Acceptable Use Policy

1. Why this policy exists

Sankofa sends email on behalf of many customers through shared infrastructure. One customer's abuse damages delivery for everyone else, so we hold every account to the standards below. This policy is part of our Terms of Service, and breaking it can lead to suspension or termination.

2. Consent: only email people who want it

You may only send email to recipients who have asked to receive it, or who have an existing relationship with you that clearly makes the message expected (for example, a receipt for something they bought, or a password reset they requested).

You must not:

• Send to purchased, rented, scraped, harvested or otherwise third-party lists
• Add people to a list without their knowledge, or use a list gathered for one purpose for something unrelated
• Send to role or generic addresses you don't have a relationship with
• Continue emailing someone after they ask you to stop

We provide a suppression list. Addresses that hard-bounce or complain are blocked automatically, and you must not try to work around it, for example by re-adding or altering suppressed addresses.

3. What you may send

Sankofa is built for transactional email: messages triggered by a user's own action or account, such as sign-up confirmations, password resets, receipts, order and shipping updates, and security or account notices.

Marketing and bulk email is allowed only if every recipient has explicitly opted in, every message identifies you as the sender, and every message contains a working, one-step way to unsubscribe that you honour promptly, and in any case within 48 hours.

4. Prohibited content and conduct

You must not use the service to send or facilitate:

• Spam or any unsolicited bulk or commercial email
• Phishing, impersonation, or messages designed to deceive recipients about who is sending them
• Malware, malicious links or attachments
• Fraud, scams, pyramid or get-rich-quick schemes, or deceptive offers
• Illegal goods or services, including counterfeit products, controlled substances and illegal gambling
• Adult sexual content, or anything that exploits or endangers children
• Content that harasses, threatens, or incites violence or hatred against a person or group
• Content that infringes someone else's intellectual property or privacy
• Misleading headers, forged sender details, or a subject line that doesn't reflect the content

You must also not attempt to break, probe or overload the service, bypass credit or rate limits, share API keys with people outside your organisation, or resell the service without our written permission.

5. Sender identity and domains

You may only send from domains you own or are authorised to use, and you must complete domain verification (DKIM and SPF records) before sending. Every message must use a real, monitored reply or contact address, and must not disguise who you are.

6. List quality and reputation limits

Healthy sending is a condition of using the service. As a guide, we expect your bounce rate to stay below 5% and your spam complaint rate to stay below 0.1%.

We monitor these rates for every account. If yours goes above these levels, or your sending threatens the reputation of our infrastructure, we may limit, pause or suspend your sending while you fix the cause. Validate addresses at the point of collection, remove addresses that bounce, and stop mailing people who complain.

7. Laws you must follow

You are responsible for complying with every law that applies to your email, including data protection and electronic communications laws in Ghana (such as the Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843)) and in the countries where your recipients live. You must keep records of the consent you rely on and give them to us if we reasonably ask.

You must also follow the Amazon Web Services Acceptable Use Policy, since your email is delivered through Amazon SES.

8. Enforcement

If we believe you have broken this policy, we may, at our discretion and with or without notice: remove the offending content, pause sending, suspend or terminate your account, block your domains, and report illegal activity to the relevant authorities. For serious or repeated violations, or when we are legally required or when delay would harm others, we will act immediately.

Credits on a terminated account for a serious violation are forfeited. We will always try to give you a chance to explain and fix a genuine mistake first.

9. Reporting abuse

If you've received abusive or unwanted email that was sent through Sankofa, please write to info.sankofa.dev@gmail.com with the full message headers if you can. We review every report and will act on confirmed violations.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as abuse patterns and regulations change. Material changes will be announced in the dashboard or by email. Continuing to use the service after a change means you accept it.