Citizens For A Better America®
(CFABA.ORG)
E-mail Policy
1. Introduction:
The purpose of this policy statement is to clarify our
policies about e-mails we send and receive. This policy applies to all
the websites owned and maintained by
Citizens For A Better America® (CFABA.ORG).
This Policy clarifies the applicability of law and of
other
policies to electronic mail. It also defines new policy and procedures
where existing policies do not specifically address issues particular
to the use of electronic mail.
2. Definitions:
The terms "electronic mail" and "e-mail" are used
interchangeably throughout this Policy.
The terms "Open Letter" means that e-mail and its
content
are not considered private but rather are open for all to see.
The term "Cyberstalking" is an Internet-related term
that’s
used to describe someone who’s stalking, threatening and/or harassing
another person online.
The terms "Citizens For A Better America®" and
"(CFABA.ORG)" and "CFABA.ORG" are used
interchangeably throughout this Policy.
The terms "'Commentary and News Release List'™" and
"e-mail list" are used
interchangeably throughout this Policy.
3. Ownership:
E-mail equipment and messages are the property of
Citizens
For A Better America® (CFABA.ORG). Messages that are created, sent or
received using the organization's e-mail system are the property of
Citizens For A Better America® (CFABA.ORG). Citizens For A Better
America® (CFABA.ORG) reserves the right to access and disclose the
contents of all messages created, sent or received using its e-mail
system(s). Citizens For A Better
America® (CFABA.ORG) may use the submission for any purpose without
restriction or compensation.
4. We do not send SPAM:
4.1 CAN-SPAM Act 2003:
The "CAN-SPAM Act 2003" is the law that
protects the
great citizens of the United States of America from the "Assault of
Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing." Here is the summary of that
act quoted from the government website located at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/bus
pubs/canspam.shtm
"What the Law Requires
Here's a rundown of the law's main provisions:
- It bans false or misleading header
information.
Your email's "From," "To," and routing information – including the
originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and
identify the person who initiated the email.
- It prohibits deceptive subject lines.
The subject line cannot mislead the recipient about the contents or
subject matter of the message.
- It requires that your email give
recipients an
opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or
another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to
ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and
you must honor the requests. You may create a "menu" of choices to
allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must
include the option to end any commercial messages from the sender.
Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to
process
opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your commercial
email. When you receive an opt-out request, the law gives you 10
business days to stop sending email to the requestor's email address.
You cannot help another entity send email to that address, or have
another entity send email on your behalf to that address. Finally, it's
illegal for you to sell or transfer the email addresses of people who
choose not to receive your email, even in the form of a mailing list,
unless you transfer the addresses so another entity can comply with the
law.
- It requires that commercial email be
identified
as an advertisement and include the sender's valid physical postal
address. Your message must contain clear and conspicuous
notice that the message is an advertisement or solicitation and that
the recipient can opt out of receiving more commercial email from you.
It also must include your valid physical postal address."
4.2 More Information About The CAN-SPAM Act 2003:
For more information see their website at http://www.ftc.gov/spam/
For a PDF version of the "CAN-SPAM Act 2003" Click
Here
4.3 We Send Political Not Commercial E-mail:
We all hate "SPAM", but not all e-mail is spam. That
fact
was
taken into consideration when the CAN-SPAM Act 2003 was written.
The e-mail we send to our "Commentary and News Release
List"
™ is political not commercial e-mail and even though the law does
not apply to political e-mail we have always tried to go above and
beyond what the law itself requires for Non-Solicited Commercial
e-mailers. The United States of America is a political place and if you
have an e-mail address associated with the U.S. you can expect to
receive e-mail intended to persuade or influence your political view
point.
As a political organization our e-mails are sent to
inform
and advocate, rather than to
sell anything. This quite the opposite of the purpose of SPAM. Often
when we are accused of spamming, it becomes clear
from the remainder of the e-mail, that the person is not upset because
it is spam but rather that the reader did not like what we had to
say. We ask those who disagree with us or do not like what we have to
say
to just tell us that or better yet follow our easy instructions to be
removed from our list. We are saddened when anyone wants to be removed
form our e-mail list but
we will comply with your request, See section
5.0.
We have two divisions of e-mail we send out. We send
out
what could be called more personal e-mail. This type of e-mail is
usually e-mail which is sent to members and friends as well as vendors.
The other division is e-mail sent to
our "Commentary and News Release List"™. This list is made up of
four main groups. The first group is our members and others who have
requested to be placed on our list. The second group is News
organizations. The third group is candidates and other political
leaders. And the last group is made up of "Interested Parties".
This third group, made up of "Interested Parties" may
sound
less defined but it really is not. We send e-mails to individuals and
organizations we believe have a vested interest in the issue or issues
we are discussing. This could be as large as every voter in the United
States but more often it is much narrower than that.
As an example of a group of "Interested Parties", take
the
issue of the "definition of marriage" which is being voted on in many
states. We consider churches in those states to be an interested party
in this matter. To that extend we target e-mails to pastors and other
Christian leaders in the states with propositions on their ballots. We
always include a method of easy removal from our list, See section
5.0.
