I run an affiliate-type website. Against our policy one of my affiliates unknowingly hired a spammer to send an email campaign.

The campaign was sent from what looked like a network of "zombie" computers (probably virus/trojan infected) using a variety of bogus "From:" addresses and IPs.

One of the emails went to a "honey-pot" email address (used to catch spammers). The owner of the email address saw my affiliate website mentioned in the email (it was not the "From:" address and was certainly not sent from my server, but just directed people to my website) and complained to my ISP and my domain registrar.

Once I found out what had happened, I quickly spoke with the affiliate and sent out a message to all affiliates prohibiting the use of unapproved email campaigns.

I have a good relationship with my ISP and was able to explain what happened and what steps we took to avoid the problem in the future. My ISP was cool - no problems since.

My domain registrar however (starts with a "G" ends with a "y") threatened to TAKE AWAY my domain name unless I paid them $200 to "clean up" this "spam issue". Or I could pay them $75 and they would ALLOW ME to transfer my domain to another registrar.

I tried to explain to them what happened but they didn't care how it happened only that there was a complaint about my website and I had to PAY to have it "cleaned up".

Here's the problem: I had/have NO CONTROL over who sends emails in any form with my domain name in them. If a competitor decided to discredit me they could easily start sending spam both with a "From:" address showing my domain as well as a link to my site in the message body.

How do I protect myself from that???

IF G-----y is going to take away my domain or extort money to "clean up" the "issue" and it was not caused by my actions, how can I respond? I can't even protect myself!

That's what worries me more than being accused of sending spam. I am very careful about what is sent from my domain, but there is NO PROTECTION from misrepresentation and the unwillingness of domain registrars like G-----y to even consider the issue from my point of view.

If they are this unwilling to examine the matter with an open mind when it is clearly not my fault, what chance have I when the complaint may come from an email that was sent from my server?

I am not trying to bash G-----y, they were my favorite and often recommended registrar until this incident. But they have sufficiently scared me such that I am quickly moving my domains away from them to a more “enlightened” registrar.