Email, Anti-Spam, Bulk Messaging, and Messaging Acceptable Use Policy

1. Purpose and Scope

This Email, Anti-Spam, Bulk Messaging, and Messaging Acceptable Use Policy establishes the rules for sending, receiving, forwarding, storing, and managing email, SMS, notifications, mailing lists, and other electronic messages through or in connection with Spark Rack Services.

1. All Spark Rack Customers and prospective Customers;
2. All End Users, authorized users, administrators, and account contacts;
3. All Spark Rack websites, portals, control panels, networks, servers, storage systems, software, and Services;
4. All resellers and downstream customers where applicable;
5. All Customer Data and Customer Content processed through the Services; and
6. All third-party providers used to support an applicable Service.

This Policy supplements the Acceptable Use Policy and applies regardless of whether messaging is sent directly through Spark Rack, through a third-party relay connected to Spark Rack infrastructure, or through a Customer application hosted by Spark Rack.

2. Core Messaging Rule

Customer may send messages only when Customer has a lawful basis, accurate sender identity, appropriate recipient permission, and a functioning method for recipients to stop future promotional messages.

Customer must not use the Services for spam, phishing, deceptive messaging, harassment, list abuse, credential theft, malware delivery, or evasion of provider controls.

3. Definitions

3.1 Commercial Message

A message whose primary purpose is advertising or promoting a commercial product or service.

3.2 Transactional or Relationship Message

A message primarily sent to facilitate, complete, confirm, or provide information about an agreed transaction, Account, subscription, warranty, safety notice, or existing relationship.

3.3 Bulk Message

A substantially similar message sent to multiple recipients, regardless of whether sent at one time or in a series.

3.4 Consent

Permission that is informed, specific enough for the messaging context, attributable to the recipient, and not obtained through deception or prohibited methods.

3.5 Suppression List

A list of recipients who must not receive specified future messages because of opt-out, complaint, invalid address, legal restriction, or policy requirement.

4. Consent and Permission

Customer must be able to explain how and when each recipient address or number was obtained and why the message is permitted.

Acceptable sources may include:

1. A recipient’s direct request;
2. An affirmative subscription;
3. An existing customer relationship where the message is relevant and lawful;
4. A contract or transaction requiring the message;
5. A legally permitted business contact context; or
6. Another documented lawful basis.

Consent to one sender, subject, brand, list, or communication type does not automatically authorize unrelated messages.

5. Prohibited List Sources

Customer must not send to addresses or numbers obtained from:

1. Purchased lists;
2. Rented lists;
3. Scraped or harvested websites;
4. Address-guessing or generation tools;
5. Data breaches or leaked databases;
6. Stolen records;
7. Another person’s list without valid authorization;
8. Public directories used contrary to law or reasonable expectation;
9. Co-registration or bundled consent that did not clearly identify the sender and purpose;
10. Contest, petition, event, or transaction information repurposed without permission;
11. Previously opted-out recipients;
12. Suppression lists used as sending lists; or
13. Any source that cannot be reasonably documented.

6. Accurate Sender Information

Messages must use accurate and nondeceptive routing, header, sender, reply-to, domain, display-name, and contact information.

Customer must not:

1. Forge headers;
2. Spoof another person or organization;
3. Use a misleading display name;
4. Hide the actual sender;
5. Use deceptive reply-to addresses;
6. Route messages through unauthorized systems;
7. Use domains without authorization;
8. Misrepresent message origin; or
9. Use technical methods intended to defeat filtering or attribution.

7. Subject Lines and Message Content

A subject line and preview text must accurately describe the message and must not materially mislead the recipient.

Customer must not use false urgency, fake replies, fake forwards, deceptive account warnings, fabricated invoices, impersonated brands, misleading prize claims, or other tactics that create a false impression.

8. Identification and Postal Address

Commercial messages must include disclosures required by applicable law, including clear identification as advertising when required and a valid physical postal address of the responsible sender.

Customer may not use Spark Rack’s address as Customer’s marketing address unless expressly authorized in writing.

9. Opt-Out Requirements

Commercial messages must provide a clear, conspicuous, functional, and reasonably simple method to stop future promotional messages.

