Acceptable use policy

1. General

1. The quality and delivery reputation of email service providers such as Flexmail is largely determined by the reputation and sending practices of our clients. Just one bad sender can destroy much of an ESP’s reputation. This is precisely why we put a great deal of care and effort into upholding that reputation, for ourselves and our users. We also do this by encouraging good email behaviour from users on our platforms, and by removing bad mailers.
   
   For that reason, we have drafted this Acceptable Use Policy. To ensure we keep our platform safe and our deliverability high, we do not allow certain types of senders and behaviours. The purpose of this document is to make the rules of our platform as clear as possible and help you understand why Flexmail is exactly right, or perhaps not right for you. If you do not comply with one or more of the following conditions, we reserve the right to terminate your account, without owing any right to compensation.
2. Even if the Customer is not the user of the Services, the Customer remains responsible for accessing and using our provided Services and/or provided Products.
3. In the event of misconduct, Flexmail has the right to suspend access to the Services or permanently deny the Customer access. Flexmail defines misconduct as violating applicable laws, agreements, intellectual property rights or other rights of third parties and committing an unlawful act.

2. Unauthorised use of the Services

When you access or use the Services, you are not permitted to do the following:

1. send unsolicited commercial email (UCE) or SPAM using Flexmail’s Services. If a Customer uses Flexmail for UCE or SPAM, access to the Services will be terminated and legal action may be taken against them;
2. harvest or otherwise collect information about third parties, including email addresses, without the express consent of those third parties;
3. use the Services for unlawful or discriminatory activities;
4. engage in publishing, posting and distributing, advertising or creating links to:
   
   
   • content, websites, topics, names, material or information that is inappropriate, blasphemous, defamatory, libellous, infringing, obscene or lewd or that contains nude images or adult-oriented content;
   • software, content or other materials protected by intellectual property laws, copyright licences, privacy and publicity rights or other proprietary rights, unless you own or control such rights or have obtained the necessary permission to publish, distribute or create links to such software and other materials;
   • software, content or other materials that contain viruses, worms, corrupted or cracked files or that damage or render unusable (or are intended to damage or render unusable) the operation of the computer, hardware, software, security measures or security systems of others, or other programmes written to circumvent the security measures of a computer, system or programmes;
   • software, content, other materials or websites that contain hate speech directed against any person or group on the basis of that person’s or group’s race, gender, belief, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation or language;
   • act in violation of applicable government legislation or regulations;
   • discredit, falsely accuse, slander, defame, taunt, intimidate, threaten others, impersonate others, invade the privacy of others or otherwise affect or violate the rights (including privacy and publicity rights) of others;
   • unlawful competition, pyramid schemes, chain letters, unsolicited or unauthorised advertising and promotional material, unsolicited emails (including spam) or multi-level or unlawful marketing campaigns;
5. access or otherwise use third-party mailing lists for the purpose of preparing or distributing unsolicited emails to third parties.

3. Unauthorised conduct

As a user, you are not permitted to do the following:

• use (or attempting to use) another user’s account without the permission of that other user and Flexmail;
• access the Services by any other means than through industry-accepted or Flexmail-approved standard application programme interfaces;
• use the Services in a manner that disrupts, disturbs, adversely affects or interferes with the use of the Services by other users or in any way impairs, blocks, overloads or degrades the operation of the Services;
• delete or modify any material, including content, posted by any other person or entity;
• delete or change any copyright notices, legal notices or proprietary notices or labels that you upload to a communication feature;
• register, subscribe or unsubscribe parties for or attempt to register, subscribe or unsubscribe parties from any Flexmail product or Service without the express consent of these parties;
• apply reverse-engineering to any aspect of the Services or do anything that reveals source code or circumvents measures intended to prevent or restrict access to any part of the Services;
• attempt to circumvent content filtering techniques used by Flexmail or access features or parts of the Services to which you do not have access rights;
• develop applications or use third-party applications to enable interaction with the Services without Flexmail’s prior written consent, including scripts designed to scrape or extract data from the Services;
• bypass or ignore instructions in our robots.txt file regulating automated access to parts of the Services;
• use the Services for illegal or unauthorised purposes, engage in activities that violate these Terms or encourage or promote such activities.

