Anti-Spam Policy

Outbound mail is shared infrastructure in the most literal sense: reputation attaches to an IP range, and one account sending to a purchased list can put every other customer on that range into a spam folder for weeks. That is why this sits on its own page rather than inside the acceptable use policy, and why enforcement here is faster than almost anywhere else in these terms.

1. What consent has to look like

Under UK data protection law and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, marketing mail to an individual generally needs their consent, and consent means a positive act. It does not mean a pre-ticked box, a condition of entering a prize draw, or an address you found published somewhere.

The narrow exception is an existing customer, contacted about similar products, who was given a way to refuse at the point their address was collected and in every message since. That exception is narrower than most senders assume.

You must be able to show, for any address on a list, when and how consent was given. If you cannot, the list is not usable here.

2. Lists bought, scraped or inherited

Purchased and rented lists are not permitted, without exception. Nor are addresses harvested from websites, directories or social networks, and nor is a list that arrived with a business you acquired unless the consent behind it covered your use of it.

"They can always unsubscribe" is not consent, and re-permissioning a bad list by mailing it to ask is itself the breach.

3. What every message has to carry

• a sender identity that is accurate — no forged headers, no misleading from-address;
• a subject line describing what the message actually is;
• a working unsubscribe link, honoured within three working days and preferably at once;
• a postal address for the sender, and the company behind the trading name.

Unsubscribes are permanent. Re-adding an address after somebody has left, because they filled in a different form or you started a new list, is treated as a fresh breach.

4. Limits on shared plans

Shared and reseller plans carry per-hour sending limits, sized for a website's transactional mail — order confirmations, password resets, contact-form notifications — rather than for campaigns.

Bulk sending belongs with a dedicated provider that manages its own reputation and gives you delivery reporting. Running a newsletter of any size through shared hosting is bad for your delivery rate before it is a problem for ours.

5. Relaying and third-party sending

Do not operate an open relay, and do not send on behalf of a third party whose consent practices you cannot vouch for. If you run mail for clients as a reseller, their compliance is your responsibility as far as we are concerned — we act against the account that owns the service.

6. What happens when spam leaves an account

Outbound sending is monitored for the pattern rather than the content. When a run starts, sending on that account is stopped first and discussed second — an hour of delay here is the difference between a warning and a blocklisting that takes weeks to clear.

• Compromise. Most spam from a hosting account comes from a hacked contact form or a stolen password rather than a decision. Sending is suspended, we tell you where it came from, and it is restored once the hole is closed.
• Deliberate sending. Terminated, and no refund is due for the remainder of the term.

Where an IP range is blocklisted because of an account, the delisting work and any cost of moving other customers to clean addresses may be charged to it.

7. Reporting spam from a site hosted here

Send the message with its full headers through abuse reports. Headers are what make a report actionable; a forwarded body without them usually cannot be traced to an account.

8. Our own mail

We write to you about your services, your invoices and your security. Marketing mail is opt-in and carries an unsubscribe that does not affect service messages. What we collect and why is in the privacy notice.

9. Who this is with

Hosting & Domains is a trading name of UK Health Care Support Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under Company No. 15042717. Registered office: Office 4648, 58 Peregrine Road, Ilford, England, IG6 3SZ. Questions about this policy go to info@hosting-n-domains.com.