The FTC is charged with enforcing the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) and the CAN-SPAM Act. It's very easy for it to obtain evidence that your company does not make it easy for consumers to opt out of telemarketing and e-mail marketing or ignores their opt-outs altogether. Several companies -- VoiceTouch, Dish Network, DirecTV, The Broadcast Team and Craftmatic -- have found this out the hard way. Four TSR violations rank among the highest privacy penalties imposed by the FTC (see table below).

The lesson for marketers is clear: regularly test your opt-out processes to make sure they're easily accessible and promptly acted upon.

The (COPPA). COPPA requires that websites oriented toward children under 13 collect personal data from children only with the consent of a parent. The websites also need parental consent to market to the children and have to provide parents a way to review and delete information about their children.

It's fairly easy to tell if a website isn't doing these things, and the FTC has made some sweeps of children's websites to net millions of enforcement dollars. Among the companies caught in this dragnet have been Playdom, Sony BMG Music, UMG Recordings, W3, Iconix, Industrious Kid and Xanga.