We value your trust and work hard to protect your information
When you use our services you entrust us with your valuable information. We have made it a priority to protect your data and to provide you with choices about controlling it. We understand that there are particular concerns from companies in the EU about how we use and protect your data, so we put this page together as a guide to answer some of the most common questions you may have.
For detailed information about our security and privacy practices, you can view our privacy policy and data processing addendum. Below are some highlights.
Postmark's primary data and servers are hosted at Deft's data center (located outside of Chicago), and Amazon Web Services (AWS). We currently don't have plans to add servers in the EU (GDPR does not require physical servers in the EU).
A DuPont Fabros facility, the Deft data center is SOC 2 Type 2 accredited and includes keycard protocols, biometric scanning protocols and round-the-clock surveillance. Our environment is colocated, meaning we have full control of the physical environment and only our policies affect the access and use of the hardware, network and software. We provide multiple levels of backups and redundancy to ensure uptime and peace of mind. Data transferred from our customers to our servers is encrypted via SSL that is configured to meet or exceed all industry standards. Cold data at rest is encrypted with 2048-bit RSA.
Even though Postmark itself has not undergone a SOC audit, our data center has. We can provide a copy of the SOC report for the data center after completing an NDA.
The Amazon Web Services infrastructure puts strong safeguards in place to help protect customer privacy. All data is stored in highly secure AWS data centers. For a detailed overview of all security and privacy measures, see the AWS Cloud Security page. For a list of all current security accreditations, see the AWS Compliance Programs page.
For even more detailed information about our security practices, you can review this help doc.
As described on our feature pages, Postmark collects and retains content and metadata for all emails for 45 days to give customers the ability to access their full message history during that time.
After 45 days, original email content and metadata are removed from our system. Bounces, spam complaints and unsubscribed recipients are stored indefinitely in a Streams Suppression list for reporting and list hygiene.
In 2016, the European Commission approved and adopted the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). GDPR is a significant change in data protection regulation in the EU and replaces the existing legal framework (the Data Protection Directive and the various member state laws). It came into effect on May 25, 2018.
GDPR adds some new requirements regarding how companies should protect individuals' data that they process. It also raises the stakes for compliance by increasing enforcement and imposing greater fines for breaches.
Our compliance, data protection, and information security teams work hard to align our services with GDPR. In our role as the Data Processor of your customer and end user information, we have provided a Data Processing Agreement, meeting with the requirements of GDPR. You can find it here.
We have worked hard to meet our obligations as a processor under Article 28 of GDPR. To this end:
We have also updated our terms of service and privacy policy to provide greater transparency about our practices and help you pass that forward to your customers and end-users.
As guidance about specific aspects of GDPR continues to be published, we will also continue our efforts to fine-tune and improve our compliance.
Like the Data Protection Directive that preceded it, GDPR includes provisions on international data transfer mechanisms. In order to comply with these provisions, we have worked with legal counsel to create a standard Data Processing Addendum (DPA), which meets with GDPR requirements for agreements between Data Controllers (you) and Data Processors (us).
Our DPA includes the new Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) for cross border transfers. It also outlines in detail our current security practices. To receive and sign a copy of our DPA, please visit the Data Processing Addendum tab on this page.
For our full response to the Schrems II Judgment (Privacy Shield invalidation), you can view this blog post.
No. Under GDPR a company is allowed to transfer personal data outside of the EU provided that it puts in place a mechanism, approved under GDPR, to make sure that personal data is adequately protected even when it is transferred outside of the EU. We offer a Data Processing Addendum (DPA) with updated Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) to all customers.
If you have an account with us, you may access, correct, or request that we delete your personal data by contacting us at [email protected].
This request can include personal data of other individuals, like your employees or customers that you have provided to us and who have requested this of you. We will respond to these requests within 14 days or less, which is well within the GDPR requirement of 30 days.
Automate data removal requests
If you’re looking to process data removal requests (also “the right to be forgotten”), you have two options to automate this process:
Ensure your client data is secure and automatically deleted upon request with our Data Removal API. With this endpoint, you can easily erase recipient data from a specific account and review the status of your data removal requests. Since this endpoint erases data, we have it turned off by default - reach out to us in support and we can enable it for your account.
Simplify this process even further by purchasing the Retention Add-On and deciding how long Postmark keeps your data. By default, Postmark stores message content and activity data for 45 days, but with this add-on, you can decrease your data retention and make sure Postmark will purge all customer data after 7 or 28 days. This is a great option for all senders who frequently deal with DSR requests under GDPR and want to put compliance on auto-pilot.
We chose the UK as a reasonable location for GDPR enforcement. The UK is hoping for a unique status under GDPR and are working towards it. For the time being the UK has declared it will be GDPR compliant and its new data protection bill is in line with GDPR.
We are happy to answer any questions and address any concerns regarding how we protect your personal data in general, as well as specifically under GDPR. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us at [email protected].
Please note that as of September 27, 2021, our updated Terms of Service incorporate our DPA with new SCCs. It is therefore no longer necessary to obtain a signed copy of our DPA. However, if your organization requires it, we do offer the ability to sign a copy of our DPA here.
To ensure no inconsistent or additional terms are imposed on us beyond that reflected in our standard DPA and standard contractual clauses, we cannot agree to sign customers’ DPAs. As a small team we also can’t make individual changes to our DPA since we don't have a legal team on staff. Any changes to the standard DPA would require legal counsel and a lot of back and forth discussion that would be cost prohibitive for our team.
Once you complete this form, the addendum will be signed electronically by both parties and a signed copy will be emailed to you. Drop us a line if you have any questions.
We share certain information with companies that may be considered our "sub-processors" under GDPR. This information is limited to the following:
Below is a full list of our sub-processors.
| Company | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Deft (formerly known as ServerCentral) | Infrastructure hosting |
| Amazon Web Services | Cloud infrastructure hosting |
If you would like to be notified when we start working with a new company that may be considered a "sub-processor", you can sign up below. We will only use your email to send notifications about new sub-processors.
