Requisite functionality under section 61F(2)(d)(ii) of Act for election advertising sent by email or electronic service
18.—(1)  For the purposes of section 61F(2)(d)(ii) of the Act, an election advertisement in the form of an email must have the requisite functionality of an email address —
(a)that is clearly and conspicuously displayed in the email;
(b)that is functioning; and
(c)to which the recipient of the email may send a reply to the sender of the email to indicate a desire not to receive any more email containing election advertising at the email address at which the firstmentioned email was received.
(2)  For the purposes of section 61F(2)(d)(ii) of the Act, an election advertisement that is sent using an electronic service (other than by way of email) must have the requisite functionality of an email address, a mobile telephone number or an online account identified by a username —
(a)that is clearly and conspicuously displayed in the election advertisement;
(b)that is functioning; and
(c)to which the recipient of the election advertisement may send a reply to the sender to indicate a desire not to receive any more election advertising that is sent using the electronic service.
(3)  For the purposes of this regulation —
(a)an email address, a mobile telephone number or an online account identified by a username (called in this paragraph a contact point) is functioning in relation to an election advertisement if the contact point —
(i)is capable of receiving content by means of email or an electronic service for at least 14 days after the election advertisement is sent; and
(ii)has the capacity, reasonably calculated in the light of the number of recipients of the election advertisement, to enable it to receive the full expected quantity of replies from the recipients by those means;
(b)if —
(i)a contact point is temporarily unable to receive content because of technical problems; and
(ii)steps are taken to correct these technical problems within a reasonable time by any of the following persons:
(A)the owner of the contact point or a person authorised by the owner to use the contact point;
(B)the provider of the email service or electronic service (as the case may be) for sending content to the contact point;
(C)the provider of an intermediary service (including a cloud computing service provider, a data storage service provider, an email security service provider or an internet access service provider) that is necessary for the functioning of the contact point,
the contact point is not taken to have ceased to be functioning;
(c)“online account” includes —
(i)a free account, a prepaid account and anything that may reasonably be regarded as the equivalent of an account; and
(ii)an account of an online facility, network, service or system; and
(d)“user name”, in relation to an online account, means a unique sequence of characters that identifies a person as a user or the proprietor of the online account.