(Last Updated: Nov 27, 2009)
Alpine Benefits™ is committed to permission-based email marketing practices, and as a result has established this no-tolerance Anti-Spam Policy. Alpine Benefits™ will occasionally update this Anti-Spam Policy. When it does, Alpine Benefits™ will also revise the 'last updated' date at the top of this Anti-Spam Policy. For changes to this policy, Alpine Benefits™ will notify you (the customer) by placing a notice on its web site home page.
1. What is Spam?
Spam is commercial email or unsolicited bulk email, including 'junk mail', which has not been requested by the recipient. It is intrusive and often irrelevant or offensive, and it wastes valuable resources. Spam messages are the opposite of permission-based email, which are normally anticipated, personal, relevant and/or associated with a pre-existing business or personal relationship. Inappropriate newsgroup activities, consisting of excessive posting of the same materials to several newsgroups, are also deemed to be spam.
2. Preventing Spam
Customers of Alpine Benefits™ products and services have agreed during their registration process, upon accepting the Terms of Use, to comply with this Anti-Spam Policy. Specifically, each customer agrees not to use the Alpine Benefits™ products or services to send unsolicited email or bulk email, whether or not for commercial purposes. Alpine Benefits™ reserves the right to determine in its sole discretion what constitutes actionable spam, as well as what measures are necessary in response to such spam activities.
3. How Alpine Benefits™ Helps You to Avoid Spamming
Alpine Benefits™ has developed its Internet marketing tools to incorporate a strict permission-based philosophy. This anti-spam philosophy is implemented through the following:
- (a) Communication and Agreement - The Terms of Use that you have agreed to as part of registering for the Alpine Benefits™ products and services state how and for what purposes you can collect your site visitor addresses, and that you will follow the Alpine Benefits™ Privacy Policy and Anti-Spam Policy.
- (b) Unsubscription - Each email created using Alpine Benefits™ products contains an 'unsubscribe link'. If your web site visitors use the link to request that they be unsubscribed, your subscriber lists will automatically be adjusted to eliminate the prospect of sending unwanted email to such persons. Additionally, each person on your subscriber list has the option of unsubscribing through a web-based method provided on the Alpine Benefits™ web site. Customers of Alpine Benefits™ who try to remove the unsubscribe link will be warned that they are doing so, and if they persist in having the link removed or deactivated in any way, then Alpine Benefits™ will have the right to terminate their account.
- (c) Purchased Mailing Lists - Mass mailings to purchased email lists are not allowed. Alpine Benefits™ only allows opt-in mailing lists. Purchased or inherited lists are by definition not opt-in. Similarly, you cannot use an email list relating to particular subject matter, and then use it for an unrelated topic.
4. Laws Restricting Spam
Spam laws vary from state to state, and from country to country. This Alpine Benefits™ Anti-Spam Policy has been developed to conform to the highest commercially reasonable standards. As a result, and without limiting the general prohibitions against all spam activities, the following are expressly prohibited:
- (a) Use of false headers, or other false information, to identify the point of origin or the transmission path of the email, or to hide the true origin of the email sender,
- (b) Unauthorized use of a third party's internet domain name without the permission of such third party, to make it appear that the third party was the point of origin of the email,
- (c) Use of any false or misleading information in the subject line of the email, and
- (d) Assisting any person in using the products or services of Alpine Benefits™ for any of these previously mentioned activities.
5. Questions to Ask Yourself
To help in establishing whether you are participating in activities constituting spam, ask yourself the following questions:
- (a) Are you sending email to non-specific addresses, such as info@domain.com or sales@domain.com?
- (b) Have you deliberately falsified your transmission path information or originating address?
- (c) Are you sending email to mailing lists or distribution lists, which then send indirectly to various other email addresses?
- (d) Have you imported for use a purchased list of any type?
- (e) Are you continuing to mail to anyone who has asked to be deleted from your mailing list?
- (f) Does your email not provide a fully functioning link to unsubscribe?
- (g) Does you email subject line contain false or misleading information?
- (h) Have you used a third party's email address or domain name without the party's consent?
If you answer yes to any of these questions, you are likely involved in spam activities, and should contact Alpine Benefits™ customer support@alpinebenefits.com
6. Measures to Enforce the Anti-Spam Policy
Any Alpine Benefits™ customer found to be using Alpine Benefits™ products or services for spamming purposes may, at Alpine Benefits™'s discretion, be immediately cut off from use of all Alpine Benefits™ products and services and/or fined US$ 1,000 per occurrence, with no refund of fees that have been paid.
Alpine Benefits™ warns all of its customers when signing up that if they participate in spamming activities they will be subject to the loss of Alpine Benefits™ services, fines and possible legal action.
Alpine Benefits™ has the right to actively review its customers' subscriber lists and email for suspiciously large broadcasts. If Alpine Benefits™ finds any customers to be spamming, it will issue a warning, and if the activities are serious enough, Alpine Benefits™ will take action immediately. If Alpine Benefits™ has any reason to believe that the customer, despite warning being given, threatens to or is continuing to send spam, then Alpine Benefits™ may take action immediately, including disabling the customer's account and/or reporting the customer and the incident to the proper authorities.
Alpine Benefits™ does not attempt to censor any content, nor to curtail the business of its customers. However, spam activities do not fall within uses authorized by Alpine Benefits™, and will not be tolerated.
7. Reporting Spam
If you believe that you have received spam from or through Alpine Benefits™'s facilities, please send a complaint from your email account along with the unsolicited email, with completed header, to supportAThbiDOTus Please provide any other information that you believe may help us in our investigation. Alpine Benefits™ does not investigate or take any action based on 'anonymous' spam complaints.
8. False Spam Complaints
Alpine Benefits™ supports the efforts of various organizations working to responsibly eliminate spam activities. However, if an individual has opted-in to receive email from a customer of Alpine Benefits™, and then falsely or maliciously files a spam complaint against Alpine Benefits™ or its customers, Alpine Benefits™ will cooperate fully with the appropriate agencies to ban the complainant from use of anti-spam software and the Internet community.