Legislation and abuse

Legal Rules

The government imposes the following four rules regarding the sending of newsletters (in summary):

1. A relationship must be an existing customer and/or have explicitly given consent for receipt

For compliance with this rule, you as a user of Laposta are responsible. Only you know if a relationship is an existing customer. Only you know if a relationship has given consent in advance for the sending of a newsletter, for example, by signing up through the registration form on your website or by registering for this at a trade fair.

Be very clear when asking for consent. Consent must be explicit. Only a provision in the general terms and conditions is not sufficient. Your relationship must be able to clearly express that they give consent. A description such as 'you give consent for the receipt of newsletters from this company and (selected) partners' is not specific enough.

It goes without saying - after the above - that newsletters must not be sent to borrowed, rented or purchased email addresses.

2. Personal data may only be collected, processed and used for a well-defined and justified purpose

You are also responsible for compliance with this rule. Collecting and using personal data indiscriminately is not allowed. Therefore, do not collect more data than you need to send your newsletter (personalized) and/or segment your lists.

This rule pertains to the collection, processing, and use of information from a natural person. General data of a company or institution are not personal data; further details of a contact person within a company or institution are.

When collecting personal data, you must inform your relationship what happens to their data. In practice, this means that you indicate that you want to send your relationship a newsletter, possibly also how often you want to do this and what subjects your newsletters will cover. Furthermore, it is your duty to handle your relationship's personal data carefully.

3. It must be clear who a newsletter comes from

Laposta automatically ensures that you comply with this requirement. For every newsletter, you must indicate who it comes from. A name of a person or company is sufficient. An alias or pseudonym is not allowed. You can only send your newsletter via pre-approved and working sender addresses.

4. A relationship must be able to easily unsubscribe from a subsequent newsletter

You automatically comply with this requirement with Laposta. Each newsletter sent via Laposta automatically includes an unsubscribe link. If a relationship clicks on this, they will be automatically unsubscribed from the next newsletter.

Supervisory Authorities

There are three agencies that oversee compliance with these legal rules. The most important is the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM). Unwanted sending of newsletters to companies or individuals (spamming) is punishable by law in the Netherlands. The ACM can impose fines of up to 450,000 euros for this.

The Personal Data Authority (AP) mainly supervises the second rule. The Foundation for the Advertising Code (SRC) monitors compliance with the rules from the industry perspective.

Laposta and the Law

At Laposta, we fully support the law. In fact: we are strongly opposed to the misuse of personal data and spam. Partly, we have a stake in this: spam is not only bad for your own sending reputation but also for that of other users of our program.

How do we prevent misuse?

To prevent misuse, we perform the necessary checks.

a. Verification of each new account

We carefully check each new account. Without an email address from a company and/or a satisfactory explanation of the use, no newsletters can be sent with our program.

b. Verification of each new relationship database

We check each new relationship database imported into Laposta against a number of criteria.

c. Monitoring list quality

Every relationship that results in a hard bounce is automatically unsubscribed. The same applies to relationships that cause a soft bounce in six consecutive newsletters; they are also automatically unsubscribed.

d. Scanning newsletter content

We scan the content of newsletters. We do not allow spam-sensitive matters, such as adding an attachment to a newsletter, with Laposta. Sender addresses must be confirmed with us first.

e. Use of SPF and DKIM

In technical terms, we use SPF and DKIM. With these, we legitimize ourselves as an email sender.

Using SPF (Sender Policy Framework), a relationship's mail server can check whether our mail server is authorized to send the newsletter. With DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mails), a relationship's mail server can verify whether our signature matches the signature of your newsletter. Especially DKIM is very effective: it prevents spammers from using forged sender addresses.

f. Monitoring newsletter performance

We also check the statistics of newsletters. Newsletters with poor acceptance, open, or unsubscribe rates are subjected to further investigation.

Spam Complaints?

We take spam complaints very seriously. Upon detection of spam, we issue a warning or terminate the use of our program. In cases of serious abuse, we notify the supervisory authorities.

If you have still received spam through our program despite all our measures, we would like to hear from you. You can send your spam complaint to abuse@laposta.nl.