Member Benefits

Benefits of Free Fair Shake Membership

   Bridges to working and networking in today’s electronic world.

This area of the website is exclusively for former felons and has been created to provide access to - and training in - useful technological tools that can build opportunities for a Fair Shake participant.

The Fair Shake Member-Only section includes online tools such as a free email address, a Personal Web Page, data storage area, Personal Resource Directory and several tutorials to learn more about all of the above. Soon you will be able to find the Areas of Study program in there as well.

We recommend you engage in every way possible to demonstrate skills and knowledge you have acquired before, during and after incarceration.

We believe that if you embrace this section of the website you will be able to put your best foot forward to disclose your intentions, organizational skills, pride in your work, and diligence to the course you are now taking. We also believe that by utilizing these tools you can help other folks succeed! Not only will your success story be an inspiration but you can also contribute to the newsletter and the Resource Directory, as well as help us fine-tune our program to make Fair Shake a better system.

Benefits of Being a Fair Shake Member

To be successful you need to communicate well and our email is the fast, inexpensive and waste-free (and ad free!) voice we provide. In the Fair Shake Web Mail you can create messages, read and respond to messages, attach job applications and other documents, and access your address book from any public computer.

Our web mail is most likely an introduction to email for many of our members. Read our tutorial and discover how easy it is to use email as a communication tool, organize your messages and protect your 100 MB account from receiving a lot of junk mail.

There are many other free web mail services available and several offer much larger storage. We suggest that you obtain an email address through another service as well so you have an address to use when you make purchases and/or create other accounts. Reserve your Fair Shake member email for important business and close personal communications.

A user@fairshake.net address shows your commitment to the purpose of Fair Shake - successful reentry - and can be interpreted as such in the eyes of an employer or other business relations. We hope you find Fair Shake Web Mail helpful to support your transition.

Your Personal Web Page is a comfortable environment to disclose the information you would like to share with people you permit to visit. Here you can introduce yourself, list your skills, your education and work history, show your photograph, link to your documents and provide relevant and important information not requested in many job applications.

Some people make hasty and incorrect judgments when they hear you are a former felon. Your Personal Web Page lets others learn about you at their leisure and provides an opportunity to make a personal connection in a non-threatening way.

This Fair Shake benefit is available to those moving in a positive direction. Profanity, nudity, or negative crime references will not be tolerated and will result in membership termination. If material is questionable we will communicate with you, but if something is obvious then access will be denied.

Your page is password protected; you decide who has permission to visit. You can change the password at any time to control the amount people that can view your page or have access to your documents such as your resume, identification, and certificates in education or specific skills. If you are involved in our Areas of Study certification program, your real-time progress can be displayed here as well.

On the Data Management page you can upload documents for storage and review which aspects of your account are taking the most of your allotted space. This is useful for making your documents available on your web page, uploading pictures and storing attachments you may have received in email or wish to upload for safe-keeping. Fair Shake provides you with 100MB of storage space. Between your Fair Shake Email, your Personal Web Page and your Personal Resource Directory, this is a very important place.

As with our other benefits, this area is not to be used for anything unrelated to moving your life forward, uploading anything for criminal activity or pornography. Any of these activities will automatically terminate Fair Shake membership.

The Resource Directory is available to everyone, but when you are signed in to your Fair Shake account you can save resources to your own account, and thus create your own Personal Resource Directory. All the contacts you have saved and searches you have preformed are here for your quick and easy reference. From this page you can review, delete and print. Printing makes these resources available to you while you are away from your Fair Shake account.

Print to include with your application or take to job interviews! They have your name(what else) and the url (address) and password for your Personal Web Page. With this card, potential employers, property managers and others can find out much more about you than can be found on a simple job application.

If only the world had a user’s manual! This area is full of tutorials that will help you understand how to use your newly discovered electronic tools. The tutorials we have written explain using all of the tools we give you within Fair Shake; we also provide links to other tutorials on popular programs that you may access .

Maybe you want to manage your income and expenses, or maybe you want to create an agenda or calendar. There are tutorials here to walk you through creating all kinds of documents using popular programs which may already be installed on the computer you are using.

What’s Shakin' is the  newsletter for Fair Shake members. It contains happenings within Fair Shake, interactive exercises and links to big news. The newsletter will automatically be sent to your Fair Shake Web Mail inbox. 

We encourage members to submit news and/or success stories related to reentry.

The Ownership Manual is a wonderful tool to review little truths and pieces of big ideas to get your brain working before decisions need to be made or when your attitude needs adjusting.   Expanded ideas are available on the website, but also we have a pocket-sized edition available for printing to take everywhere you go and use before job interviews or as a reminder in your pocket to think big before tough situations.

This section is necessarily direct and dry. We need to convey the importance of playing by our rules when you are using our website as well as the consequences of using our tools inappropriately. Since Fair Shake has been created to support your transition with resources, technical tools and interpersonal considerations, we will keep this work on a positive and somewhat professional level. We are here to support ownership, participation and integration into society. We will not supervise, reform or otherwise baby-sit any Fair Shake participants. If you choose to use the site for other than its designated use, the consequences are swift and strong.

Fair Shake was created with you in mind. If some of these tools are not working to your satisfaction, are lacking in some areas, or even if you think they are just great; please tell us!  Your opinion is valuable and you can tell us a great deal about how it works in the real world. Engage in every area to support your own reentry and improve Fair Shake for future members.

