I am noticing more and more hosting services listing FINES for clients that spam. These have been on a "Per Letter" of complaint basis. Rates have been as high as $25 per email.

I have strong statements against spam on my site and all clients recieve a very specific email concerning spam when they register. This includes loss of account with NO REFUND if in fact they are found guilty of spamming.

I believe in Responsible Hosting Practices. Our initial move to this hard stance against spam did in fact slow our registrations but we get ZERO complaints on our abuse@ address.

How many host's are taking aggressive action against spam here?

Question is,

How many host's are going to this?

Do you think this is more effective than kicking a client, providing they even stay with you when you attempt to levy the fine.

Do you believe this is an effective deterent?

Do you believe it is just better to kick the offender?

::Oh I Hate Spam::

1) A lot
2) Definitely, it attempts to take away their money
3) I think it would be, but you also have to make the public (ie, places like WHT, SPF, etc) aware about the spammer
4) Nope, you have to make it as hard as you can on them. When you work hard to fight spam, they work even harder to send spam, and sooner or later they'll get tired and give up.

1) I have seen several do this.
2) I think it is very effective for the reason Akash said
3) It can be effective if used with other methods.
4) Depending on how bad they are a combination of both fines and termination works for me.

Andrew

I think that with most spam complaints I have ever seen it was very obvious that their intent was to spam. Granted, the few and far between exploits that have caused general problems to people, but not so often. Setting up strict policies against spam not only will help with deterring potential spammers from signing up, but also in assuring the clients of clients will also take upon such policies. Nothing worse than having to tell an innocent client that unfortunately your IP block has been blacklisted, because of someone spamming.

Well, if the government (U.S.) ever gets a law written properly about spam they are talking about enforcing a $50 penalty per instance. So if someone sends their spam to 50 people and all 50 people complain (proving their case I'm sure), then the spammer would be paying a hefty fine. I like the idea but this has been talked about for a few years and so far, nothing has been done.

I think spam fines are silly. Besides that, fines on host sites in the US are not enforceable.

It also deters people from signing up. Who knows if a host will mistake you for spamming or just wrongly accuse you and want to make money and zap your credit card for extra money. A host may even legimately think you spammed when didn't because someone used a proxy and forged your headers.

deleted -accidentally posted twice