Referback is committed to permission-based e-mail marketing practices, and as a result has established this zero-tolerance Anti-Spam Policy. Referback will occasionally update this Anti-Spam Policy. When we do, we will also revise the "Last Updated" date at the top of this Anti-Spam Policy. Referback will notify you of changes to this policy by placing a notice on the Referback Marketing Information page.
Referback conforms to the FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSIONS CANSpam Act and we do not condone the transmission, distribution or delivery of any unsolicited bulk or unsolicited commercial e-mail ("Spam").
The CANSpam Act does not make spam, the practice of sending unsolicited e-mails, illegal. It does have some specific requirements for commercial e-mails.
The new law covers all e-mail for which the primary purpose is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a product or service.
The new federal law supercedes most state and local e-mail laws, except those that cover fraud and deception.
The key rules you must follow to send legal e-mail marketing messages are:- Include your full address within every e-mail message.
- Subject lines must be descriptive in nature about the content of the e-mail. There are specific civil penalties about the use of deceptive subject lines. Subject lines such as "news for a friend" would be considered misleading.
- The From line should be from you or your business and not a sales pitch or marketing message.
- Use a reply address that will be active for at least thirty days after sending your e-mail.
- A conspicuously displayed unsubscribe link must be included within every e-mail.
- Any unsubscribe requests must be honored within ten days.
- In the case of unsolicited e-mail, the marketer must label the e-mail as an advertisement. You may use the letters ADV in the subject line but this particular identification is not required.
- It is now required that a valid physical postal address of the sender be found within all e-mails. (in e-mails under CANSPAM)
- Related to sexually oriented e-mail, a message within the subject line or at the top of the e-mail must indicate the e-mail's sexual nature.
- The law also specifically bans the practice of harvesting e-mails through an automated means.This would mean it's now illegal to obtain e-mail addresses by crawling websites. This includes purchasing harvested e-mail addresses from someone else.
You may not commit any of the following e-mail offences:- use or contain invalid or forged headers;
- use or contain invalid or non-existent domain names;
- employ any technique to otherwise misrepresent, hide or obscure any information in identifying the point of origin or the transmission path;
- use other means of deceptive addressing;
- use a third party's internet domain name, or be relayed from or through a third party's equipment, without permission of the third party;
- contain false or misleading information in the subject line or otherwise contain false or misleading content;
- fail to comply with additional policies and procedures described below.
Referback does not condone the harvesting, mining or collection of e-mail addresses or other information from or through e-mail Hosting Services.
Penalties as listed by the Federal Trade Commission
Each violation of the above provisions is subject to fines of up to $11,000. Deceptive commercial e-mail also is subject to laws banning false or misleading advertising.
Additional fines are provided for commercial e-mailers who not only violate the rules described above, but also:- "harvest" e-mail addresses from Web sites or Web services that have published a notice prohibiting the transfer of e-mail addresses for the purpose of sending e-mail
- generate e-mail addresses using a "dictionary attack" - combining names, letters, or numbers into multiple permutations
- use scripts or other automated ways to register for multiple e-mail or user accounts to send commercial e-mail
- relay e-mails through a computer or network without permission - for example, by taking advantage of open relays or open proxies without authorization.
The law allows the Department of Justice to seek criminal penalties, including imprisonment, for commercial e-mailers who do - or conspire to:- use another computer without authorization and send commercial e-mail from or through it
- use a computer to relay or retransmit multiple commercial e-mail messages to deceive or mislead recipients or an Internet access service about the origin of the message
- falsify header information in multiple e-mail messages and initiate the transmission of such messages
- register for multiple e-mail accounts or domain names using information that falsifies the identity of the actual registrant
- falsely represent themselves as owners of multiple Internet Protocol addresses that are used to send commercial e-mail messages.
Penalties imposed by Referback
If Referback or our Clients confirm that you are guilty of sending unsolicited Spam, we may, without notice, take such action as we, in our sole discretion, deem appropriate, including blocking messages from a particular internet domain, mail server or IP address. On receiving notification of a valid Spam complaint, and it is the first complaint of this nature, we will issue you with a warning and advise you to conform to the Federal Trade Commission CANSpam Act. On receiving notification of a second Spam complaint, we will immediately withhold any payment and terminate any Affiliate account linked to transmitting or is otherwise connected with any e-mail that violates this policy.
