ChurchText Pro Anti-Spam Policy

Brief Overview of Spam

Spamming is the practice of sending unsolicited information to either a single user or in a mass scale via email. As anyone with a computer will testify, spam has gotten completely out of control. In fact, recent statistics show that over the last ten years, spam has grown to represent almost 80% of total email traffic with estimated impact to the global economy of approximately US $25 billion dollars per year.

Not surprisingly, this has caused receivers like Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to take drastic measures to not only protect their users, but also the networks themselves. This includes, but is not limited to anti-virus, anti-spam, and storage. This puts an enormous amount of strain on the ISP on top of the already crowded email networks.

ChurchText Pro’s Role in Combating Spam

ChurchText Pro’s ! platform is 100% permission-based and does not engage in spamming practices. We take the following steps to ensure that our clients do not engage in such activities.

Any client database submitted must provide a date/time stamp for when each of the subscribers registered to receive information from that company.

If the client cannot show such proof, then ChurchText Pro will not allow the database to be added to the system. We reserve the right to review any creative intended for a mailing and if found to contain potentially offensive or "spammy" material, will deny mailing from being sent.

Automatically remove any user that either clicks on the opt-out tab on our footer or those who send an email to our abuse@ChurchTextPro.com address.

Any client who violates the steps listed above will be suspended from sending campaigns with TextHub.

ChurchText Pro is also compliant with the CAN-SPAM laws (http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877.html) and enforces such practices for all of its clients. The company also works closely with the major anti-spam organizations such as Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS), SpamCop, Spamhaus, and Spam Prevention Early Warning System (SPEWS ensure that all of its clients are not in violation of spamming policies.

As part of the  platform, ChurchText Pro has made it very easy for users to unsubscribe to a list, which is included in the footer of every mail sent via the system. The company also maintains an abuse@ChurchText Pro.com, which is monitored 24/7 to quickly remove any users from the system upon their request.

Blacklists and ISP Relations

ChurchText Pro maintains an active relationship with the major Blacklist organizations as well the top ISPs to prevent spammer from using TextHub.  Any notices received from such organizations regarding complaints of spam will be dealt with immediate and may result in your account being suspended. If we find that your list contains spam trap seed address (hidden emails maintained by blacklist organizations to catch spammers) your account will be immediately suspended.

Process for Handling Spam Complaints

As stated above, ChurchText Pro takes spam very seriously and constantly monitors our clients to ensure spam is not being sent via our system. The following are the steps taken if your account is being flagged as a potential spammer.

Spam complaint received -- Based on the severity (such as a spam trap) as well as volume of complaints, we will assess the situation and notify the client as to the violations.

Account is temporarily suspended to give us time to properly investigate the claims.

If the block is due to numerous spam complaints, the client will have to wait until the threshold goes down before sending more mailings.

If the block is due to a spam trap, ChurchText Pro will attempt to discover the seed address(es) but this may not be possible. The client will not be able to send mailings until the database is cleared of possible traps or may have to resubmit a new database.

After the investigation, ChurchText Pro will determine whether or not it can continue to do business with the client.

For more information visit The Coalition Against Unsolicited Email (www.cauce.org)