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
Sprintlink's acceptable
uses policy
MCI's guide
to "spam" on the 'net.and policy
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.
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.
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.
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:
-
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.
-
If you have a subscription list, there should be a confirmation
e-mail sent to the address before that address is added.
-
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.
-
A valid "From:" and "Reply to" address
must be included with each message.
The following items would violate our policy:
-
Any kind of forged header information.
-
Lists which include "harvested" addresses.
-
-
Using a script on your site
to send bulk or unsolicited e-mail.
-
Using an autoresponder at your site to send bulk or unsolicited
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.
All complaints should be directed to abuse@sunnyoasis.com,
and only specific questions should be directed to customer service.
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.
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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