Acceptable use policy
This AUP governs all sending across Northbound-operated infrastructure. It is deliberately restrictive: we accept only clients whose programmes we can defend to receivers, to regulators, and to ourselves.
Last updated: 1 April 2026.
Prohibited content and conduct
The following are prohibited without exception:
- Unsolicited commercial email (cold email, purchased lists, scraped addresses, appended addresses).
- Deceptive subject lines, headers, envelope addresses or unsubscribe mechanisms.
- Impersonation of any person, brand, government body or financial institution the client is not.
- Phishing, credential harvesting, malware distribution or any adjacent activity.
- Adult content targeting jurisdictions where such content is prohibited, or without robust age verification.
- Illegal gambling in the recipient's jurisdiction.
- Promotion of unregistered securities, unlicensed financial products, MLM schemes, or "get rich quick" content.
- Content encouraging or facilitating violation of law, terrorism, human trafficking, or abuse of minors.
- Content that a reasonable person would consider hateful toward any protected class.
Permission and consent
Every recipient must be a knowing, current opt-in of the sending brand. Purchased lists, scraped lists, appended addresses and unmaintained legacy lists are prohibited. On request, the client must be able to produce, per recipient, the source of consent, the timestamp, and the IP.
Suppression
Unsubscribes must be honoured within 10 business days at the outside; Northbound operates a 24-hour target and passes this through to clients. Complaints processed through feedback loops must produce automatic, permanent suppression at the earliest processing stage of the client's stack. Suppression is enforced at the SMTP boundary; attempts to override are grounds for immediate termination.
Volume ramp
New IPs and domains must observe warm-up curves specified by Northbound. Departures from those curves require written approval.
Vertical-specific restrictions
iGaming: Only licensed operators, and only to recipients in jurisdictions where the operator is licensed to accept play.
Crypto: Only registered exchanges, custodians and infrastructure providers. No token launches, no ICO or IDO promotion, no yield programmes.
Financial services: Only regulated entities. No debt-relief, credit-repair or unlicensed lending offers.
Adult: Case-by-case only. Requires age-verification infrastructure and jurisdiction controls.
Enforcement
Northbound investigates every abuse report received at abuse@northboundmail.net. Confirmed AUP breach results in warning, suspension or termination depending on severity and prior conduct. Egregious or intentional breach results in immediate termination without notice and without refund.
Reporting abuse
Send abuse reports with full headers to abuse@northboundmail.net. Reports are triaged by engineers during business hours and on-call outside them.