Court: e-mails not covered by FACTA.

• Position: E-MAIL - Brief article

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently concluded that an e-mail is not an "electronically printed" receipt under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA).

FACTA, which went into effect in 2006 and is meant to help fight identity theft, bars businesses that accept credit cards from printing more than five digits of a card number or expiration date on a receipt. The law, as written, applies to electronically printed receipts, but doesn't define that term, according to The American Lawyer.

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The Ninth Circuit's ruling stems from a 2009 case involving Dimitriy Simoff and Expedia. Simoff claimed the travel website violated FACTA by including Simoffs card's expiration date in an e-mailed receipt.

In June 2010, a Seattle federal district judge led that the phrase "electronically printed" referred only to actual receipts printed by cash registers and dismissed the case against Expedia. Two months later, in a similar case, a different court ruled that 1-800 Contacts' e-mailed receipts...