Rackspace: AUP violation sending out bulk emails

Question: I received a email saying: "AUP violation sending out bulk emails". What does this mean? Bulk mail is considered to be mail of identical or similar content sent to 250 or more email addresses.

Example

Attention: Rackspace Account Administrator

We have blocked the following email, which was sent from one of the email accounts for which you are listed as the administrator:

Sender: someone@someone.com
Sample Email Subject: "Email Blast Subject"
2 message(s) sent to 1652 recipient(s)
Date/Time Sent: Wed 8/13 1:07 pm

This email was blocked and not delivered in compliance with the bulk mail restrictions as outlined in our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).

In order to help ensure prompt and successful email delivery without it being throttled or flagged as spam, we do not allow bulk mail to be sent from our mail servers and we do not support the automated sending of email (eg. web forms or transactional receipts).

We consider bulk mail to be mail of identical or similar content sent to 250 or more addresses external to the Rackspace network. This also includes the sending of the same or similar message more than 250 times to a single external email address (eg. a monitoring alert system).  Breaking up mass mailings and sending them in smaller batches to intentionally avoid this restriction is also a violation of the AUP.

You can learn more about our AUP here:

https://www.rackspace.com/information/legal/global/aup

If you need an email marketing solution for legitimate bulk mailings, please contact us.

Repeated bulk mail attempts from the same user may result in the disabling of their mailbox.  Extreme levels of abuse may result in the termination of email hosting services for the entire sending domain in accordance with our Acceptable Use Policy ( http://www.rackspace.com/apps/aup ) and Master Services Agreement ( http://www.rackspace.com/email_hosting/tos ).

To remedy this issue, please inform your user that the sending of bulk mail through our regular email hosting service is not permitted regardless of the contents or recipient opt-in status.  If your user is not sending these messages, their account is likely compromised and you should encourage them to choose stronger passwords which contain upper and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters.  If the mailing was automated such as an alert system, web form, or other transactional type mail please note that we do not provide technical support for this use.

If you have any questions at all regarding this notice or if you would like to receive future notifications at a different email address, please reply to this email or contact appsupport@rackspace.com.

Best Regards,
Rackspace Email & Apps AUP Team
appsupport@rackspace.com