Legal Regulations

The government imposes the following four (summarised) rules on sending newsletters:

 

1. A subscriber must be an existing customer and/or have given explicit permission for receiving the newsletter in advance

As a Laposta user, you are responsible for complying with this rule. Only you know if someone has given permission in advance or if they are an existing customer. 

Be very clear when requesting permission, as it needs to be explicit. That means that:

  • A provision in your terms and conditions is not enough.
  • Your subscriber really be able to indicate that they give permission.
  • You cannot send newsletters to rented, hired, or purchased email addresses.

Watch out: a description as ‘you hereby give permission for receiving newsletters from this organisation and (selected) partners’ is not specific enough.

 

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

You are responsible for complying to this rule as well. It is not allowed to randomly collect personal data. 

That means that you should not:

  • Collect more data than needed to send your (personalised) newsletter.
  • Collect more data than needed to section your contact lists.

Here we are speaking about collecting, processing, and using information about a natural person. 

Personal data are not: general data about a company or organisation.

Personal data are: further details about a subscriber within a company or organisation.

When collecting personal data, you have to inform a subscriber about what you will do with their details.

For example, you tell them:

  • That you want to send them a newsletter.
  • How often you want to send them a newsletter.
  • Which subjects you want to discuss in the newsletter.

It is your duty to handle the personal data of your subscribers with care.

 

3. It must be clear who sent the newsletter

Laposta makes sure that you meet this obligation. Before sending your newsletter you always have to insert information about the sender:

  • The name of a person or company is sufficient.
  • You cannot use an alias or a pseudonym.
  • You can only send the newsletter from pre-approved and working email addresses.

 

4. Subscribers must be offered an easy way to unsubscribe

This obligation is automatically met when you use Laposta as your newsletter application. To every newsletter that you send we add an unsubscribe link at the bottom as standard. Clicking on it means an automatic deregistration from the newsletter.

 

Supervisory Authorities

In The Netherlands there are three authorities which monitor compliance with these legal rules:

  • ACM: they monitor spamming and can issue fines for that for up to 450.000 euros.
  • AP: they mainly monitor the second rule.
  • SRC: the industry’s supervisor, making sure that the rules are complied with.

 

Laposta and the Law

Laposta strongly opposes misuse of personal data and spamming and we fully support the law. This is in our own interest as well as spam damages both our reputation as well as the reputation of our users.

 

How Do We Prevent Abuse?

We check:

  • Every new account for a company email address and/or a satisfactory explanation of use.
  • Every contact list imported to Laposta against a number of criteria.
  • The quality of contact lists. Every subscriber that bounces (1 hard bounce, or 6 soft bounces) is automatically deregistered.
  • The content of the newsletters. Attachments and other spam-sensitive content is not allowed. Sender addresses are always checked by us first.
  • The technicalities with SPD (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mails). These respectively check our client’s mail servers and flag fake sender addresses.
  • The results and statistics of newsletters. Low acceptance, open, or unsubscribe rates are reasons for further investigation.

 

Spam Related Complaints

We take spam related complaints extremely seriously. When we detect spam:

  • We issue a warning.
  • We terminate the account.
  • We inform the supervisory authorities (when we detect serious abuse).

 

Have you received spam through our application despite all our measures? Send your complaint to abuse@laposta.nl.