4.4 Our Headers and Our Subject Lines are accurate:
The Header is the part of the e-mail that most e-mail
programs
hide from the user unless the user requests to see it. It contains the
routing information, including the originating domain name and email
address. It can also tell you who else the e-mail was sent to.
When we address our e-mail it is sent to one
individual not
a
group and the address we send from is plain to see. In fact it has
gotten harder and harder for legitimate organizations to send e-mails
to their lists.
4.5 Our Donation Request Is Not A
'Subscription Advertisement':
E-mails sent to our "Commentary and News Release
List"™
are sent for free.
The intent of the e-mail we send to our "Commentary
and News
Release List"™ is to inform the receiver about a candidate,
political issue or news item that we believe they would consider
important. We understand that the receiver may agree or disagree with
our view point but we believe that the receiver has interest in the
candidate, issue or news item we are discussing. That is the reason we
send Updates, Open Letters and News Releases to our "Commentary and
News Release List"™. It is also the reason we keep it a free
service.
While we include a request for donations with each of
our
Open
Letters sent to our "Commentary and News Release List"™, that is
not the focus of the e-mail and the request alone does not make it
SPAM. Our donation request is usually found at the end of the e-mail
and is only a request not a demand. We are not seeking paid
subscribers. Remaining on our e-mail list is FREE and is not determined
by if you are a donor or not. You can continue to receive our e-mails
free even if you never contribute a penny.
5. How To Be Removed From Our E-mail List (Opt-out):
5.1 Opt-out
If you are unhappy you received our e-mail and you
would like to "Opt-out" or have us remove your address from our
"Commentary and News Release List" (TM) beginning on Friday, November
5, 2010 the only way for you to "Opt-out" or be removed from our
"Commentary and News Release List" (TM) is to click on the link within
the email you received to unsubscribe. If you use any other method to
"Opt-out", your attempt will fail, your address will not be removed
from our list.
5.2 Still Getting E-mails?:
If you should receive another e-mail from our
"Commentary
and
News Release List"™ after you have asked to be removed this is most
likely because we may have one or more other address, different from
the e-mail address you sent your request for removal from. Many
individuals have more than one e-mail address. If you wish to have
another address removed follow the steps outlined in section
5.1.
6. Our List Are Not For Sale:
Our list(s) are for our organizational use only and we
do
not
sell, loan or distribute it.
Our endorsed candidates do not even get our list(s).
We
e-mail to
our list on the behalf of the candidates we endorse then we list this
in our campaign filings if applicable.
7. Forwarding Our E-mails:
7.1 E-mail Sent As An Open Letter:
All our e-mails sent to our "Commentary and News
Release List" ™ are sent as Open Letters. This means that we do not
consider
them private or personal communication and that they can be forwarded
as long as
they are forwarded in full, with nothing removed or edited and full
credit is given.
7.2 Forwarding Our E-mail Letter:
In fact we strongly encourage you to forward our
e-mails. We
have written them with forwarding in mind. They are text only with no
embedded tracker images, virus or anything else that could harm your
computer
or the computer of the folks you forward it to as many others that send
emails do.
7.3 Addressing Your Forwarded E-mail:
Remember when you forward to place all the address as
"BCC"
rather than "CC" or TO". This will protect your friend's addresses from
being listed openly on the e-mail header.
7.4 I Got A Virus From Your E-mail:
When e-mail leaves our servers it is clean of any
viruses.
We can not say that about e-mail that is forwarded. We never include
attachments or images, so if you receive an e-mail that says it is from
us but it has an attachment, DO NOT OPEN IT. Instead go to our website
and check for our recent e-mails. While we encourage
forwarding we can not be responsible for any damage done by any e-mail
that is forwarded to you.
8. Posting Our E-mails:
We do not allow posting of our e-mails on other
websites.
Posting our e-mails on your website is considered a contribution by
some governmental political ethics commissions such as the Federal
Election Commission (FEC.GOV). It would be far too
difficult to track and calculate this type of donation so we have opted
to not allow posting of our e-mails on any other sites but our own. If
you have an e-mail of ours posted on your website please remove it,
thank you.
We know that others want to post our e-mails so we
have a
solution. Instead we permanently post all the e-mails we send to our
"Commentary and News Release List" ™. Then we include that address
in the original e-mail. You can post a link to our web address instead.
We allow a brief quote (1 to 5 lines) from the item as long as it
includes the link to the full text at our website.
Permanently post means that we keep the page with its
content at the same address it was originally posted to. While we may
update things
like the sidebar, header and footer, the main content will remain the
same. Our goal is that the page will not
be moved or archived for as long as Citizens For A Better America ®
(CFABA.ORG) has any say over it.
9. Policy For E-mails We Receive:
9.1 Introduction:
Below is our Policy regarding e-mails we receive from
individuals and organizations in response to one or more of the Open
Letter(s)s we have sent via e-mail. This policy does not refer to
personal or commercial e-mails. See section
11.0.
