Procedure of Spam Suspension / Define SPAM

[davidb2002]

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about suspension and spam/email.

I have had 2 occurances which resulted in 3 websites suspended. due to a total of 5 spam reports in 3 days.

So, if you could vote on the poll and maybe what your aoinion of spam is.

Thanks for all input.

[davidb2002]

Grey areas in procedure:

- What was the spam reporters definition of spam?
- How are other subscribers suppose to unubscribe if the site is suspended?
- Suspend the site that was advertised even though it didnt send the spam? (this means somene one could get someone elses site suspended).
- ToS reads that mostly all forms of "bulk" emailing is not allowed...what is bulk? 5? 10? 25+? 500+? I know sites with large mailings newsletters, our they going to suspend because or a large contact list?

Ill update as I find more grey areas.

[quietFinn]

When you elsewhere in this forum state that anyone who has their email address on a website deserve all the spam they will get I wonder what your motives really are.

You will also find that the people who get spam get it for a reason. Most of the time its because they have their email address on a website or they submit it thoughtlessly to other websites.

[davidb2002]

Well, to be honest, i have become a bit obsess with the whole spam topic. Earlier today I read the following article:

http://www.cdt.org/speech/spam/030319spamreport.shtml

The interesting fact to me is the opinion of what spam is to each individual seems to be broadly different.

Check that article out, its some interesting reading.

[dema]

Spam is definitely a very interesting topic for a variety of reasons. But more to the subject of this poll, I don't think we can really vote on such a thing without a crystal clear defintion of HG's current policies.

[vtrain]

Originally Posted by dema

Spam is definitely a very interesting topic for a variety of reasons. But more to the subject of this poll, I don't think we can really vote on such a thing without a crystal clear defintion of HG's current policies.

I though we were having a discussion about "procedure for spam reports" and not the policies themselves !

[davidb2002]

Yes, its procedure not policy that we want to discuss. Policy is written in paper saying what is what and such and such. Procedure is what they do, how they handle.

So maybe someone from hostgator can post us some information on what the procedure is for spam reports....(inviting isnt it) lol.

[ltrump]

I know why you want the procedures.....so that you can stay within them and still send out your spam. Plain and simply, you are a spammer and just want to fight the rules so that you can do what you want to do.

Try to keep in mind the harder you fight this, the less people are going to listen to you. (In other words, stop creating so many useless threads....face it, you got caught....move on)

[esl]

I agree Serra.

[amartins]

I didn't vote yet simply because I am not clear on what the procedure is...

Obviously if someone is pumping out unsoliticed mail it should be pretty easy for whoever handles abuse reports to rapidly acertain what happened and eliminate the abuser. On the other hand if there is a suspect script it should be disabled and looked in to without suspending the whole site.

What it comes down to is that a real spammer will cut and run once he is discovered whilst a legitimate user or simply someone who has a vulnerable script or something to that effect will tend to stay around making his point.. meanwhile if his whole site is suspended while things are investigated over a day or more he is not going to be a happy camper.

Antonio.

[dema]

Originally Posted by Serra

There is very little that HG can do other than suspending the site. It is simply too dangerous to tempt AOL into suspending a server.

Personally, I have all of AOL emails blocked on my server. I'm bouncing them back to AOL and I've asked AOL to contact me to be removed from my spam list.

You are very correct on that. As I have mentioned in other threads I have dealt with AOL's spam response people before and it is not fun. In their favor, they do a decent job of warning and giving you a chance to fix the problem. But in doing so they basically issue an ultimatum and if you can't meet it to a T they will likely take pleasure in making your whole netblock pay.

I would LOVE to block AOL email addys at work, but unfortunately one of our key accounts thinks AOL is The Internet(tm) (:

[amartins]

Hiya!

I had not realized AOL was such a big issue, to be honest I was under the impression AOL had lost marketshare/importance/relvance over the years, apparently not.

Maybe there couldbe an interim solution for blocking outbound email to AOL for the account/domain being reported for spamming AOL.

Got my vote in now.


António

[gdwoods]

Any follow-up or advice on the AOL problem? It appears that all of my clients (on Aztek) are blocked now from sending to .aol addresses!

I'm fairly certain that the cause is not any of my accounts, but since I'm on a shared, I pay the price. This started a day or two ago...

Does anyone know how long the suspension lasts?

As per our TOS:

3.) Zero Tolerance Spam Policy
We take a zero tolerance stance against sending of unsolicited e-mail, bulk emailing, and spam. "Safe lists" and "double opt-in" will be treated as spam. Any user who sends out spam will have their account terminated with or without notice.
Please read http://www.hostgator.com/mailpolicy.html for our generalized mail policy.
Sites advertised via SPAM (Spamvertised) may not be hosted on our servers. This provision includes, but is not limited to SPAM sent via fax, email, instant messaging, or usenet/newsgroups.
HostGator reserves the right to require changes or disable as necessary any web site, account, database, or other component that does not comply with its established policies, or to make any such modifications in an emergency at its sole discretion.
HostGator reserves the right to charge the holder of the account used to send any unsolicited e-mail a clean up fee. This cost of the clean up fee is entirely at the discretion of HostGator.

That's exactly what it is, ZERO TOLERANCE.
People cannot send reports to SpamCop without a valid mail message header. I do not believe anyone would report a spamer just for fun neither.

Whitelists or double-optin mailing lists are also considered spam, because you never got permission from the "subscribers" to send them email.

Every email that is not solicited or authorized by the recipient is spam, no matter what.

Sites are suspended after a valid report because we have hundreds of customers to protect. Whenever a spam report is created for a domain, it will blacklist the IP address temporarily.

Even though some users may not like our policy, I bet it would be even worst to get a blacklisted IP. For those who do not know about this, if your IP is blacklisted your recipients will most likely do not get your emails, as most of the mailservers on the internet will check for the status of the IP on RBLs.

The best way to protect yourselves is simple: do not send out unsolicited email.

[jeff_s]

Stay the way it is 53.85%
Needs to be lightened 30.77%
Needs to be tightened 15.38%

So 69% say "stay tough on spam". Outstanding! That's a landslide.

davidb2002 said:
I have had 2 occurances which resulted in 3 websites suspended. due to a total of 5 spam reports in 3 days.

Gee, only 5 reports in 3 days... And only a small percentage of spamee's bother to make reports. I'm afraid that yes, indeed, that makes you a "spammer". I've had ZERO reports in 5 YEARS. That makes me "not a spammer". See the difference? But my server's IP has been blacklisted before because of "spammers". That makes me ... a "victim" ... and any "spammer" on my server ... a "bad neighbor".

Spam = unwanted, unsolicited, uninvited email. Period. No gray area.

When will spammers figure out that nobody reads the crap!! Why bother?

[vtrain]

Originally Posted by jeff_s

[snip]

Spam = unwanted, unsolicited, uninvited email. Period. No gray area.

When will spammers figure out that nobody reads the crap!! Why bother?

I hate spam and have an account on spamcop.net for my private email. Fortunally because of that I solved a problem with someone that reported several messages to a mailling list to be spam. This person had joined by it's hand the mailling list and now though that the mailman procedure for unregistering was to dificult so... decided from then on to report all emails from the mailling list to spamcop. THe good thing is that mailman adds some headers to the email saying it's a mailling list and that I could answer to the spamreport, help the person to delete the record on mailman etc. But it's tough sometimes...

I do report spam to spamcop regularly .... so I'm one of those that sometimes is responsable for servers been on blacklist. I also did mistakes my self... because not always we press the right button when we are in the fury against spam...

Vt