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The Teradata Forum no longer accepts subscriptions from domains which provide free e-mail accounts (ie- Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail,
Rediffmail, etc). We also refuse subscription requests from people who use forwarding services (ie- Pobox, etc). We are currently
limiting subscribers to either corporate, academic, government or pay-for-service domains. This policy was adopted to address a
series of problems (although these problems occur elsewhere, the free e-mail accounts are responsible for the majority of such
traffic):
- Abandoned and over-quota e-mail accounts.
- Erroneously bounced mail or spurious/non-standard errors.
- Member complaints that mail wasn't being received, only to find that their provider was discarding (or losing) the
mail.
- Situations in which the ISP deliberately delays mail from certain domains as a so-called spam fighting technique.
- The Teradata Forum has a policy of banning the promotion, marketing or recommendation of products/services (see the
Rules of Conduct for further details.). If a Poster chooses to ignore the ban,
then they will be billed for their post. To be able to process the bill, it's necessary to identify the Poster's real-world
identity.
- People have been dropped from the Teradata Forum because they violated our Rules of Conduct, some have tried to use
free e-mail providers to sign-up with false or hidden identities.
These problems created a situation that while the Teradata Forum has more than 3,500 members, only a few members (10's)
came from free ISPs and yet they accounted for more than 80% of the administrative work.
It should be noted that some providers supply both free- and pay-for-services. Unless it's clear from the domain whether a
request for membership comes from a pay-for-service versus a free e-mail provider, the sign-up will be rejected.
The Teradata Forum realizes that limiting the membership hurts the nature of the Teradata Forum, but our experience argues that
the prohibition is necessary to enforce the goals, quality and security of the Teradata Forum. We are attempting to find
alternatives, but the resolution is at some point in the future.
For established members, it is possible to move an existing membership to a free e-mail provider. Please contact the
List Administrator to make arrangements.
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