Acceptable Use Policy

This policy sets out what you may and may not send through Pharos. It forms part of the Terms of Service. Breaking it is grounds for suspending or closing your account, and where the breach is damaging other customers' delivery we will act first and explain afterwards.

It is deliberately short. Read it before you send.

1 · What Pharos is for

Pharos is a transactional email gateway. It is for mail your application owes a specific person because of something they did: receipts, password resets, confirmations, alerts, notifications, account and security notices, and the operational mail a product sends to its own users.

Pharos is not a bulk marketing platform. Newsletters, campaigns, promotional blasts and any mail sent to a list because it is a list do not belong here, even where the list is opted in and the mail is lawful. If that is what you need, you need a different kind of provider, and we would rather tell you that than have your sending share our IPs.

A transactional message may contain a promotional element — a receipt can mention a related product. A promotional message does not become transactional by having a receipt attached to it. The test is whether a specific recipient action caused this specific message.

2 · Sending thresholds

These apply to every account, including free ones. They are the rates at which we will contact you and, if they persist, restrict your sending.

Measure	What it counts	Limit
Spam complaints	Recipients marking your mail as spam, as reported by receiving providers	below 0.1%
Hard bounces	Permanent failures — the address does not exist or refuses mail	below 5%
Suppressed recipients	Continuing to send to addresses already suppressed for your account	should be zero

A complaint rate above 0.1% is the number Gmail and Yahoo use, so it is the standard your sending is already being judged against by the receivers that matter. Our thresholds are not stricter than the inbox providers' — they are the same, enforced earlier.

We suppress bounced and complained addresses automatically. Sending to them again is a policy breach, not a mistake the platform will absorb for you.

3 · Consent

You must have permission to email every recipient you send to, and you must be able to show it.

For transactional mail, permission usually comes from the relationship: someone who created an account, placed an order or requested a reset has asked for the message that follows. That is the normal case and it needs no ceremony.

If an abuse complaint reaches us, we will ask you for:

• the address the recipient gave you;
• when you obtained it;
• where and how you collected it;
• what the recipient did that caused the message.

If you cannot answer those, we will treat the sending as unconsented.

You may not send to any list that was purchased, rented, scraped, harvested, appended, or obtained from a third party. This has no exceptions. A list acquired that way is not consented, whatever the seller told you.

You may not use Pharos to test whether addresses exist, to validate addresses you did not collect yourself, or to generate address permutations.

4 · Identifying yourself

Every message must honestly identify who sent it. The From and Reply-To must name you and reach you. You may not forge or obscure headers, return paths, or the origin of a message.

You may only send from domains you control and have verified in your account. If you send on behalf of a client or partner, the message must make that relationship clear to the recipient, and the sending domain must be one that party has authorised.

Where a message is not strictly transactional, it must carry a working unsubscribe link, and you must honour opt-outs immediately.

You must publish a privacy policy that accurately describes what you do with recipient data, and you must follow it.

5 · Prohibited use

You may not use Pharos to:

• send unsolicited commercial email, in any volume;
• send bulk marketing, newsletters or campaigns (see section 1);
• send mail that breaks any law that applies to you or your recipients, including anti-spam and data protection law;
• forge, delete or obscure sender information, headers or IP information;
• phish, impersonate another person or organisation, or send mail designed to deceive a recipient into giving up credentials, money or personal data;
• distribute malware, or link to it;
• interfere with the service or the networks it depends on, or attempt to gain access to any account or system you are not authorised to use;
• evade a suspension by opening another account;
• resell sending capability to third parties as their own service.

6 · Prohibited content

We do not carry mail that promotes, contains or links to:

• sexual content involving anyone under 18, or any content that exploits a minor;
• non-consensual sexual content, or pornography;
• content that incites, threatens or glorifies violence;
• harassment, or hatred directed at people for who they are;
• illegal drugs, or the illegal sale of prescription medication;
• weapons or ammunition where the sale would be unlawful;
• gambling that is unlicensed where it is offered or received;
• chain letters, pyramid or matrix schemes, or multi-level marketing recruitment;
• cryptocurrency or investment offers of the pump, airdrop or guaranteed-return kind;
• debt relief, credit repair or loan offers of the high-risk consumer sort;
• content that is defamatory, or that violates someone's privacy;
• anything else unlawful where you are, where we are, or where your recipients are.

These lists are examples, not boundaries. We may decline mail we consider abusive, deceptive or likely to damage the reputation of the infrastructure it would leave from, including mail that is lawful.

7 · Shared infrastructure

Sending IPs are shared between Pharos customers. Your sending affects everyone else's delivery, and theirs affects yours. That is the reason this policy is enforced quickly rather than gradually.

You may not consume a disproportionate share of the service, or send in patterns that disrupt it for others. Where your sending is degrading delivery for other customers we may rate-limit or pause it while we talk to you.

8 · Enforcement

What happens depends on what we find.

• We email you. The usual first step, for thresholds drifting or a pattern we want explained. Most cases end here.
• We rate-limit or pause sending. Where the problem is live and affecting others, while we wait for your answer.
• We suspend the account. For unresolved breaches, or where you cannot show consent.
• We close the account immediately, without notice. For unlawful content, phishing, malware, purchased lists, or evading a previous suspension. In these cases we act first and tell you afterwards.

Suspension does not entitle you to a refund. If you think we got it wrong, reply to the email — a person reads it.

We may change this policy, including the thresholds in section 2, as the standards receiving providers apply to senders change. Material changes are announced by email to the address on your account.

9 · Reporting abuse

If you have received mail sent through Pharos that breaks this policy, tell us at abuse@pharos.email. Include the full message headers if you can — they identify the sending account, and without them we often cannot.

A person reads that address. Reports about live phishing or malware are handled the same day.