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I noticed on a blog on the site (https://civicrm.org/blog/andrewhunt/alternatives-to-mandrill) a suggestion to use Amazon SES as an alternative to Mandrill for emails, and I also noticed an old CiviCRM/Drupal image on Amazon Marketplace. We've customized CiviCRM for a customer who is already using the software for their email campaigns and wanted to deploy on AWS but we're concerned about terms of service preventing the facilitation of mass unsolicited emails. Does anyone have experience with this?

Specifically the Amazon terms state:

You will not distribute, publish, send, or facilitate the sending of unsolicited mass e-mail or other messages, promotions, advertising, or solicitations (like “spam”), including commercial advertising and informational announcements. You will not alter or obscure mail headers or assume a sender’s identity without the sender’s explicit permission. You will not collect replies to messages sent from another internet service provider if those messages violate this Policy or the acceptable use policy of that provider.

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"Probably, no."

This seems to be a legal question, and CiviCRM is a tool. CiviCRM provides a lot of support for not violating those terms ... but someone could still contrive ways to break the agreement, so as with any tool it's how you use it that really matters.

If a large number of spammers used a specific tool, you might see bans targeted against the tool itself. I don't think this is the case for CiviCRM.

You will not distribute, publish, send, or facilitate the sending of unsolicited mass e-mail or other messages, promotions, advertising, or solicitations (like “spam”), including commercial advertising and informational announcements.

If your emails are solicited (opt-in) you should be OK here.

You will not alter or obscure mail headers or assume a sender’s identity without the sender’s explicit permission.

CiviCRM should be OK here, provided you aren't pretending to be someone else.

You will not collect replies to messages sent from another internet service provider if those messages violate this Policy or the acceptable use policy of that provider.

This applies the policy to inbound/return email also.

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What part - specifically - are you worried about? That statement certainly all seems completely in line with Canadian Anti Spam Legislation:

http://fightspam.gc.ca/eic/site/030.nsf/eng/home

In a (very tiny) nutshell - users must opt-in to receive Email from you.

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  • The American CAN-SPAM act from my understanding is more of an opt-out than an opt-in: ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/… The customer we work for uses legal email campaigns in order to achieve some of its goals. If they send unsolicited emails from our CiviCRM deployment, I'm worried that we can't deploy on AWS.
    – Han Xiao
    Commented Jun 2, 2016 at 12:27
  • I suggest to contact AWS - this is not about CiviMail and AWS Terms and Conditions - this is more between AWS and the American CAN-SPAM act. CiviMail certainly has opt-out service - and from what you write here would as such be ok under the CAN-SPAM act.
    – KarinG - Semper IT
    Commented Jun 3, 2016 at 3:28

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