Postfaro Acceptable Use Policy

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Last updated: [DATE]

This Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”) is part of the Postfaro Terms of Service. It explains what you may and may not send through Postfaro.

The short version: send only to people who asked to hear from you, make it easy for them to stop, tell them who you are, and don’t send anything harmful. If you are unsure whether a list or a message is allowed, ask us at [CONTACT EMAIL] before you send.

Postfaro shares sending infrastructure between customers. One customer’s spam can damage delivery for everyone. That is why this policy is strict, and why much of it is enforced automatically.

1. Permission (consent) is required

1.1 Every recipient must have given permission to receive your email, and that permission must still be valid. In practice this means one of:

• Express consent: the person actively opted in — for example by ticking an unticked box or submitting a sign-up form — to receive the type of email you are sending; or
• Existing customer relationship, where the law allows it: for example, in the EU/UK, emailing your existing customers about your own similar products or services, provided you gave them a clear chance to opt out when you collected their address and in every message since (the “soft opt-in”). Rules differ by country — check the law that applies to your recipients.

1.2 You must be able to prove consent. Keep records of when, where and how each address was collected. We may ask you to show this, for example after complaints or an automatic pause.

1.3 Consent is not transferable. Permission given to another company, a partner, or a previous owner of a business does not cover email from you.

1.4 Old lists. If you have not emailed a list for more than [12] months, re-confirm it carefully (for example with a small re-permission campaign) before sending a full campaign. Old lists produce bounces and complaints and are a common cause of automatic pauses.

2. Lists you must never use

You must not send to:

• purchased, rented, traded, shared or “leased” lists, including “opt-in” lists sold by third parties;
• addresses harvested or scraped from websites, social networks, directories, trade-fair catalogues or other public sources;
• addresses generated by guessing or by combining names and domains;
• role or distribution addresses (such as info@, sales@, all-staff@) unless the person or organisation behind them asked to be on your list;
• addresses that unsubscribed, complained or bounced — including addresses we have reported to you as “cancelled addresses”. Do not try to re-send to them by other means;
• lists collected for a different purpose (for example, contact details from a support ticket used for marketing without consent);
• spam traps or lists with a high share of invalid addresses.

Meeting someone at a trade fair or exchanging business cards is not automatically consent to marketing email in every country. Check the law that applies to you.

3. Legal basics you must follow

You are responsible for complying with every law that applies to your email. The table below is a summary of some common rules, not legal advice and not complete.

In addition, all mailbox providers’ bulk-sender requirements (for example those published by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft) apply. We configure your domain to meet the technical parts; you are responsible for list quality, content and complaint rates.

4. Every message must

• identify you clearly as the sender, in the From name and in the body;
• have an honest subject line that reflects the content;
• include a working unsubscribe link in the body, in addition to the one-click unsubscribe header we add automatically, and you must honour unsubscribe requests promptly (and within the legal deadline);
• include your valid physical postal address where required by law (for example under CAN-SPAM);
• be sent from a sender address you control, with replies going to a mailbox someone reads.

You must not remove, hide or interfere with the unsubscribe header we add, and you must not make unsubscribing difficult (for example by requiring a login or a payment).

5. Prohibited content and activity

You must not use Postfaro to send, link to, or promote:

1. Phishing, credential harvesting, or any message that impersonates another person, brand, bank, government body or service;
2. Malware, viruses, or links to files or sites designed to harm, track without consent, or take control of devices;
3. Fraud and scams, including advance-fee schemes, fake invoices, fake prizes, “get rich quick” schemes, pyramid or multi-level marketing recruitment, and misleading investment or cryptocurrency promotions;
4. Illegal goods or services, including illegal drugs, unlicensed pharmaceuticals, counterfeit goods, weapons where prohibited, and stolen data;
5. Sexually explicit content, and any content that sexualises minors (which we will report to the authorities);
6. Hate speech, harassment, threats, or content that promotes violence or discrimination;
7. Content that infringes copyright, trademarks or other rights of others;
8. Unlicensed gambling or gambling promotions where not permitted by law;
9. Debt collection, payday or high-cost lending, credit repair, or similar services [DECIDE: prohibit entirely or allow with review];
10. Personal data you are not allowed to share, including special-category data (health, religion, etc.) without a lawful basis;
11. Political or election campaigns [DECIDE: allow / prohibit / allow only with review and full legal compliance].

You also must not:

• use misleading header information, false sender names, or forged headers;
• use URL shorteners or redirects to hide the destination of links;
• rotate sender addresses, domains or accounts to evade filters, limits, suspensions or complaints;
• split sends across multiple accounts to get around the daily cap;
• attempt to probe, scan, overload or break our systems, or test whether addresses exist (“list washing” or “email verification” sends);
• use the Service to send transactional mail that you have routed here to escape another provider’s suspension;
• resell or share your SMTP credentials with third parties [unless we have agreed a partner arrangement in writing].

6. How we enforce this policy

Most enforcement is automatic. This protects your reputation as well as ours.

6.1 Automatic checks on every message. We check content for spam characteristics, blocklisted links and phishing (including with automated, AI-assisted classification). Messages that fail may be held for review or rejected.

6.2 Automatic suppression. We never deliver to addresses that hard-bounced, complained or unsubscribed. These are reported to you as “cancelled addresses”.

6.3 Automatic pause. Sending on your account is paused automatically if:

• your bounce rate exceeds 2%, or
• your complaint (spam report) rate exceeds 0.1%, or
• we detect phishing, malware or other clearly prohibited content.

Your first day of sending is closely monitored as a trial. [DEFINE: measurement window and minimum sample size for each threshold.]

When your account is paused, we tell you why. To resume, we may ask you to remove problem addresses, explain where the list came from, show proof of consent, change your content, or send a smaller test.

6.4 Manual review. We may review an account at any time after a complaint, an abuse report, a blocklisting, a request from a mailbox provider, or unusual patterns.

6.5 Consequences. Depending on how serious the issue is, we may:

• warn you;
• hold, reject or delete specific messages or queued batches;
• lower your daily limit or restart warm-up;
• suspend your account until the issue is resolved;
• terminate your account immediately without refund for serious or repeated violations (for example phishing, malware, purchased lists, or deliberate evasion of our controls);
• report illegal activity to the relevant authorities and, where required, cooperate with them.

6.6 No refunds for suspension due to violations. Fees are not refunded if your account is suspended or terminated because you broke this policy, except where the law requires otherwise.

7. Reporting abuse

If you received unwanted email sent through Postfaro, or want to report a breach of this policy, contact [ABUSE EMAIL — e.g. [email protected]]. Please include the full message with its headers if possible. We investigate every report.

8. Changes

We may update this AUP to respond to new laws, mailbox-provider requirements or abuse patterns. We will notify customers of material changes by email and in the customer panel.