[codingdave]

> with no ability to opt-out.

That is the key. Does the web page being down mean that there is no way to opt out? Or is it just more difficult? The page you linked says: "Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you." Take note of the "or" in that statement.

So as long as they check replies within 10 days, they seem to be OK. If they fail to do so, maybe there is a problem. FWIW, I'm in agreement that this link being down is not good. But there is not enough info to hazard even guessing whether this is a violation of law.

[playpause]

Seems unlikely every marketing email Visa sent during this outage was sent from an actual, valid email address with an inbox. Isn’t that pretty unusual for marketing emails? They’re usually from something like no-spam@domain.

[codingdave]

Agreed. I'm not saying they are in the clear, I'm saying that neither do we have enough information to declare that they definitely broke laws - the law being cited contained both flexibility and ambiguity and it would take some legal research and knowledge to know more.

(And now that I think of it, we aren't even citing the law, we are talking about a summary of the law that is posted online.)