Mailchimp’s Transparency Reports

Guiding principles

Mailchimp is committed to maintaining user privacy and confidentiality. When we receive information requests, we carefully review each request to ensure it is valid and that the requestor is entitled to the data they seek.

You can find more information about our policies and practices in:

• our Terms of Use, which lays out the agreement between us and our users;
• our Privacy Policy, which explains how we collect, share, and use personal information, and how people can exercise their privacy rights; and
• our Information Request Policy, described below.

Requests for information

This report includes data about the information requests we received for user account information worldwide in 2019. For this report, an information request is any government or non-government legal request for information about a user or information from a user’s account. An information request may be made in a variety of ways, including but not limited to court orders, search warrants, and subpoenas.

Mailchimp’s information request policy and guidelines

We carefully consider all requests for information, and under our policies, we generally don’t provide a third party with information from an account that doesn’t belong to them. When legally obligated to do so, however, we’ll respond to a court order, subpoena, search warrant, or other proper legal process seeking information and records from a Mailchimp account¹.

Mailchimp uses certain guidelines when responding to any request for information, whether from a government or non-government entity:

• We strive to maintain user privacy and confidentiality.
• We ask that requestors provide as much information as possible to properly identify the correct user account(s). We will not respond to an information request unless we first have adequate and specific information, such as an email address, internet domain, username, IP address, or other similar information, to identify and locate the correct account(s).
• Absent a statutory exception under U.S. law, we only respond to valid U.S. legal process. This means legal process (such as subpoenas, discovery requests, or court orders) must be properly domesticated by a court of competent jurisdiction and issued in accordance with the applicable federal and/or state procedural rules before Mailchimp will respond.
• Mailchimp does not accept legal process or information requests directly from government entities outside the U.S. Foreign government entities should proceed through a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty or other available diplomatic or legal means to obtain information from Mailchimp.
• Where feasible, we ask requestors to seek information directly from account holders rather than from Mailchimp.

¹ United States statutes, including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (18 U.S.C. § 2510, et seq.) and the Stored Communications Act (18 U.S.C. §§ 2701-2712), may restrict the scope of information and records Mailchimp can disclose, and any response by Mailchimp will be in accordance with these statutes.

Definitions

Below you’ll see charts²; that contain records of the total number of information requests Mailchimp received in 2019. In these charts:

• “non-content data” means basic user information, such as name, physical and email address, user identification number, internet protocol address, login history, and billing information, and other non-content records about users or contacts;
• “content data” means information contained in electronic communications, such as email contents and email subject lines, and other user generated content, such as campaign names, audience and distribution list names, etc.;
• “preservation request” refers to a situation where Mailchimp has been asked to save account information temporarily that may be needed for litigation or other legal processes while the requestor proceeds with the necessary steps to obtain the valid legal process required lawfully to receive the requested information; and
• “informal request for information” refers to a situation where a third party who is not the account holder has asked Mailchimp to disclose information from a user account voluntarily.

²The data within this Transparency Report is as accurate and comprehensive as possible.

Government requests for user account information

We define government information requests as requests issued by or received from law enforcement and other government agencies (e.g., an Attorney General, the U.S. Department of Justice, a district attorney, etc.). Except in cases of emergency and when necessary to protect the safety of individuals and our platform, we do not voluntarily provide information to government agencies.

Below you’ll see a record of the number of government information requests Mailchimp received in 2019.

2019 Requests for Information from the U.S. Government

2019 Requests for Information from Foreign Governments

*Requests received from governmental agencies in India and Malta

We do not consider this to be Mailchimp’s data—rather, it’s our users’ information that we possess at a particular point in time. This approach aligns with our overall philosophy that we are stewards with an obligation to safeguard our users’ data.

Non-government requests for user account information

We frequently receive requests for user account information from non-government sources, such as litigants in a civil proceeding or parties involved in a business dispute. In these situations, we generally encourage the requestor first to seek the information they’re requesting through alternate means, such as directly from the user or through discovery from other parties in the underlying legal action.

However, when we receive valid subpoenas or other legal process, we’ll respond and provide information as required by law.

