Hello,
We are in possession of a database including thousands of email addresses. We are planning to send a newsletter to these people and the potential newsletter will fully complies with the CAN-SPAM Act requirements.
However, some of the addresses in our database were obtained through an open source website. The email addresses that were obtained on this website were gathered manually and without any automated means (dictionnary attack, web crawlers, spiders). In fact, all the data are absolutely public on this website. Moreover, we found that bulk mail are authorized in the U.S. and, to enable prosecution under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, a website operator must post (or must have posted) a notice that "the site or service will not give, sell, or otherwise transfer addresses maintained by such website or online service to any other party for the purposes of initiating, or enabling others to initiate, electronic mail
In sum, can we use the email addresses gathered since it does not notify anywhere on the website that the addresses are not to be shared and/or will not be shared? In other words, can somebody (or an entity) use email addresses provided by a third party if the data are fundamentally meant to be public and/or sold?
Thank you very much for your time
We are in possession of a database including thousands of email addresses. We are planning to send a newsletter to these people and the potential newsletter will fully complies with the CAN-SPAM Act requirements.
However, some of the addresses in our database were obtained through an open source website. The email addresses that were obtained on this website were gathered manually and without any automated means (dictionnary attack, web crawlers, spiders). In fact, all the data are absolutely public on this website. Moreover, we found that bulk mail are authorized in the U.S. and, to enable prosecution under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, a website operator must post (or must have posted) a notice that "the site or service will not give, sell, or otherwise transfer addresses maintained by such website or online service to any other party for the purposes of initiating, or enabling others to initiate, electronic mail
In sum, can we use the email addresses gathered since it does not notify anywhere on the website that the addresses are not to be shared and/or will not be shared? In other words, can somebody (or an entity) use email addresses provided by a third party if the data are fundamentally meant to be public and/or sold?
Thank you very much for your time
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