, and integrity of information they collect from children, including by taking reasonable steps to release such information only to parties capable of maintaining its confidentiality and security; and
• Retain personal information collected online from a child for only as long as is necessary to fulfill the purpose for which it was collected and delete the information using reasonable measures to protect against its unauthorized access or use.

5. The TCPA
The TCPA provides authorization for the FTC to enforce deceptive and abusive telemarketing practices, including: