Legal Terms and Conditions of Use

Last updated: September 2019

Please read this page carefully. By using this website, you agree to be bound by the terms and conditions stated here. Therefore, if you cannot accept these terms and conditions, please do not use the website. CIS may revise these terms and conditions at any time by updating this posting. Therefore, you should visit this page periodically to see the updated terms and conditions because they are binding on you.

 

1. Use of Site Material

The contents of this website are protected against unauthorized use in the Nigeria and other countries by copyright and other intellectual property laws. CIS authorizes you to view and download the materials (logo, names and trademarks) on this website solely for your personal, non-commercial use. You must retain all copyright and other proprietary notices contained in the original material on any copy you make of the site material. You may not sell or modify our site material or reproduce, display, publicly perform, distribute, or otherwise use the material in any way for any public or commercial purpose. If you violate any of these terms, your permission to use the site material automatically terminates and you must immediately destroy any copies you have made of the material. CIS reserves all other rights it may have at law or in equity.

 

1. User Generated Content
   • User Content. We offer you the opportunity to comment on and engage in discussions regarding articles, companies and various topics. Any content, information, graphics, audio, images, and links you submit as part of creating your profile or in connection with any of the foregoing activities is referred to as “User Content” in this Agreement and is subject to various terms and conditions as set forth below.

 

1. • Other Users and User Content. You understand and agree that User Content includes information, views, opinions, and recommendations of many individuals and organizations and is designed to help you gather the information you need to help you make your own decisions. We do not endorse any recommendation or opinion made by any user. We do not routinely screen, edit, or review User Content. However, we reserve the right to monitor or remove any User Content from the website at any time without notice. You should also be aware that other users may use our website for personal gain. As a result, please approach messages with appropriate scepticism. User Content may be misleading, deceptive, or in error.

 

1. • Rights and Representations by You. If you upload, post, or submit any User Content on our website, you represent to us that you have all the necessary legal rights to upload, post, or submit such User Content and it will not violate any law or the rights of any person. You agree that upon uploading, posting, or submitting information on the website, you grant CIS, and our respective affiliates and successors a non-exclusive, transferable, worldwide, fully paid-up, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use, distribute, publicly perform, display, reproduce, and create derivative works from your User Content in any and all media, in any manner, in whole or part, without any duty to compensate you. You also grant us the right to authorize the use of User Content, or any portion thereof to other users in accordance with the terms and conditions of this Agreement, including the rights to feature your User Content specifically on the website and to allow users to request access to your User Content, such as for example through an RSS Feed.

 

1. • We may also remove any User Content for any reason and without notice to you. This includes all materials related to your use of our website or membership, including email accounts, postings, profiles, or other personalized information you have created while on our website.

 

1. Use of Links and Logos

You do not need to request permission to create a text link from your website to the CIS website. However, the CIS logo may not be used without a written agreement. Please send all requests to info@cisinigeria.org. CIS reserves the right to request the removal of any link.

 

1. Liability
   CIS makes no representations about the accuracy, reliability, completeness, or timeliness of the material on this website or about the results to be obtained from using the website. You use the website and its material at your own risk. Changes are periodically made to the website and may be made at any time.

 

This website and its material are provided on an “as is” basis without any warranties of any kind. To the fullest extent permitted by law, CIS hereby expressly disclaims all warranties, including the warranty of merchantability, non-infringement of third-party rights, and the warranty of fitness for particular purpose. In no event shall CIS be liable for any damages whatsoever resulting from the use or inability to use material on this website or sites linked to this website, whether based on warranty, contract, tort, or any other legal theory, and whether or not CIS is advised of the possibility of such damages.

 

By using this website, you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless CIS, its officers, directors, employees, and agents from and against any and all losses, claims, damages, costs, and expenses (including reasonable legal and accounting fees) that CIS may become obligated to pay arising or resulting from your use of the site material or your breach of these terms and conditions.

