• What is spam?

• What is your Anti-Spam policy?

• Why is spam bad?

• How do I join the campaign against spam?

• Will I lose referrals if one of my direct or extended referrals turns out to be a spammer?

• What will happen to the referral dollars that would have otherwise been earned by the spammers, who lost their accounts, and the people up-line from those spammers?

What is spam?

"Spam" (a.k.a. unsolicited commercial email, unsolicited bulk email, mass email, junk email) is a message that advertises goods or services posted to a message board against stated policy; sent to someone without their prior consent; or, sent in the absence of a previous relationship. For purposes of Interactive Venture's Anti-Spam Policy, spam includes:

• Email sent to people you don't know.

• Email sent to people you know, but who aren't expecting a solicitation from you.

• Off-topic or excessively multi-posted messages posted to Usenet newsgroups and message boards.

• Solicitations posted to chat rooms, or to groups or individuals via Internet Relay Chat or "Instant Messaging" systems (such as ICQ)

For more information on what spam is, why it is bad, and what can be done about it, visit:

The Responsible Internet Commerce Site
http://spam.abuse.net/

The Mail Abuse Prevention System, LLC
http://www.mail-abuse.org/

The Network Abuse Clearinghouse
http://www.abuse.net/

The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email
http://www.cauce.org/

What is your anti-spam policy?
Our anti-spam policy, acceptance of which is a condition of our General Membership Agreement, is posted here. To summarize the policy: spam is strictly prohibited. If you spam, your account will be suspended immediately and may be completely terminated. If your account is terminated, your account is closed, your referrals will be lost, any unpaid monies on account will be confiscated, and you will be ineligible for a new account.  We are extremely serious about enforcing our anti-spam policy.
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Why is spam bad?
Spam is bad for a multitude of reasons. Unlike the "junk mail" you receive in your "snail" mailbox, electronic junk mail costs the recipients more time and money than it costs the sender. For example, AOL has said that they were receiving 1.8 million spam's from Cyber Promotions per day until they got a court injunction to stop it. Many major service providers estimate that upwards of 30% of their daily email traffic is spam, costing them upwards of $1 million per month in hardware, bandwidth, and administrative costs -- equaling nearly $2 per month per user. By contrast, the spammer can use a simple dial-up account with an Internet service provider and send out more than a half-million emails per day for around $20/month.

Spam is also an unequalled time-waster. It takes time to download, sort through, and identify junk mail, and then it takes time to discard it. Assuming that it takes the typical user only 10 seconds to download, identify, and discard a message, that equates to about 5,000 hours of connect time per day spent for an ISP the size of AOL.

No other kind of advertising costs the advertiser so little and the recipient so much. The closest analogy would be auto-dialing junk phone calls to cellular users or receiving a bill from your postman for "postage due" on that month's junk mail; you can imagine how favorably that might be received.

To be sure, it is not only Interactive Ventures that thinks spam is bad. In fact, anti-spamming legislation has already taken affect in more than a dozen states in the U.S., and has been banned in several countries in Europe. To learn more reasons why spam is bad, visit the following sites:

The Responsible Net Commerce Site
spam.abuse.net

The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email on "The Problem"
www.cauce.org

To learn more about laws relating to spam, visit:
The John Marshall Law School Center for Information Technology & Privacy Law
www.jmls.edu

Suespammers.org - A Legal Resource Site
www.suespammers.org

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How do I join the campaign against spam?
There are several steps you can take to help reduce spam:

1. Do not spam!

2. Do not respond to spam

3. If you receive spam delete it unread.

4. Join CAUCE (http://www.cauce.org), the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email. It is an all volunteer organization created to advocate for a legislative solution to the problem of spam. With each new registered member, CAUCE becomes a stronger voice on Capitol Hill. It costs nothing to join.

5. Read The CAN-SPAM Act

Will I lose referrals if one of my direct or extended referrals turns out to be a spammer?
Yes. Interactive Ventures takes swift action when it receives evidence of a member spamming. After investigation, if it appears that a member is guilty of spamming, their account is subject to immediate termination. If one of your direct or extended referrals turns out to be a spammer, their account will be cancelled. You will lose the potential benefit of having the spammer as a referral as well as the potential benefit of having the spammer's direct and extended referrals as referrals. This means that all members of Interactive Ventures have the responsibility (and a strong incentive) to make sure that everyone you refer understands appropriate ways of promoting Interactive Ventures. If you or your referrals are new to the Internet, it is also a good idea to learn about other aspects of proper "Netiquette." A useful resource for this is: The Core Rules of Netiquette, excerpted from the book Netiquette by Virginia Shea. They should be considered required reading by anyone wishing to be well-received in the online world.
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What will happen to the referral dollars that would have otherwise been earned by the spammers, who lost their accounts, and the people up-line from those spammers?
The referral dollars will be donated to Internet privacy and anti-spam non-profit organizations or otherwise used to fund efforts, outside Interactive Ventures, to enhance consumer privacy on the Internet.
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