Acceptable Use and Anti-Spam Policy

Last updated: 12 October 2026

This policy is part of the Penomaly Terms of Service. It exists for one reason: every Penomaly customer shares a sending reputation. One person mailing a scraped list damages deliverability for every author on the platform.

So these rules are enforced, not decorative.

1. The rule everything else follows from

Only email people who asked you to.

Consent means a person actively chose to hear from you: they filled in a signup form, downloaded a reader magnet knowing they were joining your list, bought from you where you disclosed the list at checkout, or entered a giveaway that clearly said they were subscribing.

Consent does not mean:

• You bought, rented, borrowed or swapped a list of addresses
• You scraped addresses from websites, social media or Amazon reviews
• Someone emailed you once, so you added them
• They are in your contacts
• They followed you somewhere
• You collected the address for a completely different purpose

Importing a list you cannot account for is the single fastest way to lose your account, and it takes other authors down with you.

2. Bringing an existing list

Migrating from another platform is expressly allowed and is a core feature. When you do:

• You must have collected the original consent yourself, or have it documented
• You must import the other platform's suppression list at the same time. People who unsubscribed over there stay unsubscribed here
• The import records the consent as inherited, with its source and date

Do not use a migration to resurrect a list you stopped mailing years ago. If addresses have not been emailed in over 12 months, expect elevated bounces and complaints, and consider a re-engagement campaign to a small segment first.

3. What every message you send must contain

These are legal requirements under the US CAN-SPAM Act and equivalent laws elsewhere. Penomaly will refuse to send a campaign that lacks them.

• An accurate "From" name and address. No disguising who sent it
• A subject line that reflects the content. No bait
• A working unsubscribe link in every commercial message
• Your physical postal address. A PO box or virtual mailbox is fine, and is what most authors use. This is why we ask for it in your settings

Unsubscribes are processed immediately and permanently. You may not require someone to log in, pay, give a reason, or answer questions in order to unsubscribe.

4. Content that is not allowed

You may not use Penomaly to send:

• Anything unlawful, or anything that promotes unlawful activity
• Sexual content involving minors, or any content that sexualises minors, under any framing whatsoever
• Harassment, threats, or content inciting violence against a person or group
• Malware, phishing, or links designed to deceive
• Deceptive financial offers, pyramid schemes, or fake investment claims
• Content that infringes someone else's copyright or trademark
• Requests for reviews that are gated, rewarded or traded: asking only readers who liked a book to review it, or steering readers by whether they liked it; offering anything in return for posting a review beyond an advance copy given for an honest review; or arranging to swap reviews with other authors
• Adult content sent to lists that did not explicitly opt in to receive it

Fiction is fiction. Dark themes, violence, and explicit content within a novel are not the target of this section. Marketing a book that contains those things is fine, provided the people receiving it opted in and the content is legal.

5. Technical limits

You may not:

• Use the service to relay mail for a third party, or resell sending capacity
• Try to bypass sending limits, rate limits, or plan quotas
• Run automated scripts against the interface, outside of documented APIs
• Attempt to access another customer's account or data
• Probe, scan or test the security of the platform without written permission
• Remove, hide or break unsubscribe links or tracking required for compliance

6. Deliverability thresholds

Email providers suspend accounts whose bounce or complaint rates run high, and a suspension would affect every customer, so we act well before that point. Rates are measured over your sends in the last 7 days.

Below 1,000 sends in 7 days a rate means little, so different limits apply: sending is paused after 3 spam complaints in 7 days, or when more than 10 percent of at least 20 sends hard bounce. There is no warning stage at that volume.

We may pause sending earlier, or for other signs of a problem list, to protect deliverability for every author on Penomaly.

Hard bounces, where an address does not exist, are suppressed automatically and immediately. Soft bounces, such as a full mailbox, are retried and only suppressed after repeated failures.

These numbers are not punishment. They are the early warning that a list has a problem, and acting on them protects your own deliverability first.

7. The swap marketplace

The swap marketplace is for newsletter promotions only. It must never be used to exchange reviews.

Additional rules apply to newsletter swaps:

• List sizes shown for paying customers are read from the database. Do not attempt to inflate them by importing addresses you do not mail
• Honour swaps you agree to. Repeatedly accepting and not sending will get you removed from the marketplace
• Do not use swap contact features to pitch unrelated services

8. What happens if you break these rules

Depending on severity, we may:

1. Contact you and ask you to fix it
2. Pause sending on your account while we look into it
3. Suspend the account
4. Terminate the account and refuse future service

For serious cases, including scraped lists, illegal content, or anything involving minors, we will terminate immediately and without warning, and we will report it where the law requires.

We will always tell you why. Your data remains exportable during a suspension unless a court or the law says otherwise.

9. Reporting a problem

If you received an unwanted email sent through Penomaly, forward it with full headers to abuse@penomaly.com. We investigate every report.

If you are a Penomaly customer and you think a rule is being applied wrongly to you, write to support@penomaly.com and say so. We would rather be corrected than be wrong.