 

1. Access from outside the Nigeria (Boundary Restrictions)

The programs and services offered by CIS, including those made available on our website, are subject to Nigerian export control and sanctions laws and regulations. By accessing any portion of the CIS website, registering for a CIS program, or purchasing any goods or services offered by CIS, you acknowledge and agree to abide by Nigeria export control and sanctions laws and regulations and, specifically, to refrain from purchasing, accessing, extracting, or transferring any information or products contrary to Nigerian export control and sanctions laws. Failure to abide by these requirements will result in the blocking of access to your user-created CIS account. Furthermore, CIS may not be permitted to refund any fees received from a country or person subject to Nigeria sanctions without specific approval by Nigerian authorities. Find more information on the sanctions issued by visiting the Office of Nigeria Import and Export Promotion Council website.

 

1. Notice and Procedure for Making Claims of Copyright Infringement

All notices of alleged copyright infringement on the CIS website or affiliated sites must be sent to the CIS designated agent:

Head, Legal & Ethical Compliance

Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers

71, Raymond Njoku Street,

South-West, Ikoyi, Lagos, Nigeria

 

To be effective with your request, the notice must be a written communication and must include all of the following:

1. • A physical or electronic signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright or other exclusive intellectual property right
   • Identification of the work claimed to have been infringed
   • Description and location of the material that is claimed to be infringing
   • Contact information for the complaining party such as a mailing address, telephone number or e-mail address
   • A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or by law
   • A statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information is accurate and that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner
2. General
   These terms and conditions are governed by the substantive laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, without respect to its conflict of laws principles. Any action or proceeding arising from or relating to the use of this website shall be brought and maintained only in a state or federal court in Nigeria, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of these courts. If any provision is found to be invalid by any court having competent jurisdiction, the invalidity of such provision shall not affect the validity of the remaining provisions of these terms and conditions, which shall remain in full force and effect. No waiver of any of these terms and conditions shall be deemed a further or continuing waiver of such term or any other term. Except as expressly provided elsewhere in our website, these terms and conditions constitute the entire agreement between you and CIS with respect to the use of our website. Any changes to these terms and conditions must be made in writing, signed by an authorized representative of CIS.

 

 

 

Thank you!

One last step: To confirm that you are the owner of info@cisinigeria.org, please click the confirmation link in the e-mail that we have sent you.

 

Remember: Check your spam filter

If you do not receive the confirmation message within a few minutes, please check your spam or junk e-mail folder and mark the e-mail “not spam”, which should allow future messages to get through.

 

 

Email Blacklist

Improve Email Deliverability

 

Blacklist Removal Processing

Once we correct your email server delivery issues, we will then begin requesting removal from blacklists. Our team will handle the process from start to finish. We work with Gmail, Yahoo!, Outlook and others to expedite the removal of your IP.

 

IP address removal process. Here’s what you’re likely to come across:

 

Self-Service Removal. There are a few blacklists with a self-service removal feature that lets you take your IP address off the list without much trouble. However, you’ll want to make sure you’ve resolved any issues before doing this. If you don’t and your IP address gets listed again, it won’t be easy to get it removed that next time.

 

Time-Based Removal. Most blacklists have a built-in, automatic process that removes lower-level listings (IP addresses that are light offenders) within a week or two. But if the IP address had sent spam more than once or did a high volume, the time period will be longer.

 

Be nice…and see what happens.

When you’re trying to get off a blacklist, you’ll get farther along if you follow the rules and cooperate. If you are truly innocent of any deliberate wrongdoing (or if you made an honest mistake), let them know. The more open and direct you are with a listing database, the simpler it may be to have your IP address taken off the blacklist.

 

Keep this in mind:

 

Their priority is to reduce the spam on their email platform for their customers—their goal isn’t to prevent you from sending emails.

Spam is a serious problem. They don’t blacklist lightly. It’s their way of trying to identify and prevent real problems.

Blacklists are legal because they are designed to prevent fraud or other activity that disrupts normal business. We all need to accept that fact.

