WHAT IS YOUR ACCEPTED USES POLICY?

It is often asked why we have a policy against unsolicited e-mailing, or why we restrict bulk e-mailing. A general overview of our reasons are listed below.

Unsolicited e-mail, commonly know as "spam" is one of the more heated issues on the Internet. It is considered a breach of Netiquette and often generates more complaints than sales. This is partially because of the tremendous number of unsolicited e-mails received by some individuals (often more than 50 per day), and partially because of the damage and expense the advertising method itself causes.

Large providers who can do several million e-mails per day can cause hundreds of dollars in bandwidth charges a day to local Internet Service Providers (ISP's). This cost can cause incredible damage to a small company. Especially when it is taken into account that conservative estimates state that approximately 20% of all e-mail sent across the Internet is unsolicited.

This does not include the cost of additional mail servers, staff handling the problems this additional e-mail causes, or on-line time taken up to download and read all the e-mail messages. These costs ultimately get passed on to the consumer, who never requested the e-mail in the first place.

Many other problems are generated when the UCE senders try to avoid the hassles of bounced e-mail and complaints by spoofing and forging header information. The bounced e-mail is often sent to an unsuspecting, innocent user, who often has to bear the brunt of angry victims. In a further attempt to hide their identity, some "spammers" hijack third party servers, sometimes causing server crashes and system damage, as well as the additional data transfer cost.

This sort of unsolicited advertising is also against the policies of our upstream providers, AT&T, UUNet, and Teleglobe. By allowing our customers to violate our policy we would be violating our contract with our providers and risking disruption of service.

What types of bulk e-mail are acceptable under your policy?

Our Accepted Uses Policy forbids the transmission of certain types of e-mail. There are many reasons for not accepting bulk e-mail which are outlined in the unsolicited e-mail (UCE) FAQ. Bulk e-mail can be acceptable under the circumstances outlined below:

1. You should have a prior relationship with the person receiving the e-mail, and they should be aware that they will be receiving e-mail from your domain.
2. If you have a subscription list, there should be a confirmation e-mail sent to the address before that address is added.
3. There should always be a way to quickly and easily unsubscribe from the list included in each e-mail, and all unsubscription requests should be quickly honored.
4. A valid "From:" and "Reply to" address must be included with each message.

The following items would violate our policy:

1. Any kind of forged header information.
2. Lists which include "harvested" addresses.
3. "Targeted" e-mail lists.
4. Using a script on your site to send bulk or unsolicited e-mail.
5. Using an autoresponder at your site to send bulk or unsolicited e-mail.

Please note that this includes all domain names, IP addresses, and e-mail addresses at a site.

Can I advertise using a targeted e-mail list I purchased?

One of the many types of e-mail address lists for sale today is the "targeted" e-mail list. These lists are compiled using various methods in an attempt to reach a specific audience who, in theory, would be more interested in the product of service being offered.

Unfortunately these lists are still unsolicited and therefore violate our policy. We do not allow these lists to be used to promote domains, IP addresses, or e-mail addresses that are hosted on our servers.

Does it violate your policy to send bulk e-mail through another provider?

It is important to remember that unsolicited e-mail is often found very offensive, and the fact that we host a domain can easily be traced. Almost all ISP's and IPP's block e-mail from domains associated with unsolicited e-mail, and more importantly it is against the policies of our upstream providers to allow hosting of web sites or e-mail addresses of customers who spam.

How do you handle complaints about your customers?

The Abuse Team investigates all complaints about the sites we host. In order for an unsolicited e-mail or newsgroup abuse complaint to be considered, however, it must have the full header information for verification purposes.

We are currently operating under a "no tolerance" procedure in which we delete accounts which violate our policy.

It is very important to remember that often times unsolicited e-mailings forge header information and innocent domains are caught in the angry crossfire that follows. Please remember that just because a domain name we host may show up in several unsolicited e-mailings they do not necessarily have anything to do with them.

Allegations of trademark/copyright infringement and intellectual property disputes are handled under another policy. Domains found to have engaged in "mailbombing" or other serious or damaging breaches of policy will deleted with no warning.

What is your refund policy regarding policy violations?

Any customer who has been suspended for a violation of our policy will not receive a refund.