LuxSci is serious about the quick and efficient delivery of all email sent by our clients. We take extra steps to ensure that our servers sending outbound email are not blacklisted.  Indeed, while it is impossible to never get on any blacklist (unless you are not sending email), we have very rarely been blocked; in theses cases, we have quickly re-routed email around the blocks to ensure delivery until the block is removed.

(Note that this article applies to our premium email hosting services, and not to our separate High Volume outbound email services).

How do we stay off of the blacklists?

In order to avoid getting blacklisted, we have to ensure that our users are never sending spam or unsolicited email.  This starts with LuxSci’s very strong acceptable use policy:

Lux Scientiae takes a zero tolerance approach to the sending of Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE) or SPAM over our network. Very simply, this means that customers of Lux Scientiae may not use or permit others to use our network to transact in UCE. Customers of Lux Scientiae may not host, or permit hosting of, sites or information that is advertised by UCE from other networks. Violations of this policy carry severe penalties, including termination of service.

Sending a message, especially an advertisement, to more than five recipients, is by itself spamming unless the individuals have specifically requested to be added to a mailing list on that topic. This includes both commercial advertisements and informational messages sent to recipients via electronic mail (email), as well as off-topic messages posted in Usenet discussion groups where the recipient has not requested or invited the message. Email is a person-to-person medium, not a broadcast medium.

Customers of Lux Scientiae are strictly prohibited from using or permitting others to use UCE or SPAM over our network. As our customers are ultimately responsible for the actions of their end users over the Lux Scientiae network, it is advisable that customers develop a similar, or stricter, policy for their users.

Violation of Lux Scientiae’s SPAM policy will result in severe penalties. Upon notification of an alleged violation of our SPAM policy, Lux Scientiae will initiate an immediate investigation (within 48 hours of notification). During the investigation, Lux Scientiae may restrict customer access to the network to prevent further violations. If a customer is found to be in violation of our SPAM policy, Lux Scientiae may, at its sole discretion, restrict, suspend or terminate customer’s account. Further, Lux Scientiae reserves the right to pursue civil remedies for any costs associated with the investigation of a substantiated policy violation. Lux Scientiae will notify law enforcement officials if the violation is believed to be a criminal offense.

Violation of Lux Scientiae’s SPAM policy should be reported to abuse@luxsci.com

To guarantee compliance, we take these steps:

Impose Automated Limits

• Explicit limits on the maximum number of recipients that can be included in any message.
• Explicit limits on the number of messages that each user can send per day. This is currently 300 messages/day by default; however, it can be increased upon approval and with a small fee.

Use Automated Monitoring Systems

• The number of messages and recipients sent to by each user over the current day and over the last few hours is monitored and alerts are sent to LuxSci Support when any spam-like or bulk-email-like pattern is discerned.
• LuxSci Support can then contact the user and/or take immediate action to stop any actual abuse.

Manual Checks

• Every new account is manually verified by LuxSci sales and support to weed out accounts that could cause problems: i.e. fraudulent accounts and accounts that fit the profile of a spammer.

LuxSci is Adding a New Maximum Recipients Limit

To reinforce the efficiency and the automated monitoring systems and to better prevent any potential abuse before it reaches a significant level, LuxSci is imposing a new explicit limit on the number of recipients that users can send to each day. This will be 3000 recipients/day (or 10 times your maximum number messages per day limit).

By analyzing the email sending patterns of our users over several months, we have seen that a limit of this size is much more than is needed by any user, unless they are sending an email to mailing lists. We do not expect anyone to be impacted by this new limit unless they are attempting to send out bulk mailings.  This new recipient limit will take effect within the next few days.

But What About Sending to Legitimate Mailing Lists?

Many of our clients have a need to send out bulk email messages to their existing client lists.  While sending to legitimate client email lists is not against our acceptable use policy, the more people that do this, the more likely it is that our email servers will be blacklisted.  Why?  Because no matter how legitimate the message is, some people will complain. The higher the mail volume, the more complaints there will be.

The only way to ensure that mailing to legitimate lists does not get our mail servers blocked is to limit or prohibit sending high volume mail from our servers.

Indeed, this has been our policy.  We have referred our clients to other venues for sending bulk email to their clients, such as our partner service: iContact.  In some cases, we have allowed users to send more than the normal limit of messages after a careful assessment of their usage, recipients, and need.  We charge a premium for this allowance.  However, we have never “liked” making these exceptions as they always carry some increased risk of blacklisting.  We always like to err on the side of not getting blacklisted vs. making a few extra dollars.

New “LuxSci Mailing List” Service Coming Soon

In the next few weeks, LuxSci will launch a new service explicitly for sending mass mailings to legitimate mailing lists.  To accommodate our existing customers who have this need and to respond to the growing interest in sending bulk email, LuxSci will be adding this service for users to send to a certain number of recipients/month.  The price will be a function of the number of recipients/month allowed and all of the sending will be done through special LuxSci SMTP servers dedicated to this purpose.

In this way, we will be able to provide a service that our clients need in a way that will not impact their regular business email on our premium shared servers.  By assigning dedicated servers for bulk mailings, we limit the risk to our premium business email customers of being blacklisted.  We view this policy change as a cost effective way to offer a service that is frequently requested without sacrificing our high standards.

This is released. See: High Volume Outbound Email Service.

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