Anti-spam Policy

tinyAlbert and its partners (those who make the tinyAlbert products available to their customers), only support lawful, consent-based email marketing practices. Unsolicited commercial email (UCE) may not contain an option to unsubscribe or have been sent with the consent of the recipient. UCE is the opposite of closed-loop authenticated email: those that are requested, anticipated, personal and relevant. UCE may violate anti-spam laws, and using tinyAlbert to send UCE is not permitted.

Encouraging the Creation of Closed-Loop Authenticated Distribution Lists

Closed-Loop Authentication List Building – tinyAlbert products enable clients to put an ‘opt-in’ form on their website. This feature collects and stores email addresses of permission-based recipients. All tinyAlbert products use closed-loop authentication: an email address is not added to the recipient list until a reply to a confirmation email is received. This process is implemented completely by the software

Contact List Abuse Prevention – Our contact list hygiene system uses sophisticated algorithms to assess the probability that a list does not use closed-loop authentication. Any list that fails in the hygiene system is locked and reviewed by tinyAlbert.

tinyAlbert technology automatically screens email campaigns for indicators of potential problems such as campaign size, billing plan selected, IP address of user, time between account creation and campaign scheduling, multiple credit card refusals, and user profile information (i.e.: email address used, and specific words used in the subject or content of the campaign). Any email campaign that surpasses a threshold is held until the postmaster reviews and clears it.

To protect tinyAlbert’s reputation, and that of its clients, tinyAlbert offers to help new tinyAlbert customers upload their first large email distribution list (please note tinyAlbert does not allow customers to upload lists purchased from third parties). This allows tinyAlbert to view the contents of an email distribution list, with the customer’s permission. In addition, tinyAlbert helps first time tinyAlbert customers run a sample email campaign to a few select recipients from their list before sending to the rest.

As customers use tinyAlbert’s systems, the number of complaints they receive is tracked by an internal reputation system. Customers with a low number of complaints are not subject to the early warning monitoring or list upload restrictions. Larger lists are uploaded not by the customer, but by tinyAlbert upon the customer’s instruction, and are subject to manual scrutiny.

Software Control Tools

tinyAlbert provides its tinyAlbert customers with certain tools to assist in compliance with anti-spam laws like Canada’s anti-spam legislation (CASL) and the United States of America’s CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. For example, tinyAlbert Products independently adds an unsubscribe option to each email sent. Unsubscribes can be requested either via a link in each email, or by replying to the email with “unsubscribe” in the subject line.

This option cannot be removed by the sender; however, they can choose how it will be phrased. Anyone who unsubscribes will be automatically flagged in the database and their email address will be suppressed from all future mailings. Unsubscribe status can’t be overwritten by list merging. To further protect recipients from email abuse, contacts receiving email sent using the tinyAlbert products will only see their own names in the ‘To’ field. No other recipients’ email addresses are visible.

Email Sending Practices

tinyAlbert honours ISP policies (restrictions on number of connections, size of pipe, speed of sending servers, open relay off, reverse DNS enabled, RFC compliance). Authentication standards, such as sender policy framework (SPF), are used for outgoing email campaigns. tinyAlbert products distinguish between soft and hard bounces. Hard bounces are immediately flagged and suppressed from future mailings.

Dealing with Complaints

When a complaint is received the following process is followed:

• Every complaint that is received is reviewed by tinyAlbert’s postmaster.
• If the email address of the complainant is known, it will be immediately unsubscribed from the relevant customer list.
• If the email address of the complainant is known, they will be notified that their email address has been removed. If the complaint came via an ISP, they too will be notified of the action taken.
• The postmaster will lock the list, review its source with the customer and may either discuss the complaint are received, or terminate the account entirely.

tinyAlbert’s Privacy Policy provides for the right of tinyAlbert to share the offending user’s name and the fact that there have been complaints with any third party, including other providers of email marketing services. If you have received an unsolicited email from one of tinyAlbert’s customers, please contact [email protected].