TOS and Spam

[Karen]

Can I have your input into this situation..

In my TOS I have indicated that any account sending spam is shut down, no questions asked. I do not, however, go into great lenghts to discribe what 'spam' means. I think we need to define spam in our TOS.

I have a client who is sending spam through pop ups. The client is not spamming with email at all, only through popups.

What is happening is that when you visit other sites on the Internet, you may receive a popup from this client promoting their product. Which would indicate to me that somehow the client has spyware, or something for this to happen.

I have now received a complaint from someone who is getting these popups, so I wondering if I should include into my TOS that this is also spam and would not be accepted.

Any thoughts?

Karen

[David]

Popups are a form of advertisment just like banner ads are. If a site's owner decides to put popups on that promote a site you host, they have every right to. The person who complained agreed to see the popups, or other forms of ads, by visiting the site they were on. Sure, popups suck but site owners need a way to make money too.

[I, Brian]

It doesn't sound like SPAM at all, which is usually referred to in terms of unsolicited communication - notably for commerical purposes - which are sent to a user's private e-mail box.

Pop-ups are a form of general public advertising. Whether you like them or not, I would not at all think they would fall under any general defination of SPAM.

[Karen]

I need to verify something. The website itself DOES NOT have popups, at all. If it did I wouldn't worry about it.. I use popups on one of my sites.

What is happening in this situation is that he has somehow managed to have pop ups on other sites. The client owns a software product that is suppose to stop popups. So what is happening is when you visit a site anywhere on the Internet that has a popup, his popup jumps up as well promoting his anti-popup software. (pretty good marketing technique if you ask me)

Why I am concerned is because the person that complained gave me list of sites where he receives this popup ad. I visited all the sites and I did not receive the ad at all. This leads me to believe that he may have his ads as a form of spyware that has some how loaded onto the computer of the person complaining.

So I am wondering if he is using a spyware type thingy, would that be classified within the spam label.

Thanks for all the replies! You guys are awesome.

Karen

[Mark]

Sounds like windows messanger service spam. These are the plain popups that look just like regular windows.

I had one of these people, messagehammer.net. I was getting loads of complaints. Even though he was using his computer, not my server to spam, I canned him. Not worth the trouble. And a spammer is a spammer weather or not they use your server to do it. Do the internet a favor and get rid of him.

[David]

Have you asked your customer about this?

[Living Media]

I have my TOS worded to include SPAM as anything sent via my servers, or anything referencing any account hosted on my servers. This can get tricky if a competitor sends spam that references someone's account for the sole purpose of getting their site shut down; but there's an appeals process so that if someone is caught this way and it can be proved that someone else, not associated with their company, sent the spam, they don't get sliced.

[emstro]

I don't know that spyware can be installed by simply visiting a site, but they can set popups to appear when you leave the site to go somewhere else. That may be the case.