- What is your accepted uses policy?
- What types of bulk e-mail are acceptable under your policy?
- Can I advertise using a targeted e-mail list I purchased?
- Does it violate your policy to send bulk e-mail through another
provider?
- I have not received a response from you in two days, what are your hours?
- Whom do I contact about bulk e-mail sent to my domain that I
host with you?
- What are the legal aspects of spam in the Canadian legal systems
- How do you handle complaints about your customers?
- The site advertised in this UCE is only showing a root directory,
is this web site active?
- How do you handle trademark/copyright/intellectual property disputes?
- What is your refund policy regarding policy violations?
If you have any questions about our policies, please contact our Abuse department
at abuse@sunnyoasis.com
E-Mail Restrictions
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 along with some links
that can clarify the situation.
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 that 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, Sprint, UUNet, and MCI. Their policies are listed among the links below. By
allowing our customers to violate our policy we would be violating our contract with our
providers and risking disruption of service.
This barely begins to scratch the surface of the "spam" issue. Further
information can be found at the sites listed below:
http://spam.abuse.net
http://www.cauce.org
UUnet's acceptable uses policy
Sprintlink's
acceptable uses policy
MCI's
guide to "spam" on the 'net.and policy
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Complaints Procedures
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 "three strikes" procedure in which we
warn, suspend, then 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 can be suspended or deleted with no warning.
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Policy Violations and Refunds
Any customer who has been suspended for a violation of our policy will no longer be
eligible for the 30 day money back guarantee. Our 99.9% uptime guarantee would still be in
effect, although the time spent in suspension would be considered uptime.
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Root Directory
It is often asked why the advertised domain in a bulk e-mailing is "still active, but
showing only a root directory". This is because the account is suspended. Often times
it can take several days to sort through the ramifications of deleting a site for a
violation of policy, and the site will be kept in this status until such a time as the
account is deleted.
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Bulk E-Mail
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.
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Received Bulk E-Mail
Occasionally our customers run into a particular bulk e-mailing company, or particular
message that comes in repeatedly. Since we do track all incoming unsolicited e-mail
complaints and block repeat offenders, we ask that you forward these complaints to abuse@sunnyoasis.com as well as complaining to the
sender.
When sending a complaint to the Abuse Team, please make sure to include the full header
information ("Received From:" lines) so that we can trace the source of the
message.
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Abuse Team Hours
All complaints should be directed to abuse@sunnyoasis.com,
and only specific questions should be directed to customer service.
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Other Providers
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.
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"Targeted" Lists
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.
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Disputes and Allegations
We are very sensitive to the Internet related issues often raised about web sites we host.
These include trademark/copyright infringement, improper advertising, and a few others. We
are willing to help resolve these issues between the complainant and our customers, but
cannot act as judge and jury or delete every account accused of violating the law.
We suggest the following:
1. If our client does not respond to your cease-and-desist demand by your deadline, please
forward our name, address, email, etc. to your counsel so we may cooperate in resolving
the matter without litigation.
2. Through your counsel, or the legal branch of the appropriate local, state, or country
authorities, please inform us as to how our client responds to your demand. Although our
client may express an opinion to Sunny Oasis regarding your claim(s), the only response that
counts is the one our client sends to you--and Sunny Oasis will not necessarily receive a copy
of it.
3. If the response from our client is unsatisfactory to you, we will work with your
counsel or the legal branch of the appropriate local, state, or country authorities -- if
he or she is willing -- to agree upon the wording of an injunction which will legally
require Sunny Oasis to remove the offending web site. If we can agree on the wording of the
injunction, Sunny Oasis will not oppose your motion requesting it.
These are guidelines and suggestions, each case is always handled on an individual basis.
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