What is Spam and how can you stop it?

Have You Been Spammed?

The NewsFlash does not condone nor support spam (Unsolicited Commercial Email) because we realize it wastes everyones time and resources. Further, as the practice of spam grows, the value of email as a communications medium will be diminished. So, we do not allow our customers to send email to people who have not requested it and to people with whom they do not already have an existing relationship. For any customer to do so is a violation of our license agreement and can result in account termination.

Why were you sent email you do not want?

There are a few possibilities:

You signed up for one of our customers' newsletters or services and forgot.
You have an existing relationship with our customer (perhaps you purchased something from them or used their services).
Someone signed you up to a newsletter without your permission.

What can you do?
Follow the link at the bottom of the message you received. While many professional spammers use this mechanism to guarantee that the email address they have for you actually works, we do not spam nor do we allow our customers to do so (see below) so if you click on the "remove" link at the end of the message, you will be automatically removed from our customers' subscriber list. To report abusive email activity, send an email to abuse@TheNewsFlash.info.

How do you protect the online community from spam originating from your servers?

We do not allow our customers to send newsletters to people who have not requested them. Our standard license agreement states, in part: "…it is inappropriate (and possibly illegal) to use unsolicited email or spam to publicize your newsletter."

We require that our customers use specific tools to make sure no one is signed up to a newsletter against their wishes.
Removal links are always added to the bottom of every outgoing message.

We are specifically focused on opt-in communication - not broad based email marketing. eNewsletters, by their very nature are regular opt-in communications between a company and its customers or an organization and its members. We require that our customers only send email to individuals who have provided their email address for the purpose of receiving offers and information in the future. In addition, we encourage customers to personalize their communication with information that indicates they have an existing relationship with their customers.

We take every spam report seriously.
Each incident of reported spam is considered in the context of the customer's entire behavior using our service.

What happens when one of our customers is accused of spamming?

When we receive a complaint of spam, we immediately review our customer's account and check to see if that customer has received an inordinate number of such complaints.
If, after reviewing complaints, we find the customer's mailing list questionable, we will restrict access to our services until the customer has faxed to us an affidavit stating that they are in compliance with our email policies and are not sending spam. An authorized representative of the customer's company must sign this before their use of our service is reinstated.
Finally, if a customer violates this agreement or refuses to sign it, we will refuse to do business with them.

Why don't you just cut off any customer who gets a spam complaint?

To do so would be unfair to our customer and compromise legitimate email communications. There are a number of possible scenarios where a customer might be accused of spamming. The complaint could come from a disgruntled employee, dissatisfied customer or competitor wishing to interfere with the customer's business or from someone who forgot they signed up for a newsletter or another opt-in mail-list.

So we have to judge each case on its merits. We wouldn't be serving our customers to refuse business from anyone based on a single report of inappropriate behavior.

Have we ever refused business from a company shown to be spamming?

YES. We have experienced violations of our license agreement in the past and we have said "No thank you" to continued business. And, we will continue to do so. Our reputation and the reputation of our good customers is very important to us.