If you made a mistake and were blacklisted, don’t make the same mistake again. You likely won’t be forgiven a second time.

 

You might be able to resolve any blacklist issues online. If not, and the blacklisting is troublesome for you, consider contacting the list by phone and try to resolve the issue that way.

 

dnsbl.spfbl.net

 

 

What is a Mail Server?

With the click of a mouse button, you can send an email from one point of the globe to another in a matter of seconds. Most of us take this process for granted, giving little thought to how it actually works. It’s easy to understand how standard snail-mail gets from point A to point B – but how does an email message make its way from a sender to a recipient? The answer to that question revolves around something called a mail server. You can learn more about the role that mail serves play in email delivery by reading on below.

What is a Mail Server?

A mail server is the computerized equivalent of your friendly neighborhood mailman. Every email that is sent passes through a series of mail servers along its way to its intended recipient. Although it may seem like a message is sent instantly – zipping from one PC to another in the blink of an eye – the reality is that a complex series of transfers takes place. Without this series of mail servers, you would only be able to send emails to people whose email address domains matched your own – i.e., you could only send messages from one example.com account to another example.com account.

 

What is a Mail Server?

With the click of a mouse button, you can send an email from one point of the globe to another in a matter of seconds. Most of us take this process for granted, giving little thought to how it actually works. It’s easy to understand how standard snail-mail gets from point A to point B – but how does an email message make its way from a sender to a recipient? The answer to that question revolves around something called a mail server. You can learn more about the role that mail serves play in email delivery by reading on below.

What is a Mail Server?

A mail server is the computerized equivalent of your friendly neighborhood mailman. Every email that is sent passes through a series of mail servers along its way to its intended recipient. Although it may seem like a message is sent instantly – zipping from one PC to another in the blink of an eye – the reality is that a complex series of transfers takes place. Without this series of mail servers, you would only be able to send emails to people whose email address domains matched your own – i.e., you could only send messages from one example.com account to another example.com account.

Types of Mail Servers

Mail servers can be broken down into two main categories: outgoing mail servers and incoming mail servers. Outgoing mail servers are known as SMTP, or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, servers. Incoming mail servers come in two main varieties. POP3, or Post Office Protocol, version 3, servers are best known for storing sent and received messages on PCs’ local hard drives. IMAP, or Internet Message Access Protocol, servers always store copies of messages on servers. Most POP3 servers can store messages on servers, too, which is a lot more convenient.

 

The Process of Sending an Email

Now that you know the basics about incoming and outgoing mail servers, it will be easier to understand the role that they play in the emailing process. The basic steps of this process are outlined below for your convenience.

Step #1: After composing a message and hitting send, your email client – whether it’s Outlook Express or Gmail – connects to your domain’s SMTP server. This server can be named many things; a standard example would be smtp.example.com.

Step #2: Your email client communicates with the SMTP server, giving it your email address, the recipient’s email address, the message body and any attachments.

Step #3: The SMTP server processes the recipient’s email address – especially its domain. If the domain name is the same as the sender’s, the message is routed directly over to the domain’s POP3 or IMAP server – no routing between servers is needed. If the domain is different, though, the SMTP server will have to communicate with the other domain’s server.

Step #4: In order to find the recipient’s server, the sender’s SMTP server has to communicate with the DNS, or Domain Name Server. The DNS takes the recipient’s email domain name and translates it into an IP address. The sender’s SMTP server cannot route an email properly with a domain name alone; an IP address is a unique number that is assigned to every computer that is connected to the Internet. By knowing this information, an outgoing mail server can perform its work more efficiently.

Step #5: Now that the SMTP server has the recipient’s IP address, it can connect to its SMTP server. This isn’t usually done directly, though; instead, the message is routed along a series of unrelated SMTP servers until it arrives at its destination.

Step #6: The recipient’s SMTP server scans the incoming message. If it recognizes the domain and the user name, it forwards the message along to the domain’s POP3 or IMAP server. From there, it is placed in a sendmail queue until the recipient’s email client allows it to be downloaded. At that point, the message can be read by the recipient.

