Policies:Bulk e-mail

From OCF Help

This is OCF's Policy on Bulk E-Mail As determined by the Site Manager November 28, 2008 and amended February 10, 2009

Bulk Mailings

A message may be considered a bulk mailing if it is a generic announcement-type message intended for a large audience. Such messages may be to announce an event, a group meeting, or to distribute information to group members. While these messages are useful in certain circumstances, they also use a large amount of computational and network resources. Therefore, the use of bulk mailings on the OCF is subject to certain restrictions.

University Policy on Bulk Mailings

The University of California Electronic Communications Policy (section 3.D.7) states that Users of electronic communications services shall not: ... (ii) "spam," that is, exploit electronic communications systems for purposes beyond their intended scope to amplify the widespread distribution of unsolicited electronic messages

OCF Policy on Bulk Mailings

In addition to the University Policy, all OCF users must observe the following:

1. Bulk mailings should only be sent to people who have explicitly elected to receive such mailings
2. Because there is a relatively high rate of turnover for e-mail addresses, it is possible that an e-mail address belonging to someone who legitimately signed up to receive e-mails has been re-assigned to someone else. We recommend that you audit your mailing lists periodically or require your members to re-register on a periodic basis.
3. All bulk mailings should include clear, concise instructions for unsubscribing from the list.
   1. For Mailman lists, the following should be at the end of every mailing:

      To unsubscribe from this list, e-mail YOUR-LIST-NAME-leave@ocf.berkeley.edu 

   2. For Majordomo lists, the following should be at the end of every mailing:

      To unsubscribe from this list, e-mail "unsubscribe YOUR-LIST-NAME" to majordomo@ocf.berkeley.edu 

   3. For manually maintained lists (i.e. using .forward files or procmail), the following should be at the end of every mailing:

      To unsubscribe from this list, e-mail LIST-MODERATOR@ocf.berkeley.edu

4. Any group sending an announcement for an event for which there is an entrance fee or other charge must also comply with the federal CANSPAM Act, which requires any such e-mails to provide a physical mailing address where the sender can be reached and clear instructions by which a recipient may opt-out of receiving any further e-mails.
5. Any unsubscribe requests you receive must be honored and processed promptly. People who have unsubscribed themselves may not be added back to the list without their consent.
6. Any person or group repeatedly not following this policy may have their account disabled at the discretion of the Site Manager.

We encourage all groups who will be using bulk mailings to make use of the OCF's or CalMail's mailing list features because they offer list recipients greater control over whether and how they receive e-mails from your group. The OCF offers both Majordomo and Mailman lists. We generally recommend Mailman for new users because it offers a web interface that you can use to control and moderate your list. Majordomo uses only e-mail commands, and is thus more suited to advanced users and people with experience using Majordomo.