Sue's Healthy Lifestyle

We at Sue’s Healthy Lifestyle website would like to clear up any confusion about unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE) messages or unsolicited bulk commercial email (UBCE) messages, otherwise known as Spam or junk mail. We will talk about what makes up Spam, and about your and our responsibilities concerning it. Obviously, we will also give you our policy concerning Spam, specifically and generally. We will also give you some ideas on how to reduce your “load” of Spam.

About Spam

As the descriptive title indicates, Spam is generally considered to be the sending of
unsolicited commercial messages (in our case, e-mails). Most of these e-mails contain advertising for various products. Even e-mails that have an opt-out provision generally are defined as Spam. Why? Because the provisions require an opt-in beforehand, not an opt-out after the message is sent. “Opt-in” means that the potential receiver of e-mail(s) has given his/her permission – actively, not passively – for the specific sender to send messages to him/her. “Opt-out” means that the receiver has actively declined to receive the e-mails and does not welcome them, and that the sender must actively assure that the address is not used.

The legal situation is much less clear than the above paragraph would indicate. Many Countries have strict laws against sending Spam as we described it above. Many other Countries have absolutely no regulations at all. Then there are others that fall somewhere in between the two extremes, including the U.S.A. For example, in the U.S.A. it is acceptable to send an unsolicited e-mail, provided there is an active link to opt-out in the mail. This means someone can find a list “lying on the street,” send emails to everyone on the list with an active opt-out link, and continue to send them until each person activates an opt-out link.
This is all legal there. European countries’ practices are mixed, with Germany having
probably the strictest regulations, these being enforced actively by the German Federal
Government.

Our Spam Policy

Sue’s Healthy Lifestyle Websites do not tolerate Spam and will not participate in activities that could lead to sending Spam e-mail. Specifically, we will not give e-mail addresses of our members, subscribers or customers to third parties (unless required by valid law), and we will not send any Spam e-mails. You can find more information concerning the protection of your personal data in our Privacy Policy.

What Can You Do To Protect Yourself

Outgoing: There are various systems that provide encryption of e-mail messages, and there are e-mail services that are more consistently protective when it comes to actively removing Spammers from their services. The one that comes to mind is Google Mail, which requires explicit registration and confirmation before a g-mail account can be used. Others, such as Yahoo! Mail, follow essentially the same policies. Your own Internet service provider is in a position to do this, but not all ISP’s follow-up against Spammers with the same degree of intensity.

SUE’S HEALTHY LIFESTYLE WEBSITES NO SPAM POLICY

Incoming: There are various Spam-blockers or filters available to users. Most e-mail systems have some sort of filtering system today. You can also install a secondary system on your computer’s e-mail service if you download all your e-mails for further processing (for example with Outlook or Outlook Express [names and programs copyrighted and trademarked as property of Microsoft] or other similar programs). We use SPAM fighter – there are free and upgraded versions, and our upgraded versions tend to make about 5-10 errors per month out of probably 1000 emails per day – an excellent record in our opinion.

Passive Protection: You can also protect your e-mail address so that it is not so available on the Internet. You will see in places that we use joe and mary (AT) grossmail (DOT) co (DOT) uk instead of the standard address – we then tell the people to replace (AT) with @ and (DOT) with . and take out all the extra spaces. This will make it less likely that a robot will pick up your email address from the web and use it for Spamming purposes – the more intelligent ones will still get the address, but the less intelligent ones will miss it, at least this time. Also, don’t sign up for newsletters etc. that you really don’t need or want – if the list for this product is stolen or sold (and both are possible), your address is potentially on hundreds of new Spam lists.

You Need To Know: There are aggressive e-mail operations that follow these rules:
(1) “You send me an e-mail, I may send you e-mails,” and
(2) “There are only three ways to get off my e-mail list, sign up [in which case you end up
on another list], opt out, or die.”

We at Sue’s Healthy Lifestyle are not anti-Spam professionals. However, if you have any questions about your particular program or problem, don’t hesitate to contact us – if our practice and experience is not enough help for you, we can certainly find someone who can provide what you want!

Sue’s Healthy Lifestyle Websites
sueshealthylifestyle@gmail.comSutton, Ontario, Canada
17 November 2009