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If you have any questions about our policies, please contact us.
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 commercial e-mail (UCE), 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 60% 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
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Complaints
Procedures
We investigate 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 this 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@3-dreams.com. DO NOT respond to the sender as that only serves to verify your e-mail address to the abuser.
When sending a complaint, 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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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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