If a subscriber sues us for emails after they decidedly mark it as spam (even though they subscribed to the list on their own volition AND double opted in), the CRTC (regulatory body of Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation) will take us to court.
In some cases, the damages on this have gone in millions.
So obviously, we want to make sure our clients and ourselves are protected.
CRTC will ask us for information about this subscriber before taking the case to court. And if this user had subscribed through a third-party integration partner like OptinMonster into ActiveCampaign, we’re SOL.
AC doesn’t provide the information that could help us. Moreover, the contact timeline gets removed after just 7 days. And you know what’s in this timeline:
Is there any CASL expert who can say if this is screenshot is going to help? Because this contact double-opted in. Everything else is fully compliant, the form, the optin email, etc. But this contact record:
a) doesn’t prove it’s a double-optin
b) isn’t even available after 7 days
So what I’m saying is, as I see it, by the time a compliant by a subscriber sees the light of day and we’re put in front of the CRTC - the log is gone too.
One more thing, how come AC doesn’t have any resource in place that explains things more? Or maybe even tells us what the best way would be for us to move forward in these hypothetical situations?
@mham Thanks for commenting here and I completely understand it’s a sensitive issue we need to take very seriously.
First, I think you may be under the impression that this contact activity is only recorded for 7 days. Contact activity is stored indefinitely, so you can easily look up contacts who subscribed 2 years ago, see the date the signed up, and if it’s an ActiveCampaign form you can also see the IP address and form where they signed up. There is no 7 day limit.
This information should be plenty to defend yourself against any CASL violations — although we really hope that’s not necessary!
If you are using a 3rd party app like Optinmonster to add contacts to ActiveCampaign only the information that Optinmontster chooses to sync over is added to the contact record/history. Most API integrations do not sync over the IP address of the signup (which is required by CASL), but they should be storing it on their side. You would want to get this information from the 3rd party app. Since they are hosting your form, this is really their data and we only get what they choose to sync over.
If you want to be extra careful, you could certainly setup a hidden field in your form that contains information like the IP address used to signup, the name of the form, and any other relevant CASL information. This way you would have these important records stored in the contact profile.
Lastly, I completely agree that we really should have a resource for guidance with CASL. I’m hoping we can work on creating something soon, and I’ll be sure to let you know when we make some progress.
Regarding the 7 day limit, you’re going to have clarify this with your support team because they’re the ones who provided that information. Case ID: 408552
OptinMonster says they send the IP over to AC. Also looking into adding the IP as hidden field, I think that’s a good idea. But I don’t see the IP on AC’s side.
@mham Yes, I think there was some confusion in your support ticket about logs. We only keep detailed delivery logs for 7 days, but all of the contact’s activity (when they signed up/unsubscribed, opened, clicked, entered automations, were sent messages etc) is all stored indefinitely. Everything you need for CASL compliance (the contacts entire history) is stored indefinitely.
If you see the IP 127.0.0.1 for a form submission that would mean the contact was added internally or via the API. That’s a local IP not a real external IP.
I just opened one of the contacts in your account and I can see that it looks like OptinMonster is sending us the IP used to signup and this is logged in the contact profile. You can see it by clicking the list to which a contact is subscribed/unsubscribed:
@mham I am not sure why the IP address wouldn’t be synced over in those specific instances. Could you email us at help@activecampaign.com with that specific example? I’d be happy to look and see why we didn’t get the IP address from OptinMonster in that case.
The IP address at time of unsubscribe will show in the same spot:
But you are right that the IP for the confirmation email is not recorded in the contact profile. Would you mind submitting your feedback for this feature at ideas.activecampaign.com? I would be happy to push it forward, but it really helps to have your input in the forum.
The ideas forum is one of the primary ways our developers decide what to prioritize, and they pay close attention to the feedback we get there. I promise that your thoughts would mean a lot to the product team.
I submitted the idea, but the thing about ideas.* is that it looks like a one-sided system. Sure, I trust you that user feedback is important, and also that devs decide from there - but being that it’s one-sided, how could I be sure that this isn’t going into /dev/null or a hugely backlogged list?
Having a way for us to see the submitted idea would provide the validation we need that it’s being looked at.
