Anti-Spam
Policy for ShoestringStartups.com
(Last updated April 13, 2008)
ShoestringStartups.com is committed to
permission-based email marketing practices, and as a
result has established this no-tolerance Anti-Spam
Policy. ShoestringStartups.com will occasionally
update this Anti-Spam Policy. When it does,
ShoestringStartups.com will also revise the “last
update” date at the top of this Anti-Spam Policy.
For changes to this policy, ShoestringStartups.com
will notify you (the customer) by placing a notice
on its web site home page.
Spam is commercial email or
unsolicited bulk email, including “junk mail”, which
has not been requested by the recipient. It is
intrusive and often irrelevant or offensive, and it
wastes valuable resources. Spam messages are the
opposite of permission-based email, which are
normally anticipated, personal, relevant and/or
associated with a pre-existing business or personal
relationship. Inappropriate newsgroup activities,
consisting of excessive posting of the same
materials to several newsgroups, are also deemed to
be spam.
Customers of
ShoestringStartups.com products and services have
agreed during their registration process, upon
accepting the Terms of Use, to comply with this
Anti-Spam Policy. Specifically, each customer
agrees not to use the ShoestringStartups.com
products or services to send unsolicited email or
bulk email, whether or not for commercial purposes.
ShoestringStartups.com reserves the right to
determine in its sole discretion what constitutes
actionable spam, as well as what measures are
necessary in response to such spam activities.
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3. |
How
ShoestringStartups.com Helps You to Avoid
Spamming |
ShoestringStartups.com has
developed its Internet marketing tools to
incorporate a strict permission-based philosophy.
This anti-spam philosophy is implemented through the
following:
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(a)
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Communication and
Agreement – The Terms of Use that you have
agreed to as part of registering for the
ShoestringStartups.com products and services
state how and for what purposes you can
collect your site visitor addresses, and
that you will follow the
ShoestringStartups.com Privacy Policy and
Anti-Spam Policy.
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(b)
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Unsubscription – Each
email created using ShoestringStartups.com
products contains an “unsubscribe link”. If
your web site visitors use the link to
request that they be unsubscribed, your
subscriber lists will automatically be
adjusted to eliminate the prospect of
sending unwanted email to such persons.
Additionally, each person on your subscriber
list has the option of unsubscribing through
a web-based method provided on the
ShoestringStartups.com web site. Customers
of ShoestringStartups.com who try to remove
the unsubscribe link will be warned that
they are doing so, and if they persist in
having the link removed or deactivated in
any way, then ShoestringStartups.com will
have the right to terminate their account.
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(c)
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Purchased Mailing Lists -
Mass mailings to purchased email lists are
not allowed. ShoestringStartups.com only
allows opt-in mailing lists. Purchased or
inherited lists are by definition not
opt-in. Similarly, you cannot use an email
list relating to particular subject matter,
and then use it for an unrelated topic.
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Spam laws vary from state to
state, and from country to country. This
ShoestringStartups.com Anti-Spam Policy has been
developed to conform to the highest commercially
reasonable standards. As a result, and without
limiting the general prohibitions against all spam
activities, the following are expressly prohibited:
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(a)
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Use of false headers, or
other false information, to identify the
point of origin or the transmission path of
the email, or to hide the true origin of the
email sender,
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(b)
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Unauthorized use of a
third party’s internet domain name without
the permission of such third party, to make
it appear that the third party was the point
of origin of the email,
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(c)
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Use of any false or
misleading information in the subject line of
the email, and |
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(d)
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Assisting any person in
using the products or services of
ShoestringStartups.com for any of these
previously mentioned activities.
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5. |
Questions to Ask
Yourself |
To help in establishing whether
you are participating in activities constituting
spam, ask yourself the following questions:
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(a)
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Are you sending email to
non-specific addresses, such as info@domain.com
or sales@domain.com? |
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(b)
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Have you deliberately
falsified your transmission path information
or originating address? |
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(c)
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Are you sending email to
mailing lists or distribution lists, which
then send indirectly to various other email
addresses?
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(d)
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Have you imported for use a
purchased list of any type? |
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(e)
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Are you continuing to mail
to anyone who has asked to be deleted from
your mailing list? |
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(f)
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Does your email not provide
a fully functioning link to unsubscribe? |
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(g)
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Does you email subject line
contain false or misleading information? |
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(h)
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Have you used a third
party’s email address or domain name without
the party’s consent? |
If you answer yes to any of these
questions, you are likely involved in spam
activities, and should contact
ShoestringStartups.com customer support service at
support@shoestringstartups.com.
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6. |
Measures to Enforce
the Anti-Spam Policy |
Any ShoestringStartups.com
customer found to be using ShoestringStartups.com
products or services for spamming purposes may, at
ShoestringStartups.com’s discretion, be immediately
cut off from use of all ShoestringStartups.com
products and services and/or fined US$ 1,000 per
occurrence, with no refund of fees that have been
paid.
ShoestringStartups.com warns all
of its customers when signing up that if they
participate in spamming activities they will be
subject to the loss of ShoestringStartups.com
services, fines and possible legal action.
ShoestringStartups.com has the
right to actively review its customers’ subscriber
lists and email for suspiciously large broadcasts.
If ShoestringStartups.com finds any customers to be
spamming, it will issue a warning, and if the
activities are serious enough,
ShoestringStartups.com will take action
immediately. If ShoestringStartups.com has any
reason to believe that the customer, despite warning
being given, threatens to or is continuing to send
spam, then ShoestringStartups.com may take action
immediately, including disabling the customer’s
account and/or reporting the customer and the
incident to the proper authorities.
ShoestringStartups.com does not
attempt to censor any content, nor to curtail the
business of its customers. However, spam activities
do not fall within uses authorized by
ShoestringStartups.com, and will not be tolerated.
If you believe that you have
received spam from or through
ShoestringStartups.com’s facilities, please send a
complaint from your email account along with the
unsolicited email, with completed header, to
support@shoestringstartups.com. Please provide any
other information that you believe may help us in
our investigation. ShoestringStartups.com does not
investigate or take any action based on “anonymous”
spam complaints.
ShoestringStartups.com supports
the efforts of various organizations working to
responsibly eliminate spam activities. However, if
an individual has opted-in to receive email from a
customer of ShoestringStartups.com, and then falsely
or maliciously files a spam complaint against
ShoestringStartups.com or its customers,
ShoestringStartups.com will cooperate fully with the
appropriate agencies to ban the complainant from use
of anti-spam software and the Internet community.
