Additions to the MAPS NML occur following a nomination from someone who was placed on the mailing list without their permission, and when the owner or manager of the mailing list cannot demonstrate that email addresses on the list were confirmed before they were added to the mailing list.

First and foremost before you nominate a list to the MAPS NML you should review your records to ensure that you have not in fact requested the mailings. Next, send reports of unconfirmed mailing list mail to the list owner or manager. If you do not receive a response, you should then send a report to the owners of the network or networks from which the mailings originate. Make sure you keep copies of these reports, as you will need them as documentation should you have to submit a nomination to the MAPS NML.

If the list or network owner does not respond to your communication, or bounces it, then use some other means of reaching them, like the telephone. If you cannot reach them through their domain name, then try to reach them starting from their IP address.

If you can't find information from whois about their IP address or domain name, then try looking at the higher-level IP addresses and domain names. If you can't find anything at all, trace the route to the net in question and start talking to their upstream providers.

Do not give up until you have exhausted every possible means of contacting the list or network's owner or their providers—these are the people who need to take action in order to prevent you from being kept on or put on another mailing list without your permission.

If you get someone who says the mailing list in question belongs to their downstream customer and they will not take action to help remedy the problem, then you ought to try very hard to explain to them and get them to reconsider or clarify their AUP. There are some good examples of AUPs online that are in use around the net, and which can prove to a disbelieving upstream provider that what may seem a complicated issue is really a simple terms and conditions problem.

If you get through to someone who says that they understand, and will look into the situation, but then they don't take any action, you may need to continue to feed them information, and continue to contact them, until they understand that you take this situation seriously, and want them to do so as well.

Ultimately you may have to give up, but if there is to be any hope of getting people to understand the issues, it begins with you, and your polite, persuasive and well-reasoned explanations. Only if all of your efforts fall on deaf ears, and you find that you are unable to resolve the problem either directly with the list owner, or with their upstreams, then and only then should you send us some mail about the problem.

You should include copies of the mail from the unconfirmed mailing list, a complete record of the steps you took to report the unconfirmed mailing list, and to whom, a complete transcript of your email conversations (or notes if you used a telephone), and any other information or evidence which you may have regarding both the owner or manager of the mailing list, and any network which is owned by or which hosts someone who is responsible for the unconfirmed mailing list. Please note that we need to see the full email headers from all correspondence as well as the unconfirmed mailing list mail; without the full headers, we cannot verify the unconfirmed mailing list mail, nor can we verify the IP address being nominated.

At this point you will be ready, and have everything you need to submit a nomination to nml@mail-abuse.com. Start your message with a brief, one paragraph narrative, such as:

"I am nominating a site for listing on the MAPS NML. I received the enclosed mailing, for which I never intentionally requested to receive nor confirmed my permission for same, from an unconfirmed mailing list. I reported it, and they did not respond to my report. I then called them on the telephone, and they said"

Then attach copies of the unconfirmed mailing list mail you received, your report, and any response (or bounceback message) you received. Be sure to include full headers.

Once MAPS receives an actionable nomination for the MAPS NML we will begin the process to investigate and possibly add them to the list. Nominations must include evidence that the mailing list in question is not fully confirmed, and that the mailing list includes recipients who have not explicitly granted their permission to have their email addresses added to the list. We will contact the list owner or manager as well as the ISP, NSP, or upstream provider, and request that they provide us with documentation that they verify email addresses prior to adding them to their mailing list. Failure to provide MAPS with proof of confirmation will result in a MAPS NML listing.

If MAPS receives no response from any entity contacted, or if the mailing list owner or manager does not provide MAPS with evidence that they are confirming email addresses prior to adding them to their mailing list, then the IP address for the nominated mailing list will be added to the MAPS NML.

Please note that there many ways to confirm email addresses, and MAPS does not endorse any one particular method; what matters is that all email addresses are fully confirmed before they are added to the mailing list.