redhat wrote:
I have a customer on our system (we're local ISP) that fancies himself
quite the political spinmeister. He absolutely inundates people with
his (what I call) SPAM email. We have received numerous complaints
about this guy from all over the US (mostly colleges that he targets)
requesting that this guy be shut down. He even "attacked" me one day
not knowing who I was and told me that he would sue us if we tried to
take his email privileges away and gave me a link to some government
site with various documents on what "is" email spam and what is "not"
email spam.
Not having read that document I can't comment on it specifically, but in Canada you can not withhold a customers ability to receive their mail, but you are allowed to suspend or terminate their account, as long as you disable their mailbox with an error indicating the mailbox is suspended or that the account no longer exists if the account is terminated. You are not allowed to continue accepting mail for an account that is suspended or terminated without providing the customer access to their mail.
Apparently (I read all of the docs) when the lawmakers
created this anti-spam law they removed the label "spam" from anything
that is political in nature (so they could use it themselves and be
above the law). It would appear that this guy has me beaten but I just
can't stand to sit back and watch this guy annoy other domains the way
that he does. Does anyone else out there have any "knowledge" or
insight on this issue or can give me a link to some good resources? I
have already scoured the ".gov" sites and it doesn't look good.
thanks,
Doug
As many others have said, make sure your AUP {Acceptable Use Policy}
or TOS {Terms Of Service} agreements what ever you call it allow you to
terminate the contract due to verified complaints due to the delivery of
Unsolicited Email. Make sure that if your policy does not indicate that it
may be updated at any time without notice that you make all reasonable
attempts to inform your customers of the new change by including the
updated information or a pointer to the new policy with the customers bill,
or deliver it to their mailbox. Keep all the delivery receipts from the
mail log, and any delivery service notifications you get when the customers
read their mail. Then when a complaint comes in make sure it originated
from that customer and document the evidence keeping all pertinent log
entries and you will be within your right to terminate the customers access.The content of any message does not determine if it is Unsolicited, make sure you ban the transmission of Unsolicited Messages not SPAM . I have had complaints about NEWS Postings, and IRC chatter and comments put in forms on websites, so don't be overly specific about what kinds messages can be considered Unsolicited . You may also want to ban messages with content that is unacceptable or inappropriate for the recipient whether content or recipient was intended or not.
-- Guy Fraser
