In July of 2005, the U.S. states of Michigan and Utah became the first to establish children's protection registries. These registries are secure collections of e-mail addresses, instant messenger IDs and other types of addresses that are protected from receiving adult-oriented messages.

As a sender of these messages, it is your responsibility to ensure that the addresses you contact are not listed on the state registries. To comply with the child protection registry laws, you may apply for and receive a marketer account to use for scrubbing.

Although it is possible to apply for separate accounts and manage them through each state's website, you may simplify the process by applying for a single account through the Registry Compliance website. Billing, customer service, and other concerns can all be conveniently handled here in one place.

Once you have received and funded your account, you can begin scrubbing your lists of e-mail addresses, fax numbers, SMS numbers and instant messenger IDs. Many companies choose to accomplish scrubbing by contracting with one of our compliance partners. Alternatively, you may also choose to use the Registry Compliance desktop program to clean your lists. The desktop program uses a simple user interface to import your lists and remove addresses that are registered with the states. A third option is to integrate the compliance process within your existing systems by accessing the Registry Compliance scrub system directly.

The state registries and the Registry Compliance systems have been carefully designed to protect both the data contained in the registries, and the data contained in your marketer lists. No personally identifiable information from your lists ever leaves your computer. For more information about registry and marketer security, please visit the security section of our website.

For an overview of each jurisdiction's current legal requirements and procedures, please see the Michigan and Utah information pages in this section.