Netz0 has a deep concern in the good use of emails on the Internet. E-mail is a powerful communication tool that can open new doors to digital business, but can also be harmful to companies if used incorrectly.
For those reasons, we have created these Zero Spam rules for the correct use of electronic mail in mailing lists. If you follow these steps, you will certify that your sending complies with the proper usage of email services.
Netz0 has a zero spam policy. Therefore, we do not allow any activities related or linked to spam behaviors from our network or services. If you have a product with enabled email capabilities and are sending emails to a group of people, please read these regulations. Then check that your sending’s comply with them.
These rules apply to any mails sent to more than 100 people per sending, regardless if the message contains only informative or commercial information. Sending’s in such cases are considered as mailings and must qualify to the following rules, or will be in violation of our terms of use and Netz0 zero spam policies.
Internal mailings in organizations are exempt. Internal mailing refers to announcement’s or emails within your own domain. For example, if the sender of the mailing is staff-mailing@netz-test.com, being netz-test.com the domain of your company. If all recipients are of the type @netz-test.com, this is considered an internal mailing. In this example a mailing that is only sent internally among employees of an organization.
However, if only one single recipient address is external or outside of your domain (e.g. @gmail.com), it will automatically not be considered as internal and must comply with these mailing regulations.
These are the regulations and rules for sending newsletters, announcements, reports, or mailings, as well as any other form of mass email sending from Netz0 networks and services.
1. Not allowed to hide the origin
The customer may not modify or manipulate any e-mail message headers to hide or distort the source in any form.
Any attempt to conceal the transmitter of the mailing is prohibited, either through changes to addresses, email, domain or website. Netz0 is one of the few hosting companies that allows sending of mailings in virtual hosting accounts or shared mail services. Please use your service in a correct and responsible manner. Do not abuse the services. Only send from an email address from the web domain to which your users or customers initially subscribed.
2. Undeliverable mails should be removed
Response emails that contain errors of the type of "Undeliverable address" and/or "Failure notice" must be immediately removed from all future sendings and mailing lists. If you receive these error messages, you must check them and immediately delete the email address that is returning the bounce message. The error means the address to which the email is sent does not exist, has problems or has intentionally rejected the messages as unwanted (spam).
3. The owner is responsible for all emails broadcasted from the domain
The holder of the account in Netz0 is responsible for all types of emails sent by users from his domain or services. This includes intentional or unintentional activities, like security intrusions or malicious users carrying out spam using the holders account.
4. You must use an authorized software or program
The mailing must be sent from a program specifically designed for these type of mass mailings to avoid any saturation of mail servers. Our virtual hosting services provide these programs for free, or you can use your own if it was previously authorized by Netz0 Staff.
Sending mass e-mails from your Outlook, Webmail account or another mail program will cause the saturation of the mailbox and the server, causing the delivery failure of your mail and the likely suspension of the account for the caused service interruptions. E-mail accounts are not designed to send thousands of emails via a single message.
E-mail communications were designed from its inception for a person to person transmission. For this reason, mass sending to a large number of individuals should be made with special programs that send them in blocks and individually to each recipient.
If you sent one mail with Outlook to 100 people, and three recipients addresses fail, all the people in your email will not receive the message as it will be stuck and pending on the server for days (while delivery is re-attempted and failing each time). Programs that send messages simultaneously send one mail to each individual (so if an address fails it does not affect further delivery) and does so with time-outs to avoid saturating a service. For example, 75 messages every 5 minutes.
Limit yourself to only using a tool that was designed for this procedure. And not to a conventional mail program as you could saturate your mail service.
5. Sending’s must come from the same domain
Mailing must be sent from the same domain from which your users (recipients of messages) are subscribed. Sending to a list unrelated to your website, either purchased or from other websites is prohibited and is considered Spam without further excuses. Each mailing must always be sent from the same subscription mailing or with a prior notification change if that address changes. In short, email appearing as the sender in the list must match your domain.
Moreover, users who receive mails must be subscribed to your list from the same domain or website to which that address belongs. Even if you are the owner of several websites, you cannot send a mailing list to users that were not explicitly signed from the domain to which your list belongs.
6. Recipients must authorize the subscription
Publishing the message of "PLEASE REPLY TO BE REMOVED" is not enough. Removal instructions must contain a direct link that automatically processes the removal of recipients from your mailing list.
