Abuse Complaint!

[tmccartney66]

I've enjoyed being a customer of TCH - support is great and the family atmosphere gives me the warm fuzzies. Nevertheless, I find myself moving yet another site to another host because of TCH's draconian limitations on e-mail.

 

First of all, let me be clear that there are few people more opposed to spam than I am. But I disagree with TCH's approach to it.

 

I run amysedaris.com, a semi-official fan site for actress/comedian Amy Sedaris. It's a completely non-commercial site except for the Amazon affiliate relationship we have that raises just enough commissions to pay for the site's hosting.

 

Fans ask to be notified by e-mail whenever the news portion of the site is updated. The mailing list currently has 245 addresses, and the blog software I use shoots a notification to all those people whenever there's a new blog entry. Let me repeat - the only people on the list are the people who asked to be, using a form on the site.

 

Yesterday TCH suspended my relaying privileges because it had determined I was sending commercial e-mail without complying with the Can Spam act. TCH never asked whether I was sending spam; it simply determined that I was doing so based on the volume.

 

I already moved another site I run because I was unable to use it for perfectly legitimate civil rights discussion mailing lists, and I found a host that takes a common-sense approach to bulk e-mailing, i.e. determining whether it's spam before limiting your ability to send e-mails.

 

So I'll take amysedaris.com to a new host as well. I still have some sites here, but they are low-traffic sites that use almost no e-mail. I will continue to recommend TCH to people for whom e-mail is not mission-critical, but I won't recommend it for sites that need to use bulk e-mail for legitimate purposes, as I do.

 

 

Tracey

[Pendragon]

Yesterday TCH suspended my relaying privileges because it had determined I was sending commercial e-mail without complying with the Can Spam act.  TCH never asked whether I was sending spam; it simply determined that I was doing so based on the volume.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

As I understand it, the act requires specific information to be included in each email, perhaps their servers scan outgoing mail for that information (or someone just looked at a few), saw the required information was missing (since most spammers don't include it) and suspended delivery?

[Head Guru]

Now lets be fair and just here shall we?

 

You vioalted CAN SPAM laws. You site was NEVER suspended. We simply took the time to notify you that you were in violation of U.S. Federal Law. Since you brought this in to the open forums. Here are the facts.

 

This was the email sent to you from our abuse team.

 

Hi,

 

You are sending out e-mail that is not compliant with the government rules and regulation regarding commercial e-mail.

 

Please see http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/spam/index.html

for an indication of some of the rules and regulations about sending email.

 

In summary the law;

1) bans false or misleading header information.

2) prohibits deceptive subject lines.

3) requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method - that must work.

4) requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender's valid physical postal address

 

Your site appears not to be compliant with #3.

 

You also need to ensure that your lists are up-to-date, and that you check regularly that all your email addresses still wish to receive email from you.

 

Please note that TotalChoice Hosting has a zero tolerance policy against SPAM. Further complaints could lead to the suspension, and possible termination of your account.

 

Working with you,

 

Bill Hermonat

Client Services Team

Billh@totalchoicehosting.com

 

NOW -

 

You can can choose to leave or you can choose to correct the SPAM issue. Either way the choice is yours. However, calling us on the carpet because you were caught with your hand in the cookie jar is simply not right.

 

Wishing you good luck with your new SPAM friendly host.

 

Bill