I’m not sure what you think that is a violation of; if you have an account with a bank, you are their customer, and that is enough permission for them legally to email you (at least in the US).

I find it odd that someone would trust a bank enough to give them the info a bank needs to open an account, but not want the bank to email them.

If it’s a physical bank, I’m not sure why you’d even need to give them an email address in the first place.

That’s true. When you encourage your subscribers to forward your message, you may want to remind them to clear the remove link so that doesn’t happen

I can’t even suggest that my newsletters are forwarded on - they were not requested and so are deemed SPAM.

This has far deeper implications considering that we are dealing with a world-wide system where even Sates in the US have differing rules to the rest of the US.

But to clarify, is Aweber accusing the New York Times, CNN, The Wall Street Journal and every other news organization in the world of spam given that they all have ’send this article to a friend’ functionality on their sites???

thanks for bringing up this idea:

"What I recommend to people is this: rather than using a tell-a-friend form, put a call-to-action in your email messages that encourages people to forward those messages to someone they know who would benefit. Combine that with a section that tells people who may have been forwarded the message how they can sign up."

This has been a great idea of yours. We could add such sentence at the footer of each mailout, encouraging happy subscribers to tell their friends the most natural, no-spam way imaginable. Thanks for that!

I like the idea of someone sending a personal note rather than filling out a Tell-a-Friend form; however, I see two issues with the implementation you’re suggesting:

1. Offering a bonus in exchange for someone else’s email address is going to end up in people sticking in addresses just to get the bonus. This ups the spam risk that’s already inherent to TAF.
2. The CAPTCHA doesn’t change the fact that the person receiving the message didn’t request it. So they’re getting a piece of unsolicited bulk email, sent from your website, which has an AWeber opt-in form on it. Complaints against those messages would be against you and us.

What I recommend to people is this: rather than using a tell-a-friend form, put a call-to-action in your email messages that encourages people to forward those messages to someone they know who would benefit. Combine that with a section that tells people who may have been forwarded the message how they can sign up.

  http://www.aweber.com/faq/questions/267/

I think if your site is valuable and can create a buzz, people will refer others to you with or without a form.

I don’t see anything spammy with that.. do you?