Charging for spam?
January 25th, 2006My hosting company A2 Hosting provides for free installation of a great email list manager called PHP List. Recently I installed it and emailed a lot of people in my Outlook contacts folder about what I’m doing these days. A2 wrote to me and warned me that people were complaining that I was spamming, and that if I did it again, they’d have to shut me down.
I didn’t think I was spamming, but apparently other people did, and I suppose that’s what counts. I groveled and apologized to A2, and that was that.
Super-Bowl-commercial-obsessed registrar GoDaddy is apparently not as understanding as A2. As Domain Editorial reports, in order to discourage spam GoDaddy will charge you money. Will Hanke’s groveling apology got him a choice between paying $199 or losing his account.
While some people approve, GoDaddy is apparently alone. In a survey of registrars’ terms of service, only GoDaddy will charge you money. The rest of them will just shut you down.
The problem is neither the money nor the shut-down, it’s that there aren’t any procedures for determining what really happened. A2 Hosting was decent about it and I got off with a warning. In Will Hanke’s case, the groveling apology was used as “an admission of guilt” and he got a whopping big bill.
Would you like your registrar to be prosecutor, judge, and jury, without chance of appeal? On the other hand, if you don’t like someone, all you have to do is send an email to their registrar and accuse them of spamming….
If you don’t have people’s explicit permission to email them it can and will be considered spam.
I would tend to side with GoDaddy on this one. If you don’t take a hardline on spam you are doomed. Managing the abuse desk on any reasonable sized ISP requires a lot of time and work. Should they be doing it for free? I think not.
Michele | January 25th, 2006 at 8:07 pm
No doubt you are right, except that I rarely have anyone’s explicit permission to send them an email. I often have implicit permission, for instance when they hand me a business card, or when they email me (usually also without my explicit permission) and I reply.
I don’t think the issue is whether the line is hard, it’s rather where the line is. If we emailed each other for a couple of days regarding, for instance, a vacuum cleaner I advertised on Craigs List, and then I emailed you again a year later, letting you know that I had some other things for sale, is that spam? Maybe.
And a “hard line” is different than the “bottom line.” Other registrars will shut you down, but only GoDaddy is charging you money. What’s more, if you pay them they won’t shut you down — does that mean that you’re paying them to allow you to spam? It all seems a bit wobbly.
Antony | January 25th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
The GoDaddy policy probably caught people’s attention after a recent incident that was mentioned in a number of places:
http://www.mneylon.com/blog/archives/2006/01/16/phishing-side-effects/
GoDaddy and other registrars are being forced to take a hardline with spammers and phishers. The possible difference in some cases is that GoDaddy also offers hosting. With regard to the charging issue, I can see why some people may wish to perceive this as being suspect, but I can also understand why they are doing it. We run a similar, but not identical, policy. If we receive spamcop reports regarding a hosting account, be they a direct client or a client of a reseller or dedicated customer, we reserve the right to levy a charge per report. We also reserve the right to cancel accounts for any spam or other abuse. It’s not an issue we take lightly.
The problem with mailing is that you have to be very conscious of the recipient’s attitude to the mail. If you follow industry best practices you should not fall foul of either the registrar or the hosting company. The problem usually arises when people think that sending a mail is not disruptive and that they can use it as a “great” medium for increasing their sales. It’s a complex issue and one I’d be more than happy to debate with you
I also wrote a piece last year that is aimed at marketing professionals:
http://www.mneylon.com/blog/archives/2005/01/17/mass-emailing-dos-and-donts/
Just don’t forget that implicit and explicit are not the same thing, so you can fall into the trap all too easily
Michele | January 26th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
Thanks for the link — that’s very useful.
To close the circle, you might consider (and GoDaddy might as well) making these rules or recommendations clear to users. So instead of saying:
“If you spam we’ll cut you off and charge you money”,
you say
“Here’s a guide to what’s legitimate mail, and what’s considered spam. If we get a report that you’re spamming, you’ll need to show that you followed our rules and recommendations or we’ll cut you off and charge you money.”
These are your customers, right? It doesn’t seem right to penalize them for something unless you’ve made clear what constitutes a violation.
Antony | January 26th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
Anthony - read our AUP
We already include details on best practices and have done for quite some time
Michele
Michele | January 27th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
WordPress Trackback Spam!!!
I have installed plugins that prevent comment spams, but this won't prevent trackback to be blocked. I've been spam by many
MFA websites that most probably is from the same network with trackback, but they are not linking me on their website. May I
know how do they do it and how do I stop it? Without disabling trackback?
Thanks, and I'm using WordPress.
Elliott | December 8th, 2006 at 8:49 pm