Report Abuse

What do we consider Abuse:

1. Phishing: The use of counterfeit Web pages that are designed to trick recipients into divulging sensitive data such as usernames, passwords, or financial data;
2. Distribution of Child Pornography
3. Other Inappropriate Content
4. Distribution of sensitive personal financial information such as Credit Cards and soicial security numbers
5. Distribution of Malware
6. Spam (See Spam tab above)
7. Trademark/Copyright (Handled Here)

GKG deals with abuse reports in these situations:

1. The content is physically hosted on our network, or
2. The domain is with GKG, the content is hosted anywhere, and the nature of the abuse is malicious in nature which can potentially affect the stability of private and public networks. Examples of these types of situations is the distribution of malware and phishing sites, or
3. The domain is with GKG, the content is hosted anywhere, and the nature of the abuse is inflicting obvious personal harm. Examples of this are not limited to the distribution of child pornography and sites that distribute sensitive personal financial information such as credit cards or social security numbers, or
4. Any site that is performing obviously illegal activities.
5. For any content that is NOT obviously illegal to us, we will refer you to the local authorities or to your own attorney to work within the legal system to make that determination.

This is our process:

1. We monitor our abuse queue during business hours and review each report within 2 business hours.
2. Within those 2 business hours we will:
• Determine the nature of the alleged abuse,
• Determine whether or not we consider it abuse,
• Determine whether or not the entity causing the abuse is our customer,
• Determine the service the customer has with us,
• Determine whether or not the service is in breach of our services agreement
• Determine whether or not the action we are being asked to take is one available to us under our services agreement and our agreements with the registries and ICANN, and
• We take the appropriate action.
3. For any abuse reports where the abuse is not obviously illegal, obviously malicious nor in any other obvious way damaging someone, we will handle the report as part of our routine trouble ticket process.

GKG Believes that SPAM hurts e-commerce and the Internet community. GKG does the following as part of our anti-SPAM commitment.

• GKG clearly states our anti-spam philosophy and how we process all spam complaints in this Spam Policy, our Domain Registration Agreement and our Acceptable Use Policy.
• As an ICANN accredited registrar, GKG is required to provide contact information (including email addresses) for all of our domain holders. Traditionally, this requirement enabled many spammers to maintain an ever-growing list of valid email addresses. This resulted in an effort by domain holders to provide false contact information to Registrars. In an attempt to remove the spammer's edge (while adhering to our accreditation agreements), GKG allows all domain holders to decide not to show their real email address in our whois database. Instead, an email alias is provided in the whois database. This email alias accepts mail, filters the mail for spam (discarding all mail determined to be spam) and delivers all mail determined to be non-spam.
• GKG is required to accept and investigate all reports of inaccurate information of domain contacts as represented in our WHOIS database. In order to prevent flagrantly inaccurate WHOIS information, GKG utilizes custom filters that flag potentially inaccurate information for review.
• In an attempt to prevent common spammer behavior, GKG does not provide our domain registration customers a way to delete domain registrations. This behavior allows spammers to delete a domain before action is taken against them and reregister the domain at a new Registrar.
• Port 25 is forced to GKG's local SMTP mail server for all dial up Internet access customers. This requirement allows GKG to monitor mail closely for potential spamming behavior.
• Furthermore, GKG provides a similar filtering service to all parking, hosting and Internet access customers. All mail received by one of these customers has been compared to a list of known spammers and filtered before delivery. Any email determined to be spam is marked by inserting *****SPAM***** into the message subject. This allows the customer to create a rule that automatically handles these emails.

While GKG's policies and services are important steps to combating spam, they are not perfect. However, GKG continues its anti-spam commitment. Comments or suggestions on how to improve our campaign are gladly accepted at support@gkg.net.

GKG.NET Spam Policy

As a leading e-services company, GKG understands and accepts its responsibility to help prevent spam. Spam is defined in part as the mass electronic distribution of unsolicited e-mail to individual e-mail accounts, aliases, or mailing lists and archives.