How Email Clients are Handled

Many people use web-based email clients, like Yahoo Mail and Gmail. Those who require a lot more space – especially businesses – often have to invest in their own servers. That means that they also have to have a way of receiving and transmitting emails, which means that they need to set up their own mail servers. To that end, programs like Postfix and Microsoft Exchange are two of the most popular options. Such programs facilitate the preceding process behind the scenes. Those who send and receive messages across those mail servers, of course, generally only see the “send” and “receive” parts of the process.

At the end of the day, a mail server is a computer that helps move files along to their intended destinations. In this case, of course, those files are email messages. As easy as they are to take for granted, it’s smart to have a basic grasp of how mail servers work.

How to Remove an IP Address from a Blacklist

(Go to our Blacklist Check page to find out if your IP address is listed on an anti-spam database. This article explains why that happens and how to get off a blacklist.)

Each blacklist database has its own criteria for flagging IP addresses and compiling its own list of online offenders. Those criteria could include a variety of “listings”: technical, policy, and evidence-based.

• Technical listings occur mostly from mail-server configuration issues, such as missing or incorrect reverse DNS records, missing or incorrect banner greetings, and mail servers operating within a suspicious range of IP addresses.
• Policy listings are based on an operator that does not wish to receive email from certain countries, or ISPs, that have a history of not honoring “unsubscribe” requests.
• Evidence-based listings are those where the operator has received direct (or indirect) evidence that an IP address has been involved in sending unsolicited emails.

If your IP address has been blacklisted and you want to investigate, you’ll need to visit the blacklist’s website and do a lookup on your IP address. Most blacklist databases will provide general listing reasons, but don’t list specific email addresses tied to blacklisted IP addresses.

Getting “unblacklisted.”

If you’re able to find out why you were blacklisted, you can try to get it reversed. (You may want to work with someone who is technically savvy to better help you.)

To start with, take time to ensure your network and mail server are configured correctly and all the details are in order for resolving the issues, as prescribed by the blacklist. For example, they may ask you to correct both forward and reverse DNS records, as well as SMTP banners. In addition, you can do the following:

• Scan all computers on your network for viruses
• See if there are any known and needed “patches” (updates and fixes) for your operating system
• Configure routers more securely
• Establish and enforce stronger passwords

Following the blacklist-removal process.

You want to be removed from any blacklists because databases often share IP addresses that have been listed. If you think you’ve fixed things on your end, go back to the blacklist’s site and follow their instructions for the IP address removal process. Here’s what you’re likely to come across:

• Self-Service Removal. There are a few blacklists with a self-service removal feature that lets you take your IP address off the list without much trouble. However, you’ll want to make sure you’ve resolved any issues before doing this. If you don’t and your IP address gets listed again, it won’t be easy to get it removed that next time.
• Time-Based Removal. Most blacklists have a built-in, automatic process that removes lower-level listings (IP addresses that are light offenders) within a week or two. But if the IP address had sent spam more than once or did a high volume, the time period will be longer.

Be nice…and see what happens.

When you’re trying to get off a blacklist, you’ll get farther along if you follow the rules and cooperate. If you are truly innocent of any deliberate wrongdoing (or if you made an honest mistake), let them know. The more open and direct you are with a listing database, the simpler it may be to have your IP address taken off the blacklist.

Keep this in mind:

1. Their priority is to reduce the spam on their email platform for their customers—their goal isn’t to prevent you from sending emails.
2. Spam is a serious problem. They don’t blacklist lightly. It’s their way of trying to identify and prevent real problems.
3. Blacklists are legal because they are designed to prevent fraud or other activity that disrupts normal business. We all need to accept that fact.
4. If you made a mistake and were blacklisted, don’t make the same mistake again. You likely won’t be forgiven a second time.

You might be able to resolve any blacklist issues online. If not, and the blacklisting is troublesome for you, consider contacting the list by phone and try to resolve the issue that way.