Terms and Conditions
Email is a hostile environment
Filtering spam is like being a firefighter at an arsonists convention. The vast majority of email is spam and the process of separating out the spam from the good email is very difficult. Criminals make a lot of money trying to find new ways to get past filters like ours. People sending good email often lack the expertise to set up their outgoing email servers properly so as to distinguish themselves from spammers and are sometimes inadvertently blocked.
The SMTP protocol was invested in 1981 at a time before there was spam. it was also at a time where very few people had computers. It was a UNIX standard an ran on computers that people accessed from serial terminals. SMTP sent messages directly from the senders computer to the recipient's computer.
as time progressed the personal computer revolution took hold and people started to be able to afford to get their own computers. Then in the 1990s the Internet was opened up to the general public and people started using email, all based on the 1981 standards. New protocols like POP and IMAP allowed users to transfer the email in the server accounts to their personal computers but server to server communication still uses SMTP.
It is somewhat amazing that the SMTP protocol designed in 1981 still works today on the scale that is it being used. If not for spam and other criminal activity there would be nothing wrong with SMTP. But the standard that we all use has some real shortcomings when it comes to determining what is legitimate email and what is a scam. If it were to have been written today I'm sure there would have been some changes. However this is the reality we live in and what we are stuck with.
In the meantime, due to the explosion of the Internet, the human race has evolved to depend on email and we are all directly or indirectly dependent on having this messaging system working reliably. Yet this very important system runs without any central control and is supported by the consensus of a ragtag group of computer geeks across the world and San Francisco hippies. It's like a hobby that has evolved into a utility.
Where ever there is new technology there are those who would exploit it. And email has been a real opportunity for the criminal element to take advantage of. The Internet is a wonderful thing in that it connects people across the world in a giant communications network allowing humanity to function as one giant society. However it also allows gangsters to trick inexperienced people into giving up their passwords to their bank account or their credit card numbers. Computers are readily available in most of the world and everyone has the opportunity to exploit or be exploited. It is a constant arms race to keep the bad guys from ripping off the general public.
At the same time the computer hardware continues to become faster and more reliable and because of the power of these systems people like us have been able to create systems that do an amazing amount of work processing millions of emails a day from computers assembled out of off the shelf parts running operating systems and software developed by the open source community none of which has a central infrastructure. Yet as reliable as computers are, computers do fail or are hacked into, making the delivery of email an imperfect art.
This is the environment that exists today. The reason that we are writing this is to explain the environment that email exists in so that you can understand why it is impossible to guarantee that all good email will be delivered with high reliability. There may be an important email that you really need that for some reason gets lost. It doesn't happen a lot but it does happen and it happens to everyone. That is the way it is and it is important that you the customer understand this because if you have expectations of perfection you will be waken up by the reality of the situation.
This is especially true in the spam filtering business. Since over 90% of email is spam, filtering spam is like trying to be safe in a high crime neighborhood. You do what you can and that's all you can do. So the purpose of this rant is not only to educate you as the customer, but to lower expectation as to any type of guarantee or warranty you might expect from us in case you lose an email that is important. In order to be our customer, you have to accept that email and especially spam filtered email, is not 100% reliable and therefore we can not warrant that all your good email will be delivered. If you have these expectations, our service is not the right service for you.
Agreeing to the following conditions
By using our service you agree to all of the following conditions. If you do not accept these conditions then don't sign up for our service. These are our terms and conditions and you are accepting them when you decide to use our service. These conditions apply to trial subscriptions as well.
Month to Month or Year to Year contracts - termination
Service is sold on a month to month or year to year period depending on how you choose to pay. Customers can leave at any time. If the customer chooses to leave any money paid ahead (partial month or partial year) is forfeited. We also reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. In particular, if something should happen relating to a domain, whether intentional or not, that disrupts our spam filtering service we have the right to take any necessary steps to protect the integrity of our service.
Governing Law
The venue and Jurisdiction of this agreement is in Santa Clara County California.
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