Refer a friend - Emailing - legal problems

Question

My website has a referral program..

I have a page called "refer a friend". Logged in users can enter their friend's email addresses. As of now my site doesn't have any email limit.

Now my question is "Will I get any legal problem, if the user submits spidered email address to earn referral money?"

And how exactly big sites handle this problem?

Can I use mailchimp api for this?

Answer 1

I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. However, assuming you are in the US, if you otherwise follow the entirety of the CAN-SPAM act and put a warning on the refer a friend page ("Only refer people you know! Don't spam strangers!") then you should be ok, however, I would make sure to add a captcha or similar.