Anti-spam and acceptable-use policy

Private.Ki exists for private, person-to-person communication. We do not tolerate spam. Using Private.Ki to send unsolicited or abusive messages, to run bulk mailings, or to help others do so is prohibited. Accounts that send spam, or attempt to, are blocked and permanently closed.

If you see a Private.Ki account being used for spam or abuse, please report it.

What we consider spam and abuse

Spam is any unsolicited or bulk email sent without the recipient's prior, verifiable consent. Prohibited uses include:

• mass mailings and cold outreach to purchased or scraped lists;
• newsletters, promotional campaigns and mailing lists of any size — Private.Ki is not a marketing platform;
• affiliate or referral blasts;
• phishing and attempts to steal passwords or personal data;
• distributing malware or malicious links;
• deceptive or misleading messages, impersonation, fraud and scams;
• harassment and threats;
• automated or scripted messaging of any kind;
• any attempt to hide the sender's identity or to evade the limits described below.

How we prevent it

Private.Ki is built so that abuse is hard to scale, and the protections are the same for everyone:

• Recipient cap. A message can be addressed to at most 5 recipients across To, Cc and Bcc. There is no way to send to more.
• Invite-only sign-up and proof of work. New accounts need an invitation, and sign-up, username lookup and invite redemption require a small computation from your browser, which makes mass account creation expensive. See Proof of work.
• Rate limits. Requests are budgeted per connection: sign-up attempts, username lookups, device-pairing attempts and invite redemptions each have an hourly limit, and the API as a whole has a request budget. Exceeding one blocks the action temporarily. See Why is my account rate-limited?.
• Blocklist checks on outgoing external mail. Email to recipients outside Private.Ki is checked against DNS blocklists before it leaves: recipient domains, and any links, domains and IP addresses in the subject and unencrypted body. A hit is refused with Sending refused. Encrypted bodies, internal mail and chats are not inspected. See Third-party services.
• Guest accounts cannot send external mail. An account created by redeeming a chat invite link has no password and cannot send email outside Private.Ki until its owner sets one.
• Inbound protection. Remote images and tracking pixels in received mail are blocked by default. See How to avoid spam.

We cannot scan the content of encrypted messages between Private.Ki users — and we do not try. Enforcement inside Private.Ki relies on the limits above and on reports from recipients.

Enforcement

• Sending block during review. If our systems or a report indicate spam or attempted spam, we place an immediate sending block while we review the activity.
• Suspension. Alleged abuse may result in the account being restricted or suspended pending investigation. A suspended account cannot sign in; see Account suspended.
• Permanent closure. Intentional abuse — phishing, malware, scams, mass emailing, evasion of limits — results in permanent termination of the account and any related accounts, without reinstatement, and the person responsible is not permitted to open another account. All data under the account is lost.
• Compromised accounts. If an account appears to have been taken over, it is restricted to protect recipients while we help the legitimate owner regain control.

Reporting abuse

Please report spam, phishing, malware, impersonation or harassment involving a Private.Ki account through the abuse report page. Include the account or address involved, the date and time, and — if you can — the full message. Do not send passwords or other sensitive data in a report.

Common questions