Spam and anti-spam web page of web presence provider abitmark.com

Spam? What is it.

Some of our customers wanted us to define more precisely what spam is and why it is not permitted on our servers. We offer here some explanations and alternatives to spam. We hope that this little exposé will help to better understand why bulk e-mail marketing strategies on the Internet can have serious consequences for our customers.

Here are 3 reasons why to avoid using bulk e-mail marketing:

1. It is known as "spam".

Spam is not bulk mail. It is not e-mail offering something for sale. Nor is it a combination of these two. Spam is ANY message sent to a person who did not ask to receive that e-mail. This can be a single piece of mail, or a group of messages offering the greatest product in the world at absolutely no cost. ISPs, online services and we define spam as indicated here.

2. You WILL lose at least one of two very important accounts.

Depending upon who receives the most complaints first, your ISP account can be suspended or terminated, in addition to your server host account. This means you will lose your connection to the Internet, and your website will be down, along with any other Internet configurations you may have, such as autoresponders, etc.

3. Your reputation will be damaged.

No one wants nor can afford to be affiliated with a "spammer".

Here we show you two samples of what actually happened to spammers and their ability to receive e-mail. They're just unable to receive replies to their unsolicited spam mail:

Your message to

xxxxxxxxx@yyyyyy.com

could not be delivered. This alias has been deactivated due to spamming. Spam will not be tolerated by yyyyyy.com, and accounts are deactivated when users are found to have spammed. If you would like to contact this account or their
ISP, please mail aaaaaa@bbbbbb.com.

The user you tried to reach <.......@bigfoot.com> has been removed from the Bigfoot system. They have used a Bigfoot address inappropriately in a piece of unsolicited mail (spam). We have also contacted their genuine ISP to inform them of this infraction.

Alternatives to spam:

There are some alternatives to spam where you can do your unsolicited advertising. We have found the following areas on the Internet to be acceptable substitute for your unsolicited e-mail messages. You could use any one of them or a combination of all of them to get your message out:

1. Banner Exchanges;
2. Newsgroups with the extension "announce" or "marketing" only. But even still, you must take the time to read the group's FAQ since some groups will accept posts only if they are "formatted" according to the group's preferences.
3. Paid classified ads
4. Your own website
5. OFF-line means, such as newspapers and magazines.
6. Your signature file.

We hope that this answers some of the questions regarding SPAM.

We would like to reproduce here a notice that appeared in Nov. 97 with respect to a spammer. Here it is:
In a Texas court last week, a California spammer was fined USD13,000 and was ordered to pay USD5,000 in legal costs when the Texas Internet Service Providers Association and a number of individuals decided to sue for damages. The spammer used the domain of a private individual to disguise the origin of the junk mail and the case was brought under laws of nuisance, negligence, trespass to personal property, conversion and harmful access by computer.

Source: NUA Internet Surveys, Volume 1 Number 11.3
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/

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