Frequently Asked Questions
SPAM
GMW seeks to provide the best business class web hosting services to our users, we offer a full-range of personal and commercial hosting services.
GMW have adopted a philosophy that assumes the honesty and integrity of our subscriber base. Our services are provided in as unrestricted a manner as possible to allow our users to have the best possible Internet experience.
Help Stop Spam
Abuse of these services is a violation of our Acceptable Use Policy (a supplemental agreement you executed when subscribing to our service). One of the most serious abuses (which has long been a crime in other states) is using your account to send unwanted and unsolicited commercial e-mail, otherwise known as "spam" or "UCE".
The following are examples of spam and blatant violations of our Service Agreement.
Improper E-Mail Activities
Commercial e-mail: Defined as sending unsolicited, money-making e-mails.
You are not permitted to use your GMW account or e-mail account on your Virtual Server to send unsolicited commercial e-mail. Using an e-mail address hosted anywhere on GMW servers to collect responses from unsolicited commercial e-mail is prohibited. This also includes using third party e-mail accounts or servers including free ones to promote your GMW based Virtual Server and redirectors for the same account.
Mail Bombing: Defined as sending large volumes of unsolicited e-mail to individuals from your GMW based Virtual Server account, is 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.
Improper use of Mailing Lists
Purchased Mailing Lists: Mass mailing to purchased mailing lists is not allowed. We allow only opt-in mailing lists. To comply with our no-spam policy, the recipients on your mailing list must have specifically requested (subscribed) to receive mail from you on this topic. Purchased or inherited lists are, by definition,
not opt-in. Similarly; you could not start a list about horses and then post to it about boats. Opt-in list mailings must include instructions to unsubscribe (opt-out) in every message.Improper Newsgroup Activities
Newsgroup Spam: Defined as excessive cross-posting, or posting the same article to multiple newsgroups. This is prohibited. Generally accepted standards allow no more than 15 newsgroups, or cross-postings, for a single article. You are not allowed to use your GMW based mail facilities to send spam to newsgroups.
Off topic or improper postings: There is no restriction on content, except as defined by each newsgroup. Please keep in mind that commercial advertisements are considered off-topic for the vast major of newsgroups or e-lists. We take a very serious view of spam. If any GMW customer is determined to be in violation of our spam policy we will take immediate action. Your account will be disabled and we will report the incident to the proper local, state, and federal authorities if necessary.
Forwarding E-mail
Marking forwarded mail as spam: E-mail forwarding service is provided as a courtesy to our clients. However, many people simply don't understand the intricacies of how email functions. When you select to automatically forward mail from your GMW hosted account to your third party account, you don't opt to forward only part of it. All of the email is forwared, including whatever spam is not excluded by our filters. If you mark one of these unwanted messages as spam, it will not reflect on the originating server, but on GMW. This is unacceptable, as you selected to use the automatic forwarding service. If you are incapable of discerning the difference between forwarded messages and original messages, you should not be using the mail forwarding service. AOL users are strictly forbidden from using the forwarding service. AOLers have demonstrated gross negligence in this area and we simply cannot risk every client suffering just because another client has mail issues.
To put it as politely as I am able, we would rather not have any clients using AOL. If you absolutely must use AOL for your email service, please choose another web-host. We are not interested in your business.
Catch-all E-mail Addresses
We proudly provide the option to utilize a catch-all email address with our client accounts. A catch-all functions by collecting any or all email you receive to your domain at any nonexistent address to a single email account. This is perfectly suited to marking the source of email or enabling your site to appear larger (providing room to grow) by enabling you to use anything you want before the @ within the email address. Thus, support@, sales@ and any other combination of addresses will work, and mail to them will be delivered to the catch-all account you have on file.
Normally, this is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, it can be quickly abused by spammers who don't take the time or interest in ensuring that the email addresses they send to are legitimate. Using a catch-all address will increase the amount of spam you receive. Sometimes by a hundred-fold or more. As long as you are prepared for this, it is not normally an issue.
However, if you choose to use a catch-all address, you are expressly forbidden from forwarding the mail received by that catch-all account to an external or third party email address. This is non-negotiable. "Heuristic"-based spam detection services rarely flag only the specific messages that are detected as spam. Instead, they flag the source IP as the spammer - the source being the server most directly in contact with theirs, namely, our servers. Thus, even if you personally and willingly opt to receive these spam messages to your third-party email account, it inevitably reflects negatively upon GMW servers, and all of our users suffer from the related service interruption.
Conclusion
If your account is responsible for causing GMW servers to be blocked by any third-party email services, you will be billed for time to correct it at our standard "emergency" service rate. This is not negotiable.
This is not attempt to censor, or to curtail the business of our customers. Quite the opposite. We want to ensure that your websites and email are functioning without errors! However, spamming and other errant email practices hurt our members and our business more than it helps the spammer/user.
Report Spam: If you believe that you have received spam from GMW's network, please send a signed complaint from your e-mail account along with the abusing message and complete headers to GMW. GMW does not investigate or take actions based on "anonymous" spam complaints.