E-mail is not a secure system so there should be no
assumption
that your e-mail sent to us is completely private. That said, in the
past we have not stated a clear policy about how we treat the e-mail we
receive. This is a statement of that policy.
9.2 The Kind of E-mail We Receive:
We get a wide spectrum of responses by e-mail each
time we
send out e-mail to our "Commentary and News Release List"™. These range
from requests to be removed to donations. We receive many e-mails that
have commentary about the content of our e-mail or about its subject
matter. Sometimes we receive threats to ourselves or our property see
section 9.7. Sometimes we
receive a request to be removed but it is
followed by a commentary or accusations. In too many cases we receive
e-mails that contain fowl or obscene language. Sometimes it seems the
intent is just to offend us. We also receive e-mails from those who are
glad that we sent our e-mail. While we receive fewer of these than we
do the angry ones we are always glad to hear the encouragement.
We are glad to hear from folks on both sides of an
argument
because open dialogue is a big part of what makes America great. The
problem comes when instead of polite and clean conversation the
dialogue degrades to name calling, bad or fowl language, and sometime
even threats. Under those circumstances the original message of the
sender is lost.
9.3 E-mail We Receive is treated as "Open Letters":
If you decide to write us a comment, even if you have
also asked us to remove you, we will assume that you are seeking
dialogue with us and potentially are attempting to argue the point(s)
of our Open Letter, News Release or Commentary with us. We welcome
those kinds of discussions as long as
the general public is able to participate. To bring about the general
public participation we will consider these comments to be
open rather than private, and we are thereby free to placed those
comments on our web site.
Citizens For A Better America® (CFABA.ORG) does not
receive e-mail or any other submission in confidence or under any
confidential or fiduciary relationship.
9.4 Posting your E-mail On Our Website:
We reserve the right to choose when and if to post
those
comments on our website. In addition to posting those comments we are
also free to include or
not include a response to any of those comments.
Citizens For A Better
America® (CFABA.ORG) may use the submission for any purpose without
restriction or compensation.
We will not post anything that we consider to be
inappropriate
speech or which contains bad or obscene language. We have family
friendly websites and we may at our own discretion place the text
"word(s) removed" in place of terms we feel inappropriate for our
audience.
When we post those comments to our website we may also
include
the name and other identifying information of the sender. We will not
include a clickable e-mail address but will leave off the "@" and the
dot. We do this to prevent e-mail harvesters from picking up the e-mail
address.
Our intent is not to make the e-mail address public
but
instead to use the
information supplied to us by the sender that distinguishes the sender
from other senders. Also, the address maybe the only information that
tells us on whose behalf the writer is speaking. Some writers are
speaking on their own behalf while other are speaking for their
organization or company. This makes the address a critical piece of
information that we feel must be included.
9.5 How To Avoid Getting Your E-mail Address Posted:
If your desire is to have us not need to post your
e-mail
then there are some step you can take. Include the same information
that is in your e-mail address somewhere else in your e-mail. The best
thing to do is to place it in your signature line. If you are writing
as a representative of your organization or company then add the name
of your organization or company in your signature line along with your
title. The reason we post the e-mail address is because it tells the
reader who you are and who you represent.
9.6 I Want My E-mail Treated As Private:
We are a political organization and that requires
transparency that is why we do not treat any e-mail we receive as
private. We do treat some e-mail as less public then others see section
11.0
9.7 Threatening E-mail:
Sending an e-mail that contains a threat to life or
property
is no joke. Politics can bring about a heated discussion but
threatening or harassing someone through email is just as illegal as
doing so in an offline form. So do not do it. We take any Cyberstalking
and any threating e-mail seriously and will report it to the
appropriate law enforcement agencies. We will help those agencies in
anyway possible and will prosecute each violation to the fullest extent
of the law.
If we receive an e-mail that contains a virus or some
other
type of computer attack we will report it to the appropriate
law enforcement agencies. We will help those agencies in anyway
possible and will prosecute the offender to the fullest intent of the
law.
9.8 Attachments:
We do not open e-mail's that contain an attachment
instead
we delete them. If you are asking to be removed and have also included
an attachment we will never see your request for removal. See section
5.0 for how to Opt-out of our e-mail list.
10. Candidate Questionnaires:
See our CQ
FAQ's & Instructions page.
11. Personal or Commercial E-mail:
In addition to the e-mail we send as part of our News
and
Commentary List ™, we also receive and send personal e-mails to
members, friends, vendors and other entities. While e-mail in general
is not confidential we consider this communication to be personal
unless
we have started that it is an "Open Letter". In the cases where we have
made our side of the discussion "OPEN" we consider the senders
communication after that point to be "OPEN" as well. If the sender does
not want their e-mail to be considered "OPEN" then it would be better
if they wrote us using more conventional means such as the U.S. Postal
Service.
12. Conclusion:
We want you to get our e-mails so if you are having
any trouble receiving our e-mails please contact us and we
will try our best to solve the problem. This concludes our
E-mail Policy Statement.
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