1. The mechanism must remain available for the legally required period;
2. It must not require payment;
3. It must not require information beyond what is reasonably necessary;
4. It must not require login unless legally permitted and genuinely necessary;
5. It must not use a deceptive interface;
6. It must apply to the sender and message category represented; and
7. Requests must be honored within the period required by law and no later than ten business days for messages governed by CAN-SPAM.

10. Suppression Lists

Customer must maintain and enforce suppression lists sufficient to prevent future prohibited messages.

Suppression information may be retained solely to honor opt-outs and must not be sold, traded, published, or used to send other messages.

Customer must ensure that affiliates, contractors, marketing providers, resellers, and replacement systems receive and honor applicable suppression data.

11. Transactional and Relationship Messages

Transactional messages must remain primarily transactional and may not use a transactional label to disguise promotional content.

Examples include receipts, password resets, security alerts, service notices, support updates, billing notices, and information about an existing transaction.

Marketing content added to a transactional message must not change the primary purpose or violate applicable law.

12. Mailing Lists

Customer operating a mailing list must:

1. Use confirmed or otherwise reliable subscription methods appropriate to risk;
2. Maintain subscription records;
3. Clearly identify the list and sender;
4. Provide unsubscribe instructions;
5. Process bounces and complaints;
6. Remove invalid or unengaged recipients when necessary;
7. Protect list data;
8. Prevent unauthorized subscription;
9. Prevent list bombing;
10. Prevent address disclosure to other recipients;
11. Monitor sending reputation; and
12. Comply with all applicable privacy and marketing laws.

13. Confirmed Subscription

Spark Rack may require confirmed opt-in for high-risk, public, promotional, or large mailing lists.

A confirmation request should identify the list and sender and should not itself contain unrelated marketing.

Addresses that do not confirm should not receive recurring messages.

14. List Bombing and Subscription Abuse

Customer must implement reasonable controls against automated or malicious subscription of third parties.

Controls may include rate limits, confirmation, CAPTCHA, logging, source validation, duplicate detection, and complaint review.

Customer must promptly suppress an address reporting unauthorized subscriptions.

15. Bounce Handling

Customer must process permanent and repeated delivery failures and must not continue sending to invalid addresses.

Repeated sending to nonexistent, abandoned, blocked, or rejecting recipients may be treated as spam or negligent list management.

16. Complaint Handling

Customer must monitor complaints and promptly investigate the source, consent, content, and sending process.

High complaint rates, even when Customer claims consent, may require pausing a campaign, reconfirming recipients, changing acquisition practices, or ending the list.

Spark Rack may establish complaint thresholds based on provider requirements and network reputation.

17. Bulk Sending Approval and Limits

Spark Rack may require advance approval for bulk or high-volume messaging.

Spark Rack may impose limits on recipients, messages, connections, rate, concurrency, bandwidth, domains, IP addresses, queues, or daily volume.

Customer must not split, stagger, rotate, or distribute sending across Accounts, IP addresses, domains, or providers to evade limits.

18. Shared and Dedicated IP Reputation

Customer activity may affect shared or dedicated sending reputation.

A dedicated IP does not create a right to send spam and does not guarantee inbox placement or removal from blocklists.

Spark Rack may change, suspend, filter, or withdraw sending IP addresses when necessary to protect the Network.

19. Authentication Standards

Customer should implement accurate SPF, DKIM, DMARC, reverse DNS, HELO/EHLO, TLS, and related authentication where supported and appropriate.

Spark Rack may require specific authentication or alignment before permitting bulk sending.

Authentication does not authorize unwanted messages and does not guarantee delivery.

20. Phishing and Credential Theft

Phishing, credential collection, brand impersonation, deceptive login pages, and malicious redirects are prohibited.

Apparent phishing may be disabled immediately, even when Customer claims that the activity is a test, simulation, or marketing campaign.

Authorized security simulations require prior written approval when they could affect third parties, shared infrastructure, or external brands.

21. Malware and Harmful Attachments

Customer must not use messaging to deliver malware, ransomware, exploit code, malicious documents, credential stealers, remote-access tools, or harmful links without lawful authorization and appropriate controls.

Spark Rack may scan, block, quarantine, reject, or delete messages where permitted and reasonably necessary to protect the Services.