This also applies to the subscription procedure. Users must subscribe on a voluntary basis, upon confirmation via a message to their mailboxes. The subscription must be done from your website only and not outside the Internet or by any other means which do not include your site.
There are exceptions to this point, for example, if a company collects data in a written form from customers. In such cases, it has the authority to send a unique and first message to users. This first message can only be the welcome/confirmation mail for the list subscription or newsletter, which the user will proceed to confirm. Once confirmed on your list, the user can receive newsletters on a regular basis. This first sending must be approved by Netz0 for verification that it is indeed a subscription or welcome message. Without approval, such offline list will be considered spam activities.
Outside of this particular exception, it is not deemed as any valid authorization by other means, either in written, verbal, from social networks, etc. The only valid approval is if the user has subscribed or has completed a form on your website where he grants permission to receive emails in the future.
It is not allowed under any circumstances sending messages to purchased mailing lists or email addresses collected from the Internet or third party sites. These are called spam lists and are expressly prohibited because users have not authorized the inclusion of their email addresses to those lists.
7. No saturation of services allowed
The mass sending of thousands of messages or which cause resources excess is forbidden in virtual hosting accounts or shared email services.
Mass sending of mails can severely harm the use of mail services for other customers in a shared email server, so we must ensure the proper use of services for all users.
If your sending remains legitimate and you need to send messages to excessively large lists, you must hire your own email server or a dedicated hosting for such sendings. Otherwise, it might be abusing the resources on a shared server and affecting the email service for other users.
Netz0 will be the sole judge as to what is considered as excessive in shared type services. This is measured on a per basis performance of a particular service and the current load of outgoing mails during certain periods.
For example, sending to 3,000 people can be considered as valid in one hosting plan, but abusive in another plan. Sending 8,000 emails once a month could be deemed acceptable, but another 1,000 mails every three days as abusive.
If you have questions regarding if your mailing is valid or not, or if it is permitted, please contact us and we will be happy to assist you. Our staff will help you in migrating your lists to its own dedicated email server if required, as well as with the appropriate configuration.
8. Private servers are not excluded from these rules
Having your own dedicated or cloud email server in Netz0 does not exclude it from these rules except for above clause 7. There is no limit on the number of mails or sending frequency in dedicated hosting services as long as it is complying with the rest of these rules.
9. Netz0 will investigate complaints and take actions
If Netz0 receives any complaint against your domain, server, or IP address, you should immediately suspend further sending of mails (mailing) until a new update is received from our side. Netz0 will notify you via a ticket in the "Abuse" department in case of complaints and will proceed to investigate the claim.
If Netz0 receives several complaints from other Internet providers simultaneously, the service will be suspended or limited automatically for more verification, considering it an automatically justified claim of a Spam.
The service will be re-activated after Netz0 staff consideration indicating the procedures to be followed and measures to be taken in your account.
10. Commercial or advertising messages apply to additional regulations
If your messages are the commercial type and not transactional or informative, messages must additionally comply with the Can-SPAM Act. Commercial message refers to any email message that contains commercial information, marketing or promoting a brand, product or services.
Transactional message refers to informational messages that contain information where a user needs to perform some action or is informed about certain procedure in your website or company. For example, an email to reset a password is a transactional email, while an email that promotes a discount is a commercial email. In the case of messages containing both, your message is considered commercial and must comply with the American CAN-Spam Act law.
11. IP and services must be kept clean
If your mailing list has to be repeatedly sent, you must purchase a dedicated IP address for your sending’s. This will prevent a shared IP address from being tagged accidentally in Internet providers blacklists affecting other customers. Obtaining a dedicated IP does not grant any privileges for it to enter in blacklists and it is only a precautionary prevention measure. Netz0 monitors on an exclusive basis all the IP addresses in our network as well anti-spam lists or also called blacklists.
If you have a dedicated IP assigned, and it falls into a blacklist, even if there are no spam complaints against your domain or service, this is considered directly as Spam activities on the Internet and Netz0 staff will proceed to investigate the reason. If your IP falls repeatedly or we verify regular spam activities which are considered intentional or repeated incidents from your services, Netz0 will proceed to effectively terminate any contracted services in your account.
Netz0 staff will be the only judge as to what is considered as intentional or accidental, caused by security incidents or by unawareness on the customer’s part.
12. Your lists should not be considered illegitimate
Illegitimate mailing lists are automatically classified as spam lists and therefore inevitably in violation of our conditions of use. Please read the following article to verify if your list could be considered a spam list: