COMMERCIAL EMAIL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

An appliance and a method for permission-based email filtering capable of scanning outgoing emails to ensure the emails comply with Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation or similar rules. In one embodiment of the invention, the system intercepts outgoing emails and redirects the email to a remote server. The server compares the recipient's email address to a consent database and distributes the email to the appropriate recipient depending on whether consent from the recipient is known or unknown. If the recipient has previously denied their consent, the recipient is removed from the list of recipients for the email message and the message is not sent to that recipient. In another embodiment of the invention, the system adds a unsubscribe mechanism to the email message.