Anti-Spam Policy

Jump to: CAN-SPAM or CASL

This anti-spam policy is incorporated by reference in iContact Marketing Corp.’s (“iContact”) end user services agreement posted at www.icontact.com (“EUSA”). All capitalized terms used herein but not otherwise defined shall have the meanings ascribed to them in the EUSA.

iContact’s Services comprise primarily of a web-based technology platform through which content is delivered once a customer sends such content. While each customer retains iContact to assist with the transmittal of content to its Recipients, iContact does not actually send customer content to Recipients on a customer’s behalf. Each customer is the actual sender of emails. As the sender of emails, each customer is required to comply with the terms and conditions set forth herein and in the EUSA and to comply with all applicable laws.

We have a no tolerance spam policy. Your account will be immediately terminated if you send spam and you will be obligated to indemnify iContact against any liabilities, costs and expenses it incurs as a result of such spam. Generally, spam is defined as unsolicited mass email to persons with whom you do not have a business relationship or have not requested (opted-in to) your mailing.

 

No Tolerance Policy

iContact has a no tolerance spam policy. Customer accounts will be terminated if they send unsolicited email messages. Please report any suspected abuse to abuse@icontact.com. ISPs and blacklists administrators may also contact us at abuse@icontact.com. Please forward the complete email in question, including headers. If applicable, please also unsubscribe from the newsletter using the link at the bottom of the email if you no longer wish to receive emails from that sender. We will take the appropriate action against the sender of the email in question.

 

ISP and Blacklist Administrator Relations

iContact has built relationships with many of the leading ISPs and blacklist administrators. These relationships usually involve the sharing of information regarding policies, practices and issues. If you are an ISP, mail administrator or blacklist owner and would like to get in touch with us, please email abuse@icontact.com.

 

For iContact Customers

Each iContact customer must accept the EUSA prior to using the Services. As part of its agreement, each customer must agree to only send permission-based emails. “Permission-based” means that all Recipients must have opted-in to receive communications from that customer.

An opt-in can occur either via a sign-up form on a website, at a point-of-sale sign-up form, or on a physical sign-up sheet. Any opt-in form should include a clear description of what will be sent and how often it will be sent. Purchased lists may not be used within the iContact system, regardless of the source or permission status.

As a customer of iContact, you may not:

  • harvest emails from websites
  • purchase lists (whether they are opt-in or not)
  • have a pre-checked field on your subscription form
  • have a subscription form that subscribes users to an unrelated list
  • send out unrelated offers or unrelated content to your newsletter list
  • add an email address into a list without the subscriber’s permission
  • email someone who has requested to be removed from your list
  • utilize a list older than 6 months without reconfirming the Recipients’ subscriptions

 

You may:

  • send out a regular newsletter to a recipient who has opted-in to receive it
  • send out information and content to Recipients who have requested to receive content on that topic from your organization

 

Policy Enforcement

iContact has a no tolerance spam policy. The strict measures we take to enforce our policy include, but are not limited to:

  • We review and monitor large list imports. This includes a review of the list source, list age, collection methods, and confirmation practices.
  • We utilize an MD5 hash record to screen for characteristics of commonly harvested lists
  • A member of our staff reviews each message sent to more than 5000 Recipients and either will approve or reject it. This threshold is 500 Recipients for clients that have been with us for less than two months.
  • We utilize a content-checking utility to screen and flag any message that contains words common to unsolicited emails.
  • We require each customer to initial the following statement prior to each send: “I certify with my initials that all recipients granted their permission to be sent this message.”
  • A record is saved of every email that is sent through the system.
  • Any customer found to be using iContact for spam will be immediately cut-off from use of the product.
  • We maintain the IP address and date subscribed for every new Recipient.
  • Every email, whether text or HTML, contains a mandatory unsubscribe/opt-out link at the bottom of the message. This unsubscribe link cannot be removed.

 

Procedure for Handling Complaints

We have a no tolerance spam policy. Your account will be immediately terminated if you send spam. Generally, spam is defined as unsolicited mass email to persons with whom you do not have a business relationship or who have not requested (opted-in to) your mailing. The Service may be used only by businesses and organizations in connection with their established list of permission-based opt-in email addresses. We provide the Services only to those who follow our strict anti-spam policy. If you use the Services to send out emails to addresses obtained in any way other than a subscriber opting-in to your list, you may incur a penalty equal to $100 (US) per substantiated incident (i.e. per email) or any greater amount that may be imposed under applicable state, federal or foreign regulations.

