Show the unsubscribe they sent

They asked you to stop emailing them. Tonight, three proofs, in a system you administer. Show the request: which address, when it arrived, and whether it was a stop for all marketing or for one list. Show that address absent from the next marketing send, or write that you cannot see the list the sender used. Then show a different person, who did not ask, still on that send. If the list, the absence, or the other person requires the person who built the product, you have not stopped the mail. You have deleted a row and hoped.

This is one address and one class of message. It is not the text they were shown when they agreed to a purpose. Show the consent they gave is that text, the act, and the time, and the withdrawal of the purpose. A purpose can still be lawful to store while the marketing send is the thing they asked you to stop. Stopping the send does not prove the agreement, and showing the agreement does not prove the next campaign left them off. It is not the file of their rows. Hand one customer their file is a copy they can open, with the next person absent. A file can be complete and still not say whether Tuesday's campaign included the address. It is not deletion. When a customer asks to be deleted removes what the product can still show of them. An unsubscribe leaves the account, the invoices, and the password reset. Erasing the person to make the campaign quiet has answered a different email. It is not the list of companies who already received the row. Name who received their row is that list. A company you already sent the address to is not removed by a flag on the next send.

None of what follows decides whether a statute covers your business, and none of it is legal advice. The texts below are the clearest public statements of a stop-mail clock and of what a national survey actually asked about email. They do not tell you which law binds a Virginia company with a customer in another country. They do not replace the lawyer you call when the request is a letter from counsel. They do tell you the shape of a proof a founder can perform this week, which is a product question.

A person who does not read a newsletter is not a person who asked you to stop. Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel, wave 177, was fielded 18–24 August 2025. SSRS conducted it. 4,994 interviews were online and 159 were live telephone, 5,153 in total, out of 5,525 sampled, a survey-level response rate of 93%. The cumulative response rate, counting recruitment and attrition, is 3%. The break-off rate among panelists who logged on and completed at least one item is 1%. Interviews were in English and Spanish. The survey oversampled non-Hispanic Asian adults and weighted those groups back. The margin of sampling error printed for the full sample of 5,153 is plus or minus 1.6 percentage points (Pew Research Center, methodology). Do not hang that 1.6 on a question that was not asked of all 5,153. This is not wave 127, and it is not the smartphone question already quoted on end the session they still hold. A different wave, a different question, and a different base.

What the report measured is news, not a suppression list. 6% of U.S. adults say they often get news from email newsletters, 24% sometimes, 26% rarely, and 43% never. Respondents who did not answer are not shown, and people who do not use the internet were folded into never along with people who do not get news from digital devices, so those four shares are not a partition you should add to 100. Among people who get news from email newsletters at least rarely, 71% subscribe to fewer than five, 10% to five-to-ten, 3% to more than ten, and 16% are not sure. Those four add to 100. "About seven-in-ten" is the report's phrase for the 71%. 3% who subscribe to more than ten is not the other 3% on the same report, the share who name newsletters as the platform they prefer for news. 7% say they have paid or given money to a news newsletter in the past year. 7 is not 6, and neither is an unsubscribe rate (Pew Research Center, Email Newsletters as a Source of News).

The reading question is a third cut, still inside the newsletter readers, still not a stop. 62% say they usually do not end up reading most of the newsletters they receive. 38% say they usually read most of them, in part or in full. 1% gave no answer. 38, 62, and 1 add to 101, and the chart says the figures may not add to 100 because of rounding. "About six-in-ten" is their phrase for the 62. The report does not print the integer base of that newsletter-reader subgroup next to the 62, so the full-sample margin of 1.6 points is not a margin for the 62, and 62 is not a share of the 5,153. 62 is also not a share of your list who clicked unsubscribe, and it is not a share of campaigns you failed to suppress. Not reading is a behavior they reported about newsletters. A request to stop is a record in your system. One does not fill in the other.

The clock people quote for a commercial email is a U.S. statute the FTC explains, and it is not a finding that the statute covers you. The CAN-SPAM Act applies, on the FTC's guide, to commercial messages: "any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service," including email that promotes content on a commercial website. The guide says the law makes no exception for business-to-business email. Each separate email in violation is subject to penalties of up to $53,088. A note on the page says it was edited in January 2024 to reflect inflation-adjusted civil penalty maximums, and the page also shows August 2023. The $53,088 is the figure the guide prints. It is not an invoice, it is not a probability, and it is not the Pew 62. Do not multiply it by a list size the guide does not contain (Federal Trade Commission, CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business).

Read the two clocks before you read the dollar. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send the message. You must honor a recipient's opt-out request within 10 business days. 30 days is how long the mechanism has to keep working. 10 business days is how fast you honor a request that arrived. A mechanism that dies on day 31 is a different failure from a request you honored on day 11. You cannot charge a fee, require any personally identifying information beyond an email address and opt-out preferences, or make the person take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page. Once they have told you to stop, you cannot sell or transfer the address, even as a mailing list. The exception the guide names is a transfer to a company you hired to help you comply. Handing the address to a marketing vendor so they can keep mailing is not that exception.