As GKG offers many diverse services that are affected by spam, this document is intended to:

1. Clearly state GKG's important commitment to preventing spam, where possible;
2. Clearly state the process by which GKG will accept spam reports; and
3. Clearly state the process by which GKG will process and resolve spam reports.

GKG's Anti-Spam Commitment

GKG believes spam is hurtful to online commerce and should be controlled by reasonable parties. GKG will take all reasonable steps to accept and respond to all reasonable and credible reports of spam originating from our network or initiated by a GKG customer outside of our network. AT NO TIME DOES GKG PARTICIPATE IN SPAMMING BEHAVIOR. ALL EMAILS ORIGINATING FROM GKG ARE SENT IN ACCORDANCE TO OUR STATED POLICIES AND HAVE BEEN REQUESTED OR ARE PART OF NORMAL AND ACCEPTED BUSINESS PRACTICES.

GKG believes that all e-services companies, including ISP's, hosting companies and Registrars share responsibility for preventing spam. Due to this shared responsibility, GKG urges that domain registrants and host companies and ISP's be included in any initial spam report. However, GKG is cognizant that many companies are not yet taking this shared responsibility seriously. Therefore, GKG designed our Domain Registration Agreement to give GKG the added authority to deal with spam originating from our domain holders within this policy.

Reporting and Processing Spam Complaints

All spam reports should be filed at http://www.gkg.net/spam/ by clicking on the "Report" tab (irrespective of the GKG service that the potential spammer uses). This site collects all REQUIRED information and assigns a request number to the reporter. All requested information is required and AN INCOMPLETE SPAM COMPLAINT WILL NOT BE PROCESSED. The following information is REQUIRED:

1. The reporter's name;
2. The reporter's contact information *;
3. A copy of the spam being reported (with ALL headers), and
4. Any Additional documentation available (regarding the reported spam, inaccurate whois information, etc.)

*Contact information will be kept confidential unless the reporter provides express consent for release (this policy identifies all potential reasons for release). The reporter's contact information will be verified before the report is processed, if the information is inaccurate, the report will NOT be processed.

All reports originating in any other fashion will be considered spam; and therefore, will be subject to this policy. Furthermore, these reports may be disregarded and/or the reporters blocked from GKG's network in cases of abuse.

The report will be assigned a ticket ID and will be investigated fully. The reporter will receive an email detailing the final resolution of the investigation. GKG will process all spam complaints using the following steps:

1. The reporter's contact information will be verified. The reporter will be contacted and the spam investigation process will be explained.
2. GKG will verify what GKG service the potential spammer is using.
   1. If the potential spammer is a Internet access customer:
      1. GKG will verify the report's accuracy by reviewing the appropriate mail log files for that customer.
      2. If the customer is determined to be using the account in order to distribute spam, GKG will suspend the account and contact the account holder.
      3. The account will only be reinstated with a signed and notarized statement ensuring that spam activity will no longer occur.
      4. Further reports will result in permanent exclusion from any GKG service.
   2. If the potential spammer is a hosting customer (including domain registration customers using our parking services and co-location customers):
      1. GKG will verify the report's accuracy by reviewing the appropriate mail log files for that customer.
      2. The account will only be reinstated with a signed and notarized statement ensuring that spam activity will no longer occur.
      3. Further reports will result in permanent exclusion from any GKG service.
   3. If the potential spammer is a domain registration customer:
      1. As GKG may not provide mail service for some domain registration customers, GKG cannot independently verify the spam report; therefore, all domain contacts and the host company will be contacted and informed of a spam complaint. This contact will REQUIRE a quick response in order to keep the domain registration active.
      2. A permanent record of the complaint will be maintained. After GKG has appropriately verified that spamming activity is occurring, the domain registration will be placed on hold; therefore, removing the domain from the zone files (and consequently removes any web presence from the Internet and any mail service for that domain).
      3. If a domain registration is found to be in breach of GKG's Domain Registration Agreement, GKG will place the domain on HOLD and change the username to "spammer" (and therefore remove the domain from the zone files) until such time as the domain expires, the registration is revoked or the domain holder repairs the breach. At no time is the domain deleted for spamming - this is to prevent the spammer from reregistering the domain with another Registrar.

