Terms of Service & Acceptable Use Policy

1. Agreement to Terms

These Terms of Service ('Terms') constitute a legally binding agreement between you (whether personally or on behalf of an entity, 'you' or 'Customer') and EmailScore ('EmailScore', 'we', 'us', or 'our'), governing your access to and use of the EmailScore website (emailscore.io), our real-time verification APIs (api.emailscore.io), and all associated tools, client libraries, documentation, and services (collectively, the 'Service').

By accessing or using our Service, creating an account, or submitting any query to our API, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, you must immediately discontinue all use of the Service.

2. Nature of the Service

EmailScore provides email validation, risk scoring, identity signals, contact-list screening, and diagnosis of supplied delivery-error messages. Scores and recommended actions support decisions made by your application; they do not establish mailbox ownership, human identity, or successful delivery.

Processing may include domain lookups. Submitted addresses can appear in debug logs, and configured diagnostic processing may involve an external service. Refer to the Privacy Policy and confirmed service terms for applicable data-handling details.

3. Customer Warranty of Lawful Data Acquisition

Customer expressly represents, warrants, and covenants that:

• Lawful Means of Collection: Every email address, domain, or record submitted by you or through your API key has been acquired strictly through lawful, legitimate, direct, and authorized means.
• Affirmative Consent & Compliance: You have obtained all necessary affirmative consents, notices, opt-ins, or possess an established legitimate business relationship with each recipient as required by all applicable global privacy, data protection, and anti-spam laws, including the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act, EU/UK GDPR, CASL, and CCPA.
• No Unlawfully Acquired Data: Under no circumstance will you submit email addresses obtained through unauthorized web scraping, screen-scraping, hacking, credential stuffing, data leaks, illicit data dumps, or purchased or rented bulk lists lacking verifiable opt-in records.

4. Strict Prohibition on Email 'Fishing,' DHA, and Permutation Probing

EmailScore is an email verification and deliverability scoring engine designed to clean and protect legitimate contact lists. It is strictly prohibited to use EmailScore as an email generator, address discovery engine, or reconnaissance tool. You specifically agree that you shall NOT:

• Directory Harvest Attacks (DHA): Engage in directory harvesting, dictionary attacks, or systemic combinatorial address generation to guess, discover, or enumerate active mailboxes.
• Email 'Fishing' & Mining: Submit speculative, synthetic, or artificially generated email addresses to discover which addresses exist on a mail server or third-party domain.
• Spam & Malicious Infrastructure Support: Use the Service or its output to facilitate, prepare, test, or send unsolicited commercial email (SPAM), malware, spyware, phishing lures, or credential harvesting campaigns.
• Platform Abuse & Scanning: Use the Service in any manner that causes abusive querying, denial-of-service, or unauthorized port/DNS probing against recipient mail exchangers.

5. Algorithmic Nature of Scoring & Disclaimer of Warranties

Probabilistic Assessment: EmailScore scores, risk tiers, and decision recommendations (including ALLOW, CHALLENGE, and DENY) are mathematical opinions, statistical estimates, and heuristic indicators based on probabilistic models and domain evaluations. They do not constitute absolute factual determinations or legal guarantees that a mailbox is currently active, deliverable, or owned by an authentic human.

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED STRICTLY ON AN 'AS IS' AND 'AS AVAILABLE' BASIS. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, EMAILSCORE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY, OR OTHERWISE.

No Liability for False Positives or False Negatives: You acknowledge that statistical analysis may occasionally generate false positives or false negatives. Customer retains sole discretion and responsibility regarding any business action taken based on scoring results.

6. Limitation of Liability & Consequential Damages Waiver

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW: IN NO EVENT SHALL EMAILSCORE, ITS FOUNDERS, OFFICERS, OR AGENTS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES (INCLUDING LOSS OF PROFITS, LOSS OF REVENUE, OR CAMPAIGN FAILURE).

EMAILSCORE'S TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THESE TERMS SHALL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF: (A) THE TOTAL AMOUNT ACTUALLY PAID BY YOU TO EMAILSCORE IN THE PRECEDING TWELVE (12) MONTHS, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED UNITED STATES DOLLARS ($100.00 USD).

7. Fees, Credits & Refund Policy

Service access is billed in accordance with the pricing tiers and pay-as-you-go credit packages published on our Pricing page. Verification credits represent consumable digital goods. Once credits are consumed or processed against our API, charges are strictly non-refundable.

8. Mandatory Binding Arbitration & Governing Law

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Delaware, United States. Any dispute arising under these Terms shall be resolved through binding individual arbitration under the rules of the American Arbitration Association (AAA), with class action waivers in effect.

For legal inquiries or abuse reporting, contact [email protected].