A password reset is not this page, and a receipt can become this page. The guide's primary purpose is what decides. A message that is only transactional or relationship may not contain false or misleading routing information, and is otherwise exempt from most of the Act. The guide lists five categories, and it says the law views them narrowly. One facilitates, completes, or confirms a transaction the person already agreed to. One gives warranty, recall, safety, or security information about a product or service they bought. One notifies them of a change in terms, features, or standing in an ongoing relationship, or gives a periodic account balance. One is about an employment relationship or employee benefits. One delivers goods or services they already agreed to. A marketing message to a subscriber is not exempt because they have an account. The guide says subscribers and members do not lose the right to opt out of marketing mail. If the message mixes commercial content with a receipt, the guide's test is blunt. Message A puts the account statement first and a one-line product pitch at the end, and the guide calls that most likely transactional. Message B puts the sale first and the delivery sentence at the end, under a subject line that still says "Your Account Statement," and the guide calls that most likely commercial. The subject line they were used to is not the test. The beginning of the body is.

Two companies can both be the sender. The guide says you cannot contract away compliance by hiring someone else to hit send. Both the company whose product is promoted and the company that sends the message may be held responsible. If several marketers share one message, they can designate one sender only when that sender is in the from line, promotes its own goods, and actually complies. If the designated sender does not, the guide says all of them may be liable. That is a reason to be able to see the list. It is not a finding that your contractor's dashboard is your proof. If you cannot open the send, you do not have the absence.

One published settlement is not the per-email maximum. In August 2023 the FTC described a case against Experian Consumer Services: marketing email to people with free membership accounts, including people who had opted out, messages the FTC said lacked a way to opt out, and a claim that the email contained important account information. Experian Consumer Services agreed to pay a $650,000 civil penalty and to comply with the Act. The same alert repeats the 10 business days (Federal Trade Commission, CAN-SPAM means CAN'T spam). $650,000 is one settlement the alert reports. It is not $53,088, it is not a fine schedule you can multiply, and it is not evidence about your list. The alert is also not a finding that a similar email from you is the same case.

Do the three proofs on one real request, in the tool that actually built the send. First, the request. Open the record for that address: the time, the source (a link, a reply, a support message), and the scope. All marketing is a different scope from one newsletter. A checkbox in a settings screen that you cannot show was saved is not the request. Second, the next send. Open the campaign that went out after the clock you claim to honor, and show the address is not a recipient. A screenshot of a toggle, with no send beside it, is a setting. The send is the proof. If a vendor mailed it and the vendor will not show you the list, write that, and do not tell the customer the mail has stopped. Third, the other person. A different address that did not opt out is on that same send. If the whole campaign is empty, you suppressed a list, or you failed to send, and you have not shown that one person's request was the thing you honored. If the first address is still on the list, the toggle did not reach the sender.

Three moves feel like the proof and are a second problem. Deleting the account, because deletion is a button you already have, while the request was about a newsletter. Suppressing every address, because the tool you were given has no single-person path, and then describing the outage as compliance. Asking a model to "take them off the list," which edits a prompt and leaves the campaign tool. The first answers a deletion email they did not send. The second punishes the people who did not write. The third is a fiction. A session you can end, while the marketing job still runs overnight, is end the session they still hold. Ending the session does not edit the recipient list. A price they accepted, and a charge that does not match it, is show the price they accepted. The amount is not the mailing.

The path is ordinary when an admin can see one person and one message without seeing the next person's mail as the way to prove it. Gigbase is a multi-tenant workspace with subscription plans, role-based access for agencies, admins, and team members, invoicing, and a dedicated admin dashboard. The shape that matters here is an admin, in an account you administer, who can open one person's record. That case is not a suppression list. Nothing in the description is a headcount, a duration, or a result figure. If the only control on the admin screen deletes the tenant, or emails every member, you do not have this proof. You have a kill switch.

There is a version of this email where hiring the path is the wrong purchase. Nobody is being mailed, because the product does not send mail yet. You have no product. You are still choosing who will build, and the document in front of you is a term sheet. The criteria for that choice sit on the page written for a top saas development company. That page is criteria. It does not rank anyone, including us. The only message you send is a password reset or a receipt that stays a receipt, and the person asked you to stop security mail. That is a different design, and it is not cured by an unsubscribe link on the reset. A customer has already seen another customer's data. Leaving one address off a campaign does not close a leak. Or you wanted a lawyer to say whether the Act applies. Hire the lawyer.

When the request is real and the sender cannot show a list, the missing object is specific. An admin action, in an account you administer, that shows one address's stop, leaves that address off the next marketing send, and leaves a different address on it. A startup software development company that expects this will have put that action next to the rest of account admin, before a campaign is the way you discover the vendor owns the list. One that needs a call in order for you to see who was mailed is telling you who holds the send. If the first slice is a fixed capability, an AI integration sprint is the shape where the acceptance sentence can include the three proofs. If you do not yet know which system sends the mail, a two-week AI readiness assessment maps the systems. The findings are yours. They are not a promise that a statute applies, and they are not a rate.

An account that was allowed to merge, and a user message that replaced an instruction, are different stops: name who merged their change and when the user rewrote the rule. Do not record either on this page. A branch rule is not a mailing list. A prompt is not a campaign.

Before you tell them the mail has stopped, do the three proofs and write the time. Show the request. Show the address absent from the next marketing send. Show someone who did not ask, still on that send. Do not delete them to avoid the list, and do not ask a model to remember an unsubscribe. Not reading a newsletter is something a survey can measure. The recipient list is the page you can defend.