We also reserve the right to place your account under review and all funds due to you being withheld pending an investigation into your account. You need to be aware that our Clients are liable to incur expenses in dealing with spam generated mail and these same expenses will be deducted from your account should our client seek recourse. In this instance the amount determined by the relative client will be fair and deemed final and acceptable based on good faith and such amount will be collectable by law and deemed to have been accepted by yourself as fair and reasonable and as agreed to by registration as an affiliate of Referback.
Should these expenses not be covered by funds in your account we reserve the right to investigate other alternative means for obtaining payment for example: should your account have generated purchasing accounts we will hold payment of commission for these accounts until such a time as the account for damages has been cleared. Should your account not be active and be generating profit through commission payments we reserve the right to demand payment from the account holder.
Should you require more information regarding our spam policy, please contact
support.
Should you wish to report any incidences of Spam, please contact us at
spamreport@referback.com.
Web Spam Policy
Last Updated: July 2006
As a premiere affiliate program Referback seeks primarily to protect the intellectual property of our content and brand as well as the content and brands of our casino partners.
ReferBack?s anti-spam policy does not condone the use of any form of spam.
In most cases, reported offences by affiliates have very little to do with the Referback program; in the case of web spam it is directed at search engines beyond our control.
Should an affiliate report the scraping of his sites, spamming, cloaking, redirecting, and the like, to ReferBack, our team of consultants will consider the request after proof is provided that the affiliate has reported the offender to the relevant search engines and has done everything in his/her power to contact the offender directly.
Referback will take whatever action is regarded by us as fair, appropriate and necessary in the circumstances.
Our consultant team?s decision will be final in this regard.
Please note:
In the interests of protecting your affiliate account as well as those of other affiliates we cannot entertain requests of closing accounts lightly. We will, however, disable an account that is found to be abusing our system.
Referback warns affiliates to be cautious and mindful when reporting these kinds of practices.
It is important to emphasize that experience has shown that the best results in controlling this kind of spamming are achieved by the affiliate taking legal action against the offender. A locked affiliate account with ReferBack may not be enough of a deterrent.
Checklist:
Should you wish to report a case of web spamming, you must provide us with comprehensive proof of the occurrence in question which will include:
- Proof of your submitting your report to the applicable search engines.
- Proof of intellectual property and copyright on your site.
- Screen shots of your site.
- Screen shots of the offending site.
- Description of the method used so that we can replicate the occurrence (you will need to assist us to do so.)
RESOURCES:
In order to assist affiliates that may have fallen pray to this kind of spam, Referback has put together a list of resources which will give you the tools to report the offender as well as minimize the impact these techniques have on your websites.
What are your rights as a web publisher?Information Copyright Infringementhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringementIf you need additional information concerning copyright work, the following websites may assist you.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyrighthttp://www.copyright.govhttp://www.theesa.comhttp://www.copyright.orghttp://www.bsa.orgDigital Millennium Copyright Act on Googlehttp://www.google.com/dmca.htmlIs your content is been copied?http://www.copyscape.comActive forms on dealing with online plagiarism.http://www.copyscape.com/forumhttp://www.plagiarismtoday.comReporting To Search Engines.Googlehttp://www.google.com/webmasters/http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
Re-inclusion requests to
help@google.comMSNhttp://support.msn.com/contactus.aspxExcitehttp://mailit.excite.com/mailit/feedback_abuse.jspYahoo / AltaVistahttp://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_reportsearchspam & Yahoo spam policy
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/deletions/index.html &
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/dir/remove/remove-04.html & Yahoos copyright policy
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/copyright/copyright.htmlLycoshttp://info.lycos.com/legal/legal.aspAll the Web (FAST)http://www.alltheweb.com/help/webmaster/faq.htmlhttp://www.alltheweb.com/info/about/spam_policyspam_websearch@overture.comhttp://www.alltheweb.com/info/spampolicy.htmlhttp://www.AlltheWeb.com/help/FAQ_webmaster.htmlTheoma & Ask Jeevesjeeves@askjeeves.comWizenutinfo@wisenut.comDmozhttp://dmoz.org/add.htmlinfo@wisenut.comLookSmart / Zealhttp://listings.looksmart.com/help/guidelines.jhtmlhttp://www.zeal.com/guidelines/user/expsvc@looksmart.netInktomihttp://www.inktomi.com/products/search/spampolicyfaq.htmlhttp://www.inktomi.com/products/search/content_policy.htmlhttp://www.inktomi.com/products/web_search/guidelines.html
Should you require more information regarding our spam policy, please contact
support.
Should you wish to report any incidences of Spam, please contact us at
spamreport@referback.com.