President Bush signed this Act that was intended to create a single national standard designed to control the rising problems of deceptive or fraudulent commercial E-mails.  To date, no DNE (Do Not E-mail) registry has been created.

The Act does not ban commercial E-mails. It outlines a series of practices that must be followed when sending commercial E-mails.  The Act applies to all “commercial E-mails” whether solicited or unsolicited, and whether the E-mail can be construed as either fraudulent or deceptive.   

If you are sending commercial E-mails, there are four key requirements of which you must abide:  your E-mail’s “To” and “From” fields, as well as the originating domain name and E-mail address must be accurate and identify the sender; the subject line can’t mislead the recipient about the content of the message, plus, your message must contain clear notice that the content is an advertisement; you must provide a return E-mail address or another Internet-based response mechanism telling you not to send future E-mail messages.  And last but not least, it must  include a valid physical mailing address.

Also, if you send commercial E-mails you must: confirm that the recipient has previously agreed to enter the relationship with you, the sender, and to deliver goods or services that the recipient has previously agreed to enter into with the sender.

Insofar as you, the REALTOR, are concerned, as long as the broker or agent has established a service relationship with the client, communications between broker/agent and customer/client are probably covered, but solicitations for potential clients and customers would be considered commercial E-mails, and E-mails sent to your fellow REALTORS promoting your new listing would also be considered commercial E-mails subject to the Act.  E-mails sent by a REALTOR Association or MLS may be alright as long as they are offered as a membership benefit.  The Act also prohibits E-mail “harvesting”.