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Comment by kmod | Hacker News Reader

IANAL, but here's some FTC guidance on this, which I read (again IANAL) to say that the transactional-vs-marketing determination is not up to the sender but up to the recipient and if they "reasonably... would likely conclude" that it is marketing. Unfortunately the guidance is just about the subject line, so Experian might be toeing the letter of the guidance.

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act... (see the section "Q. What if the message combines commercial content and transactional or relationship content?")

I'm not quite sure what the legal enforceability is of the this sort of guidance, but at least with small senders when they try to pull this trick I send them this page and then I no longer receive any of these emails from them.

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The "not a marketing email" blurb in the footer where they know you are looking for an unsubscribe button is the marketing email equivalent of "I'm not touching you!" (imagine this being said by a 10-year-old you've just asked nicely to stop touching you, holding a finger an inch from your skin). Not exactly the behavior of someone who thinks the recipient wants to be receiving these emails, is it? The presence of the "this is technically not spam" disclaimer alone tells me this behavior should result in big, big fines. Too bad I'm not the one evaluating these very clear cut cases. I wish terrible things on those pieces of shit who run Comcast.

The ones I'm seeing lately are legitimately neither marketing nor transactional. Instead they're teaching me how to avoid phishing scams and stuff (not asking me to buy anything, but asking me to do things). I feel like the rule ought to be "offer an unsubscribe link unless it's transactional" but instead it's "offer an unsubscribe link if it's marketing".

Those informational emails are still marketing if they have company branding and such.

They are basically newsletters.

It’s a shame this doesn’t apply to mobile notifications. I leave Uber and DoorDash alerts on for obvious reasons, which they use to tell me I have $1 off my next $70 order or whatever. I think they’re even time sensitive.

I don’t allow notifications from Uber. If I’ve requested a ride, I leave the app open to track progress. But their notifications are mostly spam so they aren’t allowed on my phone.

What a coincidence I was trying to figure out a way to turn this off today. I figured there was some notification settings on the app to only enable actual ride/delivery notifications rather than daily $1 off spam, but nope, nothing.

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