22. Harassment and Abusive Messaging

Customer must not send threats, stalking communications, repeated unwanted personal messages, doxing, extortion, nonconsensual intimate content, discriminatory harassment, or messages intended to terrorize or seriously intimidate.

Spark Rack may preserve and disclose records where permitted by law to address safety or legal concerns.

23. SMS and Telephone Messaging

Customer using SMS, MMS, voice, or telephone messaging must comply with consent, identification, opt-out, calling-time, do-not-call, carrier, provider, and campaign-registration requirements.

Email consent does not automatically constitute SMS or telephone consent.

Customer must retain evidence of required permission and honor STOP or equivalent opt-out requests promptly.

24. Children and Minor Recipients

Customer must use heightened care when messaging minors and must comply with COPPA, state privacy laws, school rules, parental-consent requirements, and other applicable restrictions.

Customer may not use Spark Rack Services to target children with age-inappropriate, exploitative, deceptive, or prohibited marketing.

25. Marketing Vendors and Affiliates

Customer remains responsible when a contractor, affiliate, lead generator, agency, reseller, or other third party sends messages on Customer’s behalf or promotes Customer’s products.

Customer must monitor vendors, provide suppression lists, prohibit unlawful acquisition, and promptly terminate noncompliant campaigns.

26. Compromised Accounts

Customer must report suspected mailbox, application, API, or credential compromise immediately.

Spark Rack may suspend sending, reset credentials, revoke tokens, block traffic, quarantine messages, or require reinstallation.

Customer is responsible for patching systems, rotating credentials, investigating affected recipients, and completing remediation.

27. No Delivery or Inbox Guarantee

Spark Rack does not guarantee that any message will be accepted, delivered, displayed, read, retained, or placed in an inbox.

External providers may filter, reject, delay, rate limit, quarantine, modify, or discard messages based on their own policies and reputation systems.

28. Monitoring and Enforcement

Spark Rack may review technical metadata, queues, complaint data, sending patterns, bounce rates, provider feedback, and limited message content when reasonably necessary to operate, secure, troubleshoot, or enforce the Services.

Enforcement may include warning, rate limiting, blocking, queue deletion, port restriction, IP change, sending suspension, Account suspension, termination, or provider notification.

29. Emergency Suspension

Spark Rack may immediately suspend messaging when continued sending threatens provider relationships, shared reputation, Customer safety, legal compliance, or network stability.

Emergency suspension may occur before the Customer is contacted.

30. Records and Audit Cooperation

Customer must maintain reasonable records of consent, list source, subscriptions, opt-outs, campaigns, vendors, and complaints.

Spark Rack may request a sample of those records when investigating Abuse. Failure to provide credible evidence may result in continued restriction or termination.

31. No AI Training

Spark Rack does not use Customer messages, mailing lists, delivery records, support communications, or messaging metadata for AI or machine-learning training and does not authorize providers to do so.

Traditional fixed-rule spam filtering and security controls may be used consistent with the Artificial Intelligence Policy.

32. Customer Responsibility for Compliance

Customer is responsible for compliance with CAN-SPAM, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act where applicable, state laws, international marketing laws, privacy laws, carrier requirements, and industry rules.

Spark Rack does not certify a campaign as legally compliant.

33. Contact

Messaging questions and reports should be submitted through the support or abuse channel in the Customer Portal.

Spark Rack
Attn: Email and Messaging Compliance
PO Box 2215
Valdosta, GA 31604
United States

34. Acknowledgment

By using messaging Services, Customer acknowledges that:

1. Customer must have a lawful basis and appropriate recipient permission.
2. Purchased, rented, scraped, generated, leaked, and unauthorized lists are prohibited.
3. Sender information and subject lines must be accurate.
4. Commercial messages must include required identification, postal address, and opt-out mechanisms.
5. Opt-outs and suppression lists must be honored.
6. Customer remains responsible for vendors and affiliates.
7. Spark Rack may limit or suspend sending to protect shared infrastructure and reputation.
8. No message delivery or inbox placement is guaranteed.
9. Phishing, malware, harassment, and evasion are prohibited.
10. Customer must maintain evidence of consent and respond to complaints.