January 2004
Happy New Year!
IN THIS MONTH'S ISSUE:
- Adhost Improves Domain Name Services (DNS)
- New Adhost Site
- Can-Spam Act Passes
- 2003 Year in Review
- Referral Bonus
Adhost Improves Domain Name Services (DNS)
Adhost has now updated our name servers to use software that is more efficient, as well as more secure. In addition, one of the new servers is located at an entirely different physical location to give additional redundancy.
This is a technical change and should not affect your use of your domain name in any way. There will be no "downtime" or other disruption; this is simply a service upgrade.
To facilitate this change, we have activated two new machines, ns.adhost.com at 216.211.128.11, and ns0.adhost.com at 66.119.192.10. New domains names which are registered to be controlled by Adhost should now list these two servers as the "Domain Servers" for the new domain name. If you are registering a domain yourself, you should no longer use the old NS1.ADHOST.COM and NS2.ADHOST.COM name servers. Instead, please use these;
| NS.ADHOST.COM | 216.211.128.11 |
| NS0.ADHOST.COM | 66.119.192.10 |
In the very near future, we will be asking the major domain registrars to convert any domains that still have the old server names, to the new ones. Again, this should not affect your web sites, email, or other domain based services in any way, since we will maintain the old servers until we are sure they are no longer needed. In fact, there will continue to be an "ns1.adhost.com" and "ns2.adhost.com" for the foreseeable future, and they will continue to resolve your domain names as they do now.
Should you have any questions about these changes, address your email to webmaster@adhost.com.
As you may have already noticed, the Adhost Web site has been recently revamped by our design team. We are very excited to announce the launch of our new site and hope you enjoy the fresh look and feel. As an existing Adhost customer, we realize that you use our site primarily for things like logging into your WebMail or control panel, and to search for support issues. If there is something we can help you find, please do not hesitate to call us at 206-404-9500 or email support@adhost.com. We’re here to help you 24/7 as always.
We will continue making improvements to the Adhost Web site and would appreciate any feedback you have to offer. Simply email us at feedback@adhost.com with your comments. Thank you.
Last month President Bush signed a bill into law establishing federal rules for commercial email and penalties for unsolicited mass spamming.
Called the CAN-SPAM Act, the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 came into effect on January 1, 2004. The law prohibits the use of deceptive subject lines and false header information in bulk commercial email and requires unsolicited messages to include opt-out instructions. Penalties for violations include fines of up to $250 per email, up to a total of $6 million.
The CAN-SPAM Act requires commercial emails to be labeled as such, although no standard has yet been established. In addition, promotional emails must now include the company’s physical address.
Critics of the bill say that it will not substantially affect the amount of SPAM we receive daily, because many bulk emailers are outside of the U.S. and therefore are beyond the jurisdiction of the CAN-SPAM Act. Other critics claim that the bill has in effect legalized SPAM as long as the bulk emailers play by the new rules.
The bottom line is this new legislation affects all commercial emailers, even the legitimate ones. If the only promotional email you send out is your company’s newsletter it appears that you must comply with the new legislation. The CAN-SPAM Act necessitates careful compilation and maintenance of your unsubscribe lists to ensure you never again email someone who has opted-out. This can get especially tricky if you rent third-party lists for your email promotions.
Keep in mind that this new anti-spam legislation does not necessarily overrule existing state laws. Check out http://www.spamlaws.com if you need a refresher course on your own state laws.
See the links below for additional information on the CAN-SPAM Act and its implications on permission-based email:
- http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877.html
- http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2003/0,4814,88306,00.html
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4437-2003Dec16?language=printer
- http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2555
It’s that time of year again when we reflect on the multitude of news-worthy (and not-so-news-worthy) happenings of the past year. Check out the following link to see a variety of lists including the top internet search terms of 2003, top news stories, and other year-end compilations such as most popular books, movies, and personalities.
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