Disputing A Spam Complaint/Decision

All spam complaint decisions will be based on the information provided by the complainant. While GKG does not accept any liability regarding false complaints, GKG will attempt to verify all complaints before action is taken.

If you dispute a spam complaint or decision, you must complete the following steps:

1. Notify GKG of the dispute by responding to the initial spam complaint.
2. Provide any documentation used to develop the dispute.

GKG may, at our sole discretion, require that you participate in the spam investigation. Furthermore, refusal to participate at the requested level will be considered when making a final decision and can be used as the sole basis for a decision against you.

Inaccurate WHOIS Information

GKG is required to accept and investigate all reports of inaccurate information of domain contacts as represented in our WHOIS database. In order to prevent flagrantly inaccurate WHOIS information, GKG utilizes custom filters that flag potentially inaccurate information for review. GKG's WHOIS database can be found at www.gkg.net/whois. All reports of inaccurate information should be directed to http://www.gkg.net/whois_form/whois_form.html. Once received, GKG will process the reports as follows:

1. The report MUST be received via the appropriate form along with any documentation showing that the contact information is inaccurate.
2. GKG will independently verify that the contact information is inaccurate and attempt to contact the current domain holder. The current domain holder will be given 72 hours to contact GKG and update the inaccurate contact information. If the inaccurate contact information is not updated, the domain will be placed on HOLD (removing the domain from the zone files and preventing any changes).
3. The HOLD will be removed only with appropriate proof of accurate contact information. Appropriate proof will consist of government issued identification or other indisputable documentation.

Internet access:

1. The reporter's contact information will be verified. The reporter will be contacted and the spam investigation process will be explained.
2. GKG will verify what GKG service the potential spammer is using.
3. If the potential spammer is a Internet access customer:
   1. GKG will verify the report's accuracy by reviewing the appropriate mail log files for that customer.
   2. If the customer is determined to be using the account in order to distribute spam, GKG will suspend the account and contact the account holder.
   3. The account will only be reinstated with a signed and notarized statement ensuring that spam activity will no longer occur.
   4. Further reports will result in permanent exclusion from any GKG service.

Hosting:

1. The reporter's contact information will be verified. The reporter will be contacted and the spam investigation process will be explained.
2. GKG will verify what GKG service the potential spammer is using.
3. If the potential spammer is a hosting customer (including domain registration customers using our parking services and co-location customers):
   1. GKG will verify the report's accuracy by reviewing the appropriate mail log files for that customer.
   2. If the customer is determined to be using the account in order to distribute spam, GKG will suspend the account and contact the account holder.
   3. The account will only be reinstated with a signed and notarized statement ensuring t hat spam activity will no longer occur.
   4. Further reports will result in permanent exclusion from any GKG service.

Domain Registration:

1. The reporter's contact information will be verified. The reporter will be contacted and the spam investigation process will be explained.
2. GKG will verify what GKG service the potential spammer is using.
3. If the potential spammer is a domain registration customer:
   1. As GKG may not provide mail service for some domain registration customers, GKG cannot independently verify the spam report; therefore, all domain contacts and the host company will be contacted and informed of a spam complaint. This contact will REQUIRE a quick response in order to keep the domain registration active.
   2. A permanent record of the complaint will be maintained. After GKG has appropriately verified that spamming activity is occurring, the domain registration will be placed on hold; therefore, removing the domain from the zone files (and consequently removes any web presence from the Internet and any mail service for that domain).
   3. If a domain registration is found to be in breach of GKG's Domain Registration Agreement, GKG will place the domain on HOLD and change the username to "spammer" (and therefore remove the domain from the zone files) until such time as the domain expires, the registration is revoked or the domain holder repairs the breach. At no time is the domain deleted for spamming - this is to prevent the spammer from reregistering the domain with another Registrar.

Abuse Report

Please complete the following required form in order for your abuse report to be processed accordingly. This information is necessary in order to serve our customers in a timely and efficient manner.

Please note, that we reserve the right at our sole discretion to provide an appropriate response to each report.

* All fields must be filled out completely and accurately in order for the report to be valid and acted upon.