To determine whether you have sent spam we will:

  • review the content of the message in question
  • review your subscriber list for patterns common to harvested lists
  • review the spam complaint
  • view the records to see when the subscriber was subscribed and their IP address

 

Procedure for Handling False Positive Complaints

We realize that it is possible for those who have subscribed to your mailings to have forgotten that they have subscribed. For this reason, we keep the IP address and date of subscription for all new Recipients. If we receive a complaint from a Recipient for which we have a record of their subscription, and the email sent to them contained the content they subscribed to, then we will notify such Recipient of the date and from which computer they subscribed from and provide a link for that Recipient to unsubscribe from your list.

Upon this type of complaint, we will notify you of the complaint, explain the action taken, review your web site, and may suggest changes to the notifications or descriptions you provide when subscribers sign up for your lists.

In the case that a subscriber who makes a complaint did not sign up through your site (i.e. was imported into the system) no IP record or date of subscription will be available. In this case, we will investigate the situation, look at the email in question, and if it is determined that you may be sending unsolicited commercial emails, we will immediately disable the sending function on your account and we will immediately contact you by email and/or phone. As soon as we hear from you and are able to verify that the subscriber was indeed an opt-in Recipient, we will remove the sending-block.

Transfer of Recipients


Please note that a Recipient subscribing to one of your lists does NOT give you permission to transfer them to other lists or to send them content, even if it is through the same list, that differs from the content the Recipient subscribed to.

Procedure for Handling Subpoenas

To request from iContact information about an iContact customer in connection with a civil case, you must serve iContact with a subpoena or court order that is valid and enforceable under North Carolina law, and must agree to iContact’s terms of compensation set forth herein. All civil subpoenas should be directed to the iContact Legal Department. Generally, iContact will not produce any information until approximately three weeks after its receipt of a valid subpoena or court order, unless a formal objection is filed by you or iContact is legally required to do so. iContact charges $100.00 per hour for research (plus additional fees if testimony or deposition is required), $0.25 per page and $22.00 to respond via Federal Express.

For more information visit The Coalition Against Unsolicited Email, or contact iContact Customer Support.

What is CAN-SPAM?

The CAN-SPAM act of 2003 is a law that regulates commercial email. It protects the rights of the consumer and requires email marketers to follow its rules when sending emails. The law applies to any email whose primary purpose is advertising or promoting a commercial product or service.

The major provisions of the act are:

    • The email must not have misleading header information.
    • The email must not have a misleading subject line.
    • The email must come from a functioning return email address.
    • Senders must remove all unsubscribe requests within 10 business days.
    • Commercial email must display the physical postal address of the sender.

  • Any unsolicited emails must clearly identify that it’s an advertising email.
  • The recipient must have the opportunity to decline further emails.

 

Enforcement

The United States Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice are authorized to enforce this law to its full extent. Other federal and state agencies can enforce CAN-SPAM against organizations under their jurisdiction.

More info

For more information about the CAN-SPAM Act, including penalties, additional rules, and opportunities to comment, visit the FCC website (http://www.fcc.gov/guides/spam-unwanted-text-messages-and-email). To review the full CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, please visit: https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/cases/2007/11/canspam.pdf

What is CASL?

Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) was introduced in 2014 and requires that email recipients opt in or give explicit permission to receive commercial electronic messages. Previous legislation such as CAN-SPAM governed the process of opting out of email communications; CASL takes this a step further by putting requirements in place for opting into email communications. Furthermore, the burden of proof is on the business sending the email. What does this mean? In addition to the mandatory opt-out methods email marketers must employ (as defined in CAN-SPAM), CASL requires the sender to prove that each subscriber has given explicit permission to receive marketing emails from your organization.

Implied vs. Explicit Consent

Effective July 1, 2014, senders are responsible for at least implied consent for their subscribers to receive promotional emails. If you have been following iContact’s permission-based practices (as required by our Terms and Conditions), the contacts you already have in your iContact account should qualify for implied consent. An existing business relationship with the recipient (such as a previous purchase within the last two years) or if the recipient had made an inquiry to the sender in the last six months are both good examples of implied consent under the legislation. Implied consent also exists if the recipient has “conspicuously published” their email address without an accompanying statement that they do not wish to receive unsolicited mail, AND the mail “is relevant to the [recipient’s] business, role, functions or duties in a business or official capacity”.

