Abuse of these services is considered a violation of our Acceptable Use Policy (a supplement of the agreement you executed when subscribed to our service). One of the most serious abuses is using your account to send unsolicited commercial e-mail, otherwise known as "SPAM". The following are examples of SPAM and are blatantly contrary to our Service Agreement.

Inappropriate E-Mail Activities

Commercial e-mail: Defined as sending unsolicited commercial e-mails. This is prohibited. You are not permitted to use your Visual NetCentre account or e-mail alias/account of your Virtual Server to send unsolicited commercial e-mail. Using an e-mail address hosted anywhere on Visual NetCentre servers to collect responses from unsolicited commercial e-mail is prohibited. This also includes using third party e-mail accounts or servers including free ones to promote ("spamvertise") your Visual NetCentre based Virtual Server and redirectors for the same account.

Mail Bombing: Defined as sending large volumes of unsolicited e-mail to individuals from your Visual NetCentre based Virtual Server account. This is strictly prohibited.

Harassment: Defined as sending threatening or harassing e-mail after being requested to stop, is prohibited. Extremely threatening or harassing e-mail never is allowed.

Inappropriate use of Mailing Lists

Purchased Mailing Lists: Mass mailing to purchased mailing lists is not allowed. We allow only opt-in mailing lists. To comply with our no-SPAM policy, the recipients on your mailing list must have specifically requested (subscribed) to receive mail from you on this topic. Purchased or inherited lists are, by definition, NOT opt-in. Similarly; you could not start a list about horses and then post to it about boats. Opt-in list mailings must include instructions to unsubscribe (opt-out) in every message.

Inappropriate Newsgroup Activities

Newsgroup Spamming: Defined as excessive cross-posting, or posting the same article to several newsgroups. This is prohibited. Generally accepted standards allow no more than 15 newsgroups, or cross-postings, for a single article or substantially similar articles. Such articles may be canceled. You are not allowed to use your Visual NetCentre based mail facilities to SPAM the newsgroups. You are prohibited from cross-post or post-off-topic subjects in the Visual NetCentre support forums.
Off topic or inappropriate postings: There is no restriction on content, except as defined by each newsgroup. Continued posting of off-topic articles is prohibited. Please note that commercial advertisements are off-topic in the vast majority of newsgroups.

We take a very dim view of SPAM. It is one of the most annoying things encountered on the Internet. If an Visual NetCentre customer found to be spamming we will take action immediately. If we find that you have violated our No-SPAM Policy, we will disable your account and report you and the incident to the proper local authorities if necessary.

We are not attempting to censor, nor are we attempting to curtail the business of our customers. But as a whole, SPAMming hurts our members and us more than it helps the spammer.

Reporting SPAM: If you believe that you have received SPAM from Visual NetCentre's network, please send a signed complaint from your e-mail account along with the abusing message and complete headers to abuse@visualnetcentre.com. Visual NetCentre does not investigate or take actions based on "anonymous" SPAM complaints.