Authorize.net does not send spam. Ever. In fact, we deplore spammers; so much so that we reserve the right to terminate merchants who we discover are involved with spam (see our Terms of Use). We are committed to doing everything in our power to minimize the impact of spam on Authorize.net and on the businesses and lives of our merchants. We absolutely do not sell or distribute for our own financial gain any merchant or customer e-mail addresses. There are times, however, when in the course of normal business that we may share or disclose this data. For complete information on situations in which we may share data, please see the "Information Sharing and Disclosure" section of the Authorize.net Privacy Policy.
Authorize.net does send a significant volume of e-mails to our merchant and reseller clients. For example, in 2005 Authorize.net processed over 270,000,000 transactions for our merchants, which means that we sent out over 540,000,000 associated transaction confirmation and receipt e-mails. In addition, we occasionally send out important administrative announcements, newsletters, and promotions to our clients and partners who have opted to receive them. That's a lot of e-mail, so it's easy to see why we sometimes mistakenly get grouped with the bad guys. In order to avoid this, we are constantly working to establish relationships of legitimacy and trust with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who take considerable measures to protect their e-mail customers from spam.
If you are an Authorize.net merchant, you can help us maintain our reputation as a legitimate originator of business-related e-mail. You can do this by managing the types of e-mail communications you receive from Authorize.net in the Merchant Interface. In the Manage Contacts setting under the Account menu, you can opt in or out of receiving the following e-mail types for each individual who is listed as a contact for your Authorize.net Payment Gateway account:
- Administrative Announcements
- Technical Notes
- New Products and Promotions
- Newsletters
Please be sure to maintain a valid e-mail address for each of your account contacts in the Merchant Interface as well as for automated e-mail receipts. Incorrect e-mail addresses generate "bounced" emails, which are one of the criteria used by ISPs to identify spammers, and can lead to Authorize.net e-mail not reaching its intended recipients. If you are an Authorize.net merchant, and do not want to receive receipt e-mails, you can help us avoid "bounced e-mails" by changing your receipt e-mail address to blackhole@authorize.net.
You can also help to assure that you receive all correspondences from Authorize.net by adding the Authorize.net domain ("@authorize.net") to your e-mail "white list". To do this in Microsoft Outlook, go to Actions > Junk E-mail > Junk E-mail Options > Safe Senders and add "authorize.net" to your safe senders list. If you are using a client other than Microsoft Outlook, please refer to the help files for that particular e-mail client to see if they offer this service.
Finally, here are some simple steps you can take to avoid receiving spam:
- Try not to display your e-mail address in public.
- Never respond to a spam message. This includes attempting to opt-out of unsolicited messages.
- Review the privacy policy of any company that requests your e-mail address.
- Use an e-mail or spam filter.
Additional information on how to identify and prevent spam can be found at the Federal Trade Commissions "spam for Consumers" website.
If you have any questions or concerns about the Authorize.net Spam Policy or if you receive spam which appears to have originated from Authorize.net (it was likely "spoofed"), please do not hesitate to contact us at phishing@authorize.net.