As of July 1, 2017, all contacts must have given explicit consent to receive promotional marketing emails. It must be made expressly clear at the point of email address collection that they are agreeing to being placed on a marketing or promotional email list. Typically, explicit permission requires a checkbox with a permission statement at the point of opt in. (Please note that the checkbox cannot be pre-checked.) Anyone who does not click on the checkbox should not be added to your iContact account since they have not given explicit permission to receive marketing messages. Keep in mind, double opt-in is the easiest and most secure way of obtaining explicit consent.

Exceptions

Each iContact customer must accept the EUSA prior to using the Services. As part of its agreement, each customer must agree to only send permission-based emails. “Permission-based” means that all Recipients must have opted-in to receive communications from that customer.

An opt-in can occur either via a sign-up form on a website, at a point-of-sale sign-up form, or on a physical sign-up sheet. Any opt-in form should include a clear description of what will be sent and how often it will be sent. Purchased lists may not be used within the iContact system, regardless of the source or permission status.

As with any legislation, there are some exceptions:

  • Transactional emails (sales recipients, order confirmations, shipping notifications, etc.)
  • Messages that provide warranty, recall, safety, or security information about a product or service purchased by the recipient.
  • Messages sent on behalf of a charity or political organization for the purposes of raising funds or soliciting contributions.
  • Responses to a current customer, or someone who has inquired in the last six months.
    A good rule of thumb is that one-off messages sent on a one-to-one communication basis originating from a previous business transaction are exempt. Please remember that a transaction is not considered an explicit opt-in and may not be added to your bulk mailing lists.

You may:

  • send out a regular newsletter to a recipient who has opted-in to receive it
  • send out information and content to Recipients who have requested to receive content on that topic from your organization

 

 

FAQS

What is spam?

Spam is unsolicited email also known as junk mail or UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email). If you send any email in bulk (to more than a handful of recipients) to recipients who have not requested to receive it, it will be considered spam, regardless of the contents of the email. By sending email to only to those who have requested to receive it, you are following accepted permission-based email guidelines.

Why do we have to fight spam?

First, no one likes to receive unsolicited email. It is a burden on mail servers and an annoyance to all who receive it. Further, if we allowed a client to send unsolicited email through our mail servers or did not strictly enforce our Anti-Spam policy, our IP address and domain would be added to blacklists. Many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and email filtering services subscribe to these blacklists. If one of our servers were to be added to a blacklist, all email coming through that server to subscribers whose ISP or mail filer subscribes to that blacklist will not be received. This is for all of our clients, not just the one who sent the original email that was reported. Once on blacklists, it is very difficult and often impossible to get off. As such, we must enforce this policy very strictly.

Is there a law restricting spam?

Yes, there are numerous laws restricting spam, including the United States’ CAN-SPAM Act, the Australian Spam Act of 2003, the Canadian Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act and other laws that may apply to your country, province, or state. For more information, please visit Spam Laws.

How does iContact protect users from sending spam?

iContact is a permission-based email-marketing tool that follows the strictest permission-based philosophies:

  • Communication — Your subscriber registration page must state why you are collecting the site visitor’s email address and how you plan to use their address. Additionally, by accepting our license agreement you have agreed to not sell or rent your lists.
  • Verification – iContact includes an option for you to send all new subscribers an email confirming their interest in receiving emails from you.
  • Unsubscribe – Every email generated from iContact contains an unsubscribe link which automatically updates your subscriber lists to avoid the chance of sending unwanted emails to visitors who have unsubscribed.

 

What tests can I apply to ensure I’m not sending spam?
  • Are you importing a purchased list of ANY kind?
  • Are you sending to non-specific addresses such as: sales@domain.com, business@domain.com, webmaster@domain.com, info@domain.com, or other general addresses?
  • Do you have any abuse@, postmaster@, or hostmaster@ addresses on your list?
  • Are you sending to distribution lists or mailing lists that send indirectly to a variety of email addresses?
  • Are you either sending to or mailing anyone who has not explicitly agreed to join your mailing list?
  • Does your email’s subject line contain false or misleading information?

If you have answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be labeled as a spammer.