Unsolicited e-mail (aka SPAM) Policy
What is SPAM?
Do you ever find yourself opening your Inbox, looking for e-mail from a friend or relative, only to find unwanted advertisements for "get rich quick" schemes, pyramid schemes, or even pornographic material? This is unsolicited e-mail, also known as "SPAM", and it is becoming a growing nuisance on the Internet.
It is not only annoying but can also be harmful because of its negative impact on other Internet users and attitudes toward Netdoor, but also because it can overload Netdoor's network and disrupt service to Netdoor subscribers. SPAM typically causes increased traffic on the Internet while also increasing the system load on ISPs' e-mail servers, slowing down the sending and receiving of legitimate e-mail.
The biggest problem our members encounter with SPAM are those that originate at other domains. These domains send out bulk e-mail by using re-mailer programs that often hide their true recipients, leaving customers confused as to how this e-mail found its way to their Inbox and wondering how to prevent receipt of future mailings.
What can you do about this?
Write Your Congressman
To further the fight against SPAM, it is essential to include our public officials in the effort. SPAM will continue to grow exponentially until state and federal injunctions are put in place. Since our public officials often do not check their own email, they are unaware and uneffected by the recent rise of this unsolicited "junk" email. We have laws to protect us from unsolicited "junk" mail in our physical mail box. If you make the request of a company, to no longer send you their mailers, they must abide by this, by federal law. The same MUST be put in place for protection from the burden SPAM has become. Contact your Congressman!
From a unified voice, our elected representatives need to hear the scream for help!!
What To Do/What Not To Do
Here are a few simple things you can do to help prevent SPAM from reaching your Inbox.
- NEVER RESPOND TO SPAM - The reply-to address is most likely invalid. If the address is valid, you might even get a response saying that your name will be taken off the list, but you usually can't trust that they're telling the truth because you've just confirmed that they've got a live address for future solicitation purposes. Once your email address is verified as valid they can also then sell it to other soliciters, meaning that you'll probably soon be flooded with even more spam.
- DO NOT POST YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS PUBLICLY - This is just an invitation to spammers. Newsgroups and websites are some of the biggest e-mail address collection points for spammers. Once you post to a newsgroup or website, you're almost guaranteed to get spam. Spammers and the people who sell spamming as a business have software that "harvests" email addresses from places such as Internet websites or newsgroup postings. This software can be used to seek text strings that are in the form of an email address. When it finds one, it catalogs it on a database of other e-mail addresses to be used to send spam and/or sold to spammers. If you must post your address publicly, try using a different email address than your primary. In other words, have a public address and a private address. NETDOOR provides up to 4 additional email only addresses for residential users that can be used for just such purposes.
Are they going to share or sell my address?
If you can't answer these questions satisfactorily or if you can't find their privacy statement, don't enter your address.
Do I want emails from this website?
Do I trust them?
Is it worth the risk?
- NEVER BUY ANYTHING ADVERTISED IN SPAM - The reason that people spam is because they can make money. They make money, like all advertisers, by convincing people to buy a product. If no one buys the things advertised in spam, companies will quit paying spammers to advertise their products.
- SPAM FILTER - While there is no such thing as a perfect filter, anti-spam software can help keep spam at a manageable level. Many e-mail programs such as MS Outlook or MS Outlook Express contain email filtering options. We've also recently released a new spam filtering service that seems to successfully block 90% or more of the unsolicited e-mails that most of our members receive. As upgrades to the filter we are using, Brightmail, become readily available, the SPAM filter will catch more SPAM of this nature.
What is NETDOOR doing about this?
Netdoor has had a long standing policy of fighting the sending of unsolicited e-mail. When we receive complaints about any of our users sending unsolicited e-mail, we investigate the situation and take steps to insure that the user(s) do not violate this policy again and follow the guidelines outlined in our Acceptable Use Policy.
In the case of unsolicited e-mail that originates outside of our domain(s), there is less that can be done. Ideally, these bulk mailers would provide a valid return e-mail address and honor your request to be removed from their list. This is seldom the case. Most bulk e-mailers use forged e-mail addresses to send their mail so that complaints cannot be mailed back to them. In addition, to hide their true whereabouts, most mass mailers relay their SPAM through other companies' mail servers so that the e-mail appears to originate from another company. Netdoor has taken steps to ensure that e-mail cannot be relayed through our mail server unless the sender is legitimately within our domain.
In order to block as much SPAM as possible from reaching our members' mailboxes, we continue to maintain a list of domains taken from several publically available lists of bulk e-mailers that are then restricted from sending e-mail to any Netdoor user. Addresses and domains are added as they are reported and when someone from one of these sources listed attempt to e-mail a Netdoor user they receive the following message:
551 I'm sorry, we don't accept mail from your domain. More Info
The webpage that the message directs them to explains the situation and how it can be reversed if they can prove that they do not send unsolicited e-mail or have an enforcement policy against unsolicited e-mail.
We have also imposed a maximum of 25 recipients when using the Netdoor mail server (incoming or outgoing). This includes to, cc and bcc fields as many spammers use this "feature" to decrease the number of messages needed to send millions of server clogging e-mails a day. The drawback to this is a few customers use this as well to send or receive adhoc mailing lists. If you are interested in continuing to use this pseudo mailing list method we highly suggest you utilize a mailing list application (like the ones available at CNET Download.Com) or check out the free web-based mailing list application at Yahoo!