Spam / UCE Policy

As the Internet grows, so do the possibilities for abuse. LeadWebHosting has implemented the following policies regarding abuse of Internet services. These policies are intended to control costs and protect you, our customer, from Internet harassment and intrusions of privacy.

“Netiquette” is generally defined as the standards or practices an individual or organization engages in to insure responsible Internet citizenship on their behalf, as well as refraining from standards or practices which would impose undue financial, time, or social constraints on other users of the Internet. Every facet of the Internet is overseen by individual organizations (such as LeadWebHosting) whose networks are interconnected to form the Internet. Every user of the Internet is responsible for their behavior on-line as they are off-line.

Each entity using the Internet contributes to, and thus assumes some liability for, the cost associated with traffic and storage. Figuring the cost of storage space and transmission together, a single posting can cost the collective Internet thousands of dollars! Similarly, transmitting e-mail costs money and bandwidth. A customer abusing e-mail or news postings can create a large financial impact on the individual networks involved.

Individuals that have fell victim to Internet abuse have other costs, including decreased effectiveness of the Internet. A user besieged by SPAM e-mail (a massive bulk e-mail message to subscribers who did not indicate any desire to receive such e-mail) spends additional time downloading and responding to e-mail which was not requested.

When an LeadWebHosting customer engages in one of these abusive activities, it costs time and resources to respond to complaints. This “opportunity cost” can adversely effect LeadWebHosting’s ability to provide other services. In some instances, angry Internet users have been known to “mail bomb” an ISP by creating programs to send bulk e-mail until the ISP’s mail server crashes, thereby denying e-mail access to every customer of the ISP. While our system is robust enough to rebuff or eliminate most of these abuses, LeadWebHosting cannot prevent every undesirable activity.

To reach its goal of providing the best business class web hosting services to our users, LeadWebHosting offers users a full range of commercial hosting services. Abuse of these services is considered a violation of our Terms of Service/AUP (“Contract Agreement”). You executed this Contract Agreement before the commencement of your service. One of the most serious abuses is using your account to send unsolicited commercial e-mail, otherwise known as “spam.” Spamming, or the sending of unsolicited email, from an LeadWebHosting server, or using an email address that is maintained on an LeadWebHosting machine is STRICTLY prohibited and will result in a minimum fee of $500.00. The following are examples of spam and are blatantly in violation of your Contract Agreement.

Inappropriate E-Mail Activities:
Commercial e-mail: Defined as sending unsolicited commercial e-mails. You are not permitted to use your LeadWebHosting account or e-mail alias/account of your Virtual Server to send unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Using an e-mail address hosted anywhere on LeadWebHosting servers to collect responses from unsolicited commercial e-mail is also prohibited. This includes using a throw-away, free e-mail account and redirectors for the same account.

Mail Bombing: Defined as sending large volumes of unsolicited e-mail to individuals from your LeadWebHosting account is strictly prohibited.

Harassment: Defined as sending threatening or harassing e-mail after being requested to stop, is prohibited. Extremely threatening or harassing e-mail never is allowed.

Inappropriate Newsgroup Activities:
Newsgroup Spamming: Defined as excessive cross-posting, or posting the same article to several newsgroups is prohibited. Generally accepted standards allow no more than 15 newsgroups, or cross-postings, for a single article or substantially similar articles. Such articles may be canceled. You are not allowed to use your LeadWebHosting based mail facilities to SPAM the newsgroups

Fine/Penalties
Should you violate LeadWebHosting’s SPAM Policies, you WILL be charged a minimum $500.00 administrative fee and $125.00 per hour technical support for the time it takes us to “clean-up” your SPAM. This shall include but not be limited to the time required to answer e-mail from angry recipients of your SPAM and/or other actions of the angry recipients in retaliation of your SPAM and/or repair of a damaged server due to “Mail Bombing”. Other fees may range from $1.00 to $10.00 per email as defined by State law. You will also be charged $50 per gigabyte of data transfer that your SPAM incurred, including bandwidth used by answers to or complaints about your SPAM. We will invoice this amount and should it not be paid, we will take necessary steps to recover these costs and fees. Necessary steps include legal action in a court of law, and/or recovery through a collection agency. Please note also that it is now considered a crime to send UCE (unsolicited commercial e-mail) as it falls into the category of “junk faxes.” LeadWebHosting will turn over all names and personal information to the proper local, state, federal, and international officials of any person who violates this policy.

LeadWebHosting may also pursue legal remedies for our or our customers’ lost revenue resulting from blacklisting.

Any LeadWebHosting client found to be spamming will have his/her account terminated immediately without recourse. We will investigate the report thoroughly before terminating any account which is part of the administrative fee. LeadWebHosting reserves the right to act without warning or second chance. If we conclude that you have violated our Acceptable Usage Policy, we will report you and the incident to the proper local, state and federal authorities and will prosecute you to the full extent of the law.

If you know of any LeadWebHosting client that is or might be violating this policy, please send a message or, if possible, forward the SPAM or UCE in full (including headers) LeadWebHosting