Email & Anti-Spam Policy

We take email deliverability and recipient consent seriously. This policy describes how The Horizon Brief sends email and how we comply with the US CAN-SPAM Act and general anti-spam best practices.

Opt-in only

We only send our newsletter to addresses that have explicitly subscribed through our website. Every new subscription goes through double opt-in: after you submit your email address, we send a confirmation email, and you must click the confirmation link before you are added to our sending list. We never add addresses to our list from purchased lists, scraped sources, or third parties.

One-click unsubscribe in every email

Every email we send includes a clearly visible unsubscribe link in the footer. Clicking it removes you from future mailings immediately, with no login or additional steps required. Our emails also include the List-Unsubscribe and List-Unsubscribe-Post headers, which allow supporting email clients (such as Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail) to offer a one-click unsubscribe option directly in the inbox interface, separate from the link in the email body itself.

Honoring unsubscribe and removal requests

Unsubscribe requests, whether submitted through the link in an email or by emailing [email protected], are honored within 48 hours. Once unsubscribed, an address is added to our suppression list and will not receive further newsletter emails unless the person actively resubscribes through our opt-in process. See our Unsubscribe page for more detail.

Bounce and complaint handling

We monitor delivery outcomes for every email we send. Addresses that hard-bounce (indicating the address is invalid or no longer exists) are automatically suppressed from future sends. If a recipient marks one of our emails as spam, that address is automatically and immediately added to our suppression list, and we do not send further emails to it. We monitor our aggregate bounce and complaint rates on an ongoing basis to keep them within the thresholds required by our email service provider and by general industry standards for responsible senders.

What our emails will always include

• Accurate, non-deceptive subject lines and "From" information
• Our physical postal address, as required by CAN-SPAM
• A functioning, one-click unsubscribe mechanism
• Clear identification that the message is from The Horizon Brief

What we will never do

• Send to an address that has not opted in
• Use deceptive subject lines or forged sender information
• Continue emailing an address after it has unsubscribed or requested removal
• Sell or share our subscriber list with third parties

Sending infrastructure

Our emails are sent using Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES). We maintain our own suppression and bounce-handling processes on top of the infrastructure provider's protections, consistent with the practices described in this policy.

CAN-SPAM compliance statement

The Horizon Brief complies with the requirements of the US CAN-SPAM Act, including accurate header information, non-deceptive subject lines, clear identification of the message as an advertisement or newsletter where applicable, inclusion of our physical postal address, a clear and conspicuous unsubscribe mechanism, and prompt honoring of unsubscribe requests. Our postal address is:

[YOUR NAME] [YOUR ADDRESS]

Contact

Questions about this policy, or to report a suspected issue with one of our emails, can be sent to [email protected].