Access to a Fair Shake email address is free for 3 years. We request a donation of $10 per year after that, which will go directly toward supporting new users. We will notify you 6 months before the free subscription expires so you can start to consider your options.

To open an account, please complete the registration process by providing us with current, complete and accurate information as prompted by the Registration Form. Choose a user name at least 2 characters long and password more than 4 characters long. Once you agree to this contract, you are entirely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your password and account. Furthermore, you are entirely responsible for any and all activities that occur under your account and you are required to notify Fair Shake.net immediately of any unauthorized use of your account or any other breach of security.

If we find we cannot verify the information you submitted (i.e. DOC #) we will contact you immediately. You will need to respond to our email within 2 weeks, so please check your email fairly often in the first two months. If we cannot resolve the issue at that time, your email access will be blocked.

Fair Shake.net will not monitor, edit, or disclose any personal information about you or your use of the Service, including its contents, without your prior permission unless such action is necessary to:

• Conform to legal requirements or comply with legal process.
• Protect and defend the rights or property of Fair Shake.net.
• Enforce the Terms of Service.
• Act to protect the interests of its members or others.

Upon approval of this contract, you agree that Fair Shake.net may access your account, including its contents, as stated above or to respond to service or technical issues.

Storage:

The total amount of storage space per member is limited to 100 MB. Some email messages may not be processed due to space constraints (. Once you exceed your storage quota, you agree that Fair Shake.net is not responsible for the deletion or failure to store messages or other information. Fair Shake.net prohibits the use of the allocated space primarily for the storage of certain file types such as video, music, software and games.

Spam:

Spam refers to unsolicited commercial or personal email. It pollutes the Internet with many copies of the same message, forcing it on people who have not requested the information it contains. Spam ties up the Internet's valuable resources by forcing the resources to process very large volumes of non-requested mail.

Using Fair Shake.net mail service for the purposes of spamming is expressly forbidden:

• Spamming will not be tolerated.
• An account used for spamming will be terminated immediately.
• We will notify the ISP or access provider of any spamming activity by an individual, and prompt them for action against that person.
• Using the service in any way for spamming purposes, whether directly or indirectly, will expose an individual to legal action.
• Forging email headers is illegal and will result in legal action

Fair Shake.net will immediately terminate any account that it believes, in its sole discretion, is transmitting or is otherwise connected with any Spam or other unsolicited bulk email.

Pornography (sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal) :

1. Fair Shake.net does NOT allow the sending or receiving of emails with pornographic contents.
2. Fair Shake.net is applying advanced technologies in filtering pornographic emails either they came from mailing lists or pornographic websites.
3. Fair Shake.net reserve the right to terminate any account that it's username contains pornographic descriptions. (i.e.: sex@Fair Shake.net)

Member Conduct:

Upon agreement to the terms of the contract, you are solely responsible for the contents of your transmissions through the Service. Your use of the Service is subject to all applicable local, state, national and international laws and regulations. Therefore, you agree:

• to comply with all applicable laws regarding the transmission of technical data exported through the Service.
• that you shall not use the Service for illegal purposes.
• that you shall not interfere or disrupt networks connected to the Service.
• that you shall comply with all regulations, policies and procedures of networks connected to the Service.

The Service makes use of the Internet to send and receive certain messages; therefore, your conduct is subject to Internet regulations, policies and procedures. The following are considered to be unacceptable practices if carried out by any subscriber:

• Using the auto-responder, vacation reply, forwarding or POP retrieval features with other Web-based mail providers that have the same options, to prevent the creation of 'infinite mail loops'.
• Providing false data on the registration forms and surveys, including the fraudulent use of credit cards.
• Using the service in connection with chain letters, junk email, spamming or any duplicative or unsolicited messages (commercial or otherwise).
• Harvesting or otherwise collecting information about others, including email addresses, without their consent.
• Creating a false identity or forging an email address or header, or otherwise attempting to mislead others as to the identity of the sender or the origin of the message.
• Transmitting through the service unlawful, harassing, abusive, threatening, harmful, vulgar, obscene or otherwise objectionable material of any kind or nature.
• Transmitting any material that may infringe the intellectual property rights or other rights of third parties including trademark, copyright or right of publicity.
• Transmitting any material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs or any other harmful or deleterious programs.
• Interfering with or disrupting networks connected to the service or violating the regulations, policies or procedures of such networks.
• Attempting to gain unauthorized access to the service, other accounts, computer systems or networks connected to the service, through password mining or any other means.
• Interfering with another member's use and enjoyment of the service or another entity's use and enjoyment of similar services.

If a Member's conduct is found to be inconsistent with the intent of this agreement, Fair Shake.net retains the right, at its sole discretion, to determine whether or not a Member's conduct is consistent with the letter and spirit of the Terms and Conditions of this service. Fair Shake.net may terminate Service if a Member's conduct is found to be inconsistent with the intent of this agreement.

Proprietary Rights to Content:

Members acknowledge that content, including but not limited to text, photographs, video, graphics, software, music, sound, or other material presented to Members by Fair Shake.net is protected under the laws of copyright, trademark, patent, unfair competition or other applicable laws. Therefore, you are only permitted to use this Content as expressly authorized by Fair Shake.net or the owners of the original material. Members may not copy, reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from this Content without the express written authorization to do so by Fair Shake.net or the owners of the original material.

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