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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.
-
BE CAREFUL WHO YOU GIVE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS TO - If a
website asks for your e-mail address, be sure you know why. Read
the terms of use and privacy statements of the site before
entering your address. Ask yourself some simple questions.
Are they going to share or sell my address?
Do I want emails from this website?
Do I trust them?
Is it worth the risk?
If you can't answer these questions satisfactorily
or if you can't find their privacy statement, don't enter your
address.
-
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. NETDOOR closely monitors spam to ensure your
legitimate mail is getting to you. The Email Filtering System is updated every
15 minutes of every day by Red Condor analysts.
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.
Recipient Limit
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!
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