2019 Requests for Information from Non-Government Sources

2019 Requests for Information from Foreign, Non-Government Sources

*Requests received from private entities in Australia, France, and United Kingdom

³Request received from private entity in France

Enforcing our Terms of Use

When users sign up for an account with Mailchimp, they agree to our Standard Terms of Use (Terms), which includes our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). Under this agreement, Mailchimp reserves the right to, within our sole discretion, suspend or terminate accounts. Our primary focuses in enforcing our Terms are to protect our high email deliverability rates and ensure a functional, secure platform for all users.

Our Terms prohibit accounts from distributing offensive material, promoting anything illegal, whether goods or activities, or harassing anyone. This includes distributing pornography or sexually explicit content, as well as campaigns promoting or supporting terrorism or violent extremism.

Mailchimp uses a combination of automated and human-run detection systems to ensure our users are complying with our Terms and our AUP. These systems review account behavior and content users are sending or publishing. Our Terms require our users to ensure their compliance with applicable laws based on both where they and their contacts are located and how they’re using our digital marketing tools. While Mailchimp does not provide legal advice or make legal determinations, our abuse prevention and compliance systems can indicate which behavior or content may likely violate certain laws, and which can therefore be too risky for our platform and result in suspension or termination.

We’re proud of how well our Abuse Prevention and Compliance teams protect our users and our platform from malicious actors. Suspension or termination notices include information about how to contact our Compliance team to address the Terms violation(s) or dispute our decision. Our Compliance team thoughtfully considers any explanations and supplemental information provided by users in response to suspension or termination notices and in some cases will reverse their decision and reinstate an account. However, the majority of suspensions and terminations are upheld.

While the routine review process is very effective at detecting and addressing violations of our Terms, Mailchimp has additional processes for responding to new trends based on current events. In 2019, Mailchimp recognized that the rise in anti-vaccine material on platforms like ours posed a heightened risk to individuals and public health. As a result, we terminated 33 accounts for sending or disseminating anti-vaccine (also known as anti-vaxx) content. These accounts were either primarily dedicated to sending this type of content, or had established a pattern of frequent sending and publishing. These accounts were notified of their termination and were allowed to transfer their data, but were not allowed to use Mailchimp to communicate with their contacts further.

Combating Hate Speech and Misinformation

Following the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA, in 2017, Mailchimp updated our terms of use to clarify our rules around hate speech. In October 2020, we updated our terms to specify that misinformation, which we define as materially false, inaccurate, or misleading in a way that could deceive or confuse others about important events, topics, or circumstances, also violates our Standard Terms of Use. We won’t allow our technology and tools to be used in ways that can hurt people.

Mailchimp uses a combination of automated and human-run systems, including off-platform research, to identify and catch hate speech and potentially harmful misinformation, both before and after it’s been published to a channel through our platform, such as an email campaign, landing page, or website. Language is constantly changing and evolving, and keeping up with terminology remains a challenge.

In addition, many news outlets, journalists, and research organizations reporting on these topics use Mailchimp, and we don't want to restrict that. We take preventative measures to inhibit certain accounts from communicating with their audiences, as well as detection and enforcement measures that are triggered after content has been published to a channel through our platform. As a member of Tech Against Terrorism, we also pledge to balance our monitoring and compliance enforcement measures with a respect for the human right to free expression.

Finally, our internal platform abuse committee is a diverse group of employees from across the company representing a range of backgrounds and perspectives across the political spectrum. This committee provides guidance to our Abuse Prevention and Compliance teams as we review certain accounts and evolve our policies.

When our systems detect a violation of Section 17 of our Terms, we carefully review accounts’ campaign and publishing history, as well as related off-platform material in some cases. Once Mailchimp determines an account has violated our terms with hate speech, threats of violence, or potentially harmful misinformation, we notify users of the termination. As we shared above, while our Compliance team reads and considers responses from our users, due to the nature of these violations, nearly all terminations are upheld.

We hope this report has been useful. If you have questions, please contact legal@mailchimp.com.

Published October 1, 2020 by Mailchimp’s Communications and Corporate Affairs and Legal teams. Updated November 12, 2020.