emailrules.today
Stop 1 of 8WorkingWeeks or years earlier

CASL

Canada's anti-spam law — commercial email needs consent you can prove, plus identification and unsubscribe rules.

Say it out loud

“Canada is the strict one. Consent has to be provable, and the kind we get from a purchase expires.”

CASL (Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation) requires consent that is either express or fits a defined implied category, plus sender identification and a working unsubscribe. Crucially, implied consent has a clock on it: the categories expire, and when they do the permission is gone rather than merely old.

2 years
implied consent from a purchase
CASL, S.C. 2010 c. 23
6 months
implied consent from an enquiry
CASL, S.C. 2010 c. 23
CAD 10M
maximum penalty, business
CASL, S.C. 2010 c. 23
The testWhich consent do you actually have?Published valuesscrolls →
Express they asked, in a way you recorded no expiry

You must be able to show what they were told at the time.

Implied existing business relationship 2 years

Two years from the purchase or contract, then it is gone.

Implied an enquiry they made 6 months
Implied published business address conditional

Only where the address is published without a no-marketing statement, and only about their role.

Unsubscribes honoured within 10 business days

Yours

Nobody does this for you.

What goes wrong

Treating a Canadian segment as “basically the US”. The penalties are an order of magnitude larger than most teams assume, and the two-year clock means a list that was compliant last year silently is not this year.

The dated rules behind this

A definition is not a citation. These are the pages with the primary source, the date it was published, and what to do about it.

See also

Where this sits

Stop 1, you get the address. Someone hands you an email address, and the terms of that handover decide everything after it.

← BeforeOpt-inNext →Double opt-in

FAQ

Awkward questions

Who is this actually for?

People who ship email and are too busy to re-read every PDF: week-one marketers, lifecycle/CRM, deliverability, multi-country ops, DTC brands, agencies — on Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Braze, HubSpot, SFMC, or something else. Pick your tool and geos so product-specific pages only appear when they match. EU and UK are first-class filters. Not for people who sell tools about email and need a fake score to demo.

Why only ~40 rules? Isn’t that… thin?

On purpose. A wall of 400 undated “best practices” is how you look busy and still get burned. Every page needs a primary source we actually read. Thin and checkable beats fat and folklore. Europe, bulk inbox rules, measurement honesty, and protocol topics like BIMI/DMARC policy are on the shelf when we can cite them — not every Member State and not every vendor myth. Coverage map lists what we still refuse to invent.

Is this legal advice?

No. If it were, you’d have a billable hour and a longer PDF. This is a dated operator reference written by an email geek. Confirm anything high-stakes with counsel who knows your facts. Same for “will this make me compliant?” — no tool does that. Lawyers and judges do. We say what the sources say and what to do first on Monday.

Why no trust score out of 100?

Because we refuse to invent a number you can’t audit. Fake scores sell seed tests and panic. You get findings, dates, and links. If that feels less exciting than a red dial, good — you’re not the red-dial customer.

Why should I trust you more than my ESP’s blog?

ESPs sell seats. Seed-score vendors sell fear. AI invents citations when nobody watches. We sell nothing today — no pixels, no placement scores, no affiliate — so we can say when a tool is the problem. A human verifies, dates, and corrects in public. Tools may help draft; they do not ship unsourced claims. Check the primary links. Fail that test and leave.

Do I need an account?

No. Filters live in this browser and the URL. Share the link. That’s it. Accounts come later only if they earn it — not so we can nurture you about email.

I’m an agency. Where’s multi-client mode?

We tried a client-name CRM on the setup card. It made the product feel like work before it felt useful. Role filters + copy link + one-page brief (optional PDF title) is enough for now. Complexity comes back when the free shelf is habit, not before.

Is the quiet changelog a bug?

No. Quiet means nothing material moved. We don’t invent urgency so the homepage looks “alive.” Sticky risks still show what usually needs a person when the market is still.