4. Use of accounts

1. Our Marketing Services are intended to be used for a single set of message subscribers. You may not continuously delete contacts from an account and import new contacts into an account. For example, you may not subscribe to a programme for 25,000 subscribers/contacts and try to send messages to 100,000 contacts by deleting contacts and importing new contacts.
2. Flexmail is not aware of the internal affairs of your organisation or the nature of your personal relationships and will not mediate disputes over account ownership. You may not request access to, or information about, an account that does not belong to you, and you must resolve disputes relating to accounts directly with the third parties in question. Flexmail will decide who owns that account based on the content of the emails in an account, and if multiple individuals or entities are identified in the content, Flexmail will assume the contact details for that account.
3. Under the monthly Flexmail programmes, users are permitted to send an unlimited number of emails to their contacts, subject to fair use. This is calculated based on the average user’s regular use of the application. In case of excessive use of the Services or spam behaviour, Flexmail reserves the right to deny you access to the Service or offer you the Services at an adjusted price.
4. In addition to the content guidelines reflected in our acceptable use policy and anti-spam policy, there are a number of specific expectations regarding clients using Flexmail’s Services:
   - Your spam ratio must be lower than 1 in 1,000 mails (0.1%). If you exceed that limit, sending for your account may be paused while we look for possible causes.
   - Your bounce rate must be lower than 10% of all emails sent. If you exceed this limit, inbox providers may start to think you are sending mails to contacts for whom they are not intended.

5. Liability

1. You hereby agree to indemnify Flexmail against any damages, loss, liability, settlements and expenses (including, without limitation, costs and reasonable legal fees) related to any claim or action for alleged breach of the foregoing or otherwise arising out of or in connection with your use of the Services.
2. In addition, you acknowledge and agree that Flexmail is entitled to claim damages if you use the Services for unlawful purposes, in an unlawful manner and/or in a manner contrary to the Terms of this Agreement, and that such damages shall include, without limitation, direct, indirect, special and incidental damages, damages for reliance and/or consequential damages.
3. Although Flexmail has no obligation to monitor the content you provide or your use of the Services, Flexmail is entitled to do so and can remove any such content and prohibit any use of the Services that Flexmail deems in violation of the foregoing. In that case, Flexmail cannot be held liable by the Customer.

6. Digital Services Act, measures and procedures

1. Flexmail (including its subsidiairies) adheres to the measures set out in the EU Regulation no. 2022/2065 – Digital Services Act ("DSA"). Users are responsible for the content they upload, share, or otherwise make available on our services. Any content that violates the DSA, other applicable law or our Terms & Conditions may be subject to removal, and users may be subject to account suspension or termination on team.blue’s initiative.
2. We will cooperate with relevant authorities as required by the relevant regulation and DSA, including providing information (including personal data) and assistance in investigations. The single point of contact will be reachable, at the following email address: info@flexmail.be (the “Abuse Email”).
3. If any person or entity is aware of the presence of specific items of information and/or content on Flexmail that individual or entity considers to be illegal content, the individual or entity may contact Flexmail at the Abuse Email and send a report (the “Report”) that meets all of the requirements below:
   (a) a sufficiently substantiated explanation of the reasons why the individual or entity alleges the information in question to be illegal content; and
   (b) a clear indication of the exact electronic location of that information, such as the exact URL or URLs, and, where necessary, additional information enabling the identification of the illegal content adapted to the type of content and to the specific type of hosting service; and
   (c) the name and email address of the individual or entity submitting the notice, except in the case of information considered to involve one of the offences referred to in Articles 3 to 7 of Directive 2011/93/EU; and
   (d) a statement confirming the genuine belief of the individual or entity submitting the notice that the information is accurate and complete.
4. Once Flexmail receives a report, it will send a confirmation receipt to the individual or entity without undue delay. Where a Report meets the above requirements, Flexmail will notify that person or entity of its decision, providing a “statement of reason”. Flexmail is not required to undertake a detailed legal examination of the facts in the Report, but must carry out a review at the level expected of a diligent hosting provider.
5. If the individual or entity does not agree with Flexmail’s decision, they may contact Flexmail once again, at the Abuse Email, setting out the reasons they do not agree with the decision. Flexmail will examine the request and communicate the final decision to the individual or entity. Notwithstanding the above process, the individual or entity may also report the allegedly illegal content or activity to public authorities in order to defend its rights.
6. To enhance transparency and in compliance with the DSA, Flexmail may publish reports outlining its content moderation practices, including the number and nature of content removals and user accounts suspended or terminated.

UPDATED: 05/03/2024