Terms of Service & Acceptable Use Policy
Effective Date: September 15, 2026 · Last Updated: September 15, 2026
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 & Stateless Architecture
EmailScore provides sub-millisecond, algorithmic email deliverability scoring, syntax validation, disposable domain detection, domain generation algorithm (DGA) analysis, and PRNG machine-salt detection.
Stateless Engine: You acknowledge and agree that EmailScore is engineered as a stateless, in-memory analysis engine. We do not store, retain, harvest, resell, or compile submitted email addresses into third-party databases. Emails submitted for verification are evaluated in volatile memory and discarded immediately following delivery of the scoring payload, with only non-identifying telemetry retained for billing and rate-limiting purposes.
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 without limitation the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act (15 U.S.C. § 7701 et seq.), the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA).
- 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 third-party 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 (e.g., querying automated combinations such as
first.last@domain.com,a@domain.com,b@domain.com) 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 in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) or international cybersecurity statutes.
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.
"AS IS" & "AS AVAILABLE": THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED STRICTLY ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, EMAILSCORE AND ITS AFFILIATES, OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, AND LICENSORS EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY, OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, TIMELINESS, OR UNINTERRUPTED AVAILABILITY.
No Liability for False Positives or False Negatives: You acknowledge that statistical analysis may occasionally generate false positives (marking an authentic email as high risk) or false negatives (marking an undeliverable or malicious email as low risk). Customer retains sole discretion and responsibility regarding any business action taken based on the Service's scoring results.
6. No Email Deliverability or Inbox Placement Guarantee
Email delivery depends on complex, external, and dynamic variables outside EmailScore's control, including sender IP reputation, sending domain age, email authentication protocols (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), email content, volume pacing, recipient engagement, and mailbox provider spam filtering algorithms (such as those maintained by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and anti-spam blocklists).
Accordingly, EmailScore does NOT warrant or guarantee that emails scored as ALLOW will achieve inbox placement, will not bounce, or will not be flagged by recipient filters or blacklists.
7. Limitation of Liability & Consequential Damages Waiver
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW:
- CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES WAIVER: IN NO EVENT SHALL EMAILSCORE, ITS FOUNDERS, OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, OR SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF PROFITS, LOSS OF REVENUE, LOSS OF GOODWILL, LOSS OF DATA, WORK STOPPAGE, SYSTEM OUTAGE, RECIPIENT COMPLAINTS, BOUNCE-RATE INCREASES, DOMAIN OR IP BLACKLISTING, OR MARKETING CAMPAIGN FAILURE, REGARDLESS OF THE THEORY OF LIABILITY (CONTRACT, TORT, NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, OR OTHERWISE), EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
- AGGREGATE MONETARY LIABILITY CAP: IN NO EVENT SHALL EMAILSCORE'S TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE EXCEED THE GREATER OF: (A) THE TOTAL AMOUNT ACTUALLY PAID BY YOU TO EMAILSCORE UNDER THESE TERMS IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO LIABILITY, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED UNITED STATES DOLLARS ($100.00 USD).
8. Broad Customer Indemnification
You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless EmailScore and its affiliates, officers, agents, partners, and employees from and against any and all claims, demands, liabilities, damages, judgments, losses, regulatory penalties, fines, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees and court costs) arising out of or resulting from:
- Your breach of these Terms, including specifically the Lawful Data Acquisition Warranty and Anti-Harvesting prohibitions;
- Your submission of any email address or data collected without proper legal authorization, consent, or lawful basis;
- Any violation by you or your end users of applicable privacy or anti-spam regulations (including CAN-SPAM, GDPR, CASL, and CCPA);
- Your downstream email marketing, communications, or commercial electronic messages sent to addresses verified by the Service; or
- Any unauthorized use of your account or API credentials.
9. Data Protection Roles (Controller vs. Processor)
To the extent that personal data (such as individual email addresses) is processed through the Service under applicable privacy laws (such as GDPR or UK GDPR):
(a) Customer is the Data Controller: Customer determines the purposes and means of processing and warrants that it holds full legal rights and consents to process such data.
(b) EmailScore is the Data Processor: EmailScore processes such data solely on Customer's instructions for the transient, algorithmic scoring of email validity, operating in accordance with its stateless architecture.
10. Intellectual Property & Anti-Scraping of Service
All rights, title, and interest in and to the Service—including without limitation our algorithms, Markov likelihood matrices, Shannon entropy formulas, tokenizer token frequency banks, scoring models, source code, API schemas, and documentation—are and will remain the exclusive property of EmailScore.
You shall not, directly or indirectly: (a) reverse-engineer, decompile, disassemble, or extract source code from the Service; (b) benchmark our API against competing services for public publication without our prior written authorization; or (c) query our Service systematically to train, build, fine-tune, or calibrate any machine learning, artificial intelligence, or competing email verification product.
11. 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. All payments are processed securely via third-party payment gateways.
Verification credits represent consumable digital goods. Once credits are consumed or processed against our API, charges are strictly non-refundable. If your account is suspended or terminated for violation of our Acceptable Use Policy or Anti-Harvesting rules, all remaining credits are immediately forfeited without refund.
12. Abuse Monitoring, Suspension & Termination
EmailScore reserves the right to monitor aggregate API query patterns (such as query distribution anomalies, rapid permutation patterns against identical domains, or abnormal syntax spikes) to ensure compliance with these Terms.
We reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to immediately suspend or permanently revoke your API keys and terminate your account without notice, liability, or refund if we detect or reasonably suspect email harvesting, dictionary attacks, or other fraudulent or unauthorized activities.
13. Mandatory Binding Arbitration & Class Action Waiver
BINDING ARBITRATION: YOU AND EMAILSCORE AGREE THAT ANY DISPUTE, CLAIM, OR CONTROVERSY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE SHALL BE RESOLVED THROUGH BINDING INDIVIDUAL ARBITRATION RATHER THAN IN A COURT OF GENERAL JURISDICTION, CONDUCTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE RULES OF THE AMERICAN ARBITRATION ASSOCIATION (AAA).
CLASS ACTION WAIVER: YOU AND EMAILSCORE AGREE THAT EACH PARTY MAY BRING CLAIMS AGAINST THE OTHER ONLY IN AN INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY, AND NOT AS A PLAINTIFF OR CLASS MEMBER IN ANY PURPORTED CLASS, COLLECTIVE, OR REPRESENTATIVE PROCEEDING. NO ARBITRATOR MAY CONSOLIDATE MORE THAN ONE PERSON'S CLAIMS OR PRESIDE OVER ANY FORM OF REPRESENTATIVE OR CLASS PROCEEDING.
WAIVER OF JURY TRIAL: BOTH PARTIES EXPRESSLY WAIVE ANY CONSTITUTIONAL OR STATUTORY RIGHT TO A TRIAL BEFORE A JURY.
14. Contractual Time Limitation on Claims
YOU AGREE THAT REGARDLESS OF ANY STATUTE OR LAW TO THE CONTRARY, ANY CLAIM OR CAUSE OF ACTION ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE USE OF THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS MUST BE FILED WITHIN ONE (1) YEAR AFTER SUCH CLAIM OR CAUSE OF ACTION AROSE, OR BE FOREVER BARRED.
15. Governing Law & Contact Information
These Terms and any dispute arising hereunder shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Delaware, United States, without regard to its conflict of law principles.
For legal inquiries, abuse reporting, or questions regarding these Terms, please contact our compliance desk at: legal@emailscore.io.