I asked for some clarification about the rules about sending email on TotalChoice Hosting and what is considered 'spam' after upgrading to a reseller account and reviewing their Acceptable Use Policy, which is posted at:
http://totalchoicehosting.com/web-hosting-aup.html

Here's a consolidation of information they sent to my queries about rules regarding sending email:

Please see http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus61.shtm
for an indication of some of the rules and regulations about sending email.

and this page for CAN SPAM Act: Requirements for Commercial Emailers
http://www.mimosasystems.com/articles/can-spam-act-requirements-for-commercial-emailers.html

In summary the law:

• bans false or misleading header information.

• prohibits deceptive subject lines.

• requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method - that must work.

• requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender's valid physical postal address

By law, bulk emails can be sent only to people who have agreed to receive emails from you.

I asked for a definition of 'bulk mail' and what is okay and what's not. They answered:

In the very basic, bulk email means nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by e-mail.
In order to send such (bulk) emails you need to ensure that the email owners have agreed to receive such emails from you as a first step.

There are limits to how much email a domain can send at a time. If you open a ticket at the help desk on the TotalChoice website, they will explain the limits. They don't publish them on the TCH website, because they don't want to tell spammers what the limits are.

If you are have a TotalChoice Hosting reseller account and a domain hosted by you breaks the anti-spam rules, your reseller account may be suspended.

Forwarding email to someone with an AOL/AIM, Comcast, Hotmail, MSN, or Yahoo! email address is not allowed.

This is to prevent TotalChoice Hosting from being blacklisted by those internet service provider companies. Unfortunately, in the past there were problems with folks who had TCH domains sending spam, and TCH had to create this rule to keep domains they host from  being permanently unable to send mail to those companies.

So you cannot set up an alias address in the Control Panel to automatically forward mail to another address or addresses from those companies.

It is also not okay to set a regular email address associated with a domain on TCH to automatically forward all incoming email to an email address on those companies.

In other words, any automatic forwarding that is not screened first by a human being who specifically selects email (that is not spam) to forward to someone they know is not allowed.

Using mailing lists (listservs) such as Phplist and Mailman are not forwards, so would not fall under the same TotalChoice policy. But listservs must have a way for subscribers to confirm that they want to be on the listserv -- and a clear, effective way for someone to unsubscribe - in other words an opt-out method that must work - as mentioned above.

If there are policy changes for TotalChoice Hosting that means it will also change for us as a reseller.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Gabi Clayton

(Updated on12/14/09.)