Privacy policy

This is a convenience translation. Only the German version is legally binding.

Controller

Scope

This policy applies to this website and to the customer portal at my.mailbridge.email. Where something relates to only one of the two, this is stated in the relevant section. For the emails that you yourself send through our relay, we act as a processor. We do not analyze the content of your emails and store it only while delivery is in progress, for at most 5 days. We log sender, recipient and delivery status for 30 days so that you can trace in the portal what happened to an email; the mail server's technical log is rotated by size and may reach back further when little mail is sent. This is governed by the data processing agreement (DPA, German AVV); you conclude it after signing in to the portal under “Data protection & DPA” and download it there together with our technical and organisational measures (TOM).

Privacy at a glance

This website processes as little data as possible. No cookies are set, no scripts or content are loaded from third-party servers, and no third-party analytics services are integrated. Fonts and all other resources are delivered from our own server in Germany. The guide articles list their sources at the end, for example statutory texts and technical standards. These links do not load anything: only when you click one of them do you leave our site, and from then on the privacy policy of the respective provider applies. We evaluate how often each page is accessed exclusively on our own server, from the access log; your IP address is not included in the statistics (see “Audience measurement”). The governing law is the GDPR and the German Telecommunications Digital Services Data Protection Act (Telekommunikation-Digitale-Dienste-Datenschutz-Gesetz, TDDDG).

Hosting

This website, the customer portal at my.mailbridge.email and the relay servers that handle your sending are operated at Hetzner Online GmbH, Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, Germany. The servers are located exclusively in Germany, distributed across the data centers in Nuremberg and Falkenstein. We have concluded a data processing agreement (DPA) with this provider pursuant to Art. 28 GDPR; Hetzner is therefore our subprocessor, including for the processing of your emails, in which we ourselves act as a processor. No processing takes place in third countries. The legal basis for operating the website is our legitimate interest in providing it securely and reliably (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR); for sending through the relay, it is our contract with you (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR) and the data processing agreement.

The information security management system of Hetzner Online GmbH is certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022. According to the certificate, its scope covers all hosting services and the data centers; the two locations named above are listed in the annex to the certificate. The certificate was issued by SOCOTEC Certification Deutschland under number ZN-2025-35 and is valid until September 26, 2028. LOGIN SystemHaus GmbH itself is not certified to ISO 27001.

SSL/TLS encryption

For security reasons, this website uses SSL or TLS encryption. You can recognize an encrypted connection by the address bar of your browser showing “https://” and a lock icon. Data you transmit to us cannot be read by third parties in transit.

Cookies

This website does not set any cookies, neither necessary nor optional ones. Consent under § 25 TDDDG is therefore not required; there is no cookie banner for you to dismiss here.

Server log files

When you access the website, our web server automatically processes technically necessary data: IP address, date and time of the request, page accessed, browser type and browser version, operating system used, and referrer URL. This data is used to provide and secure the service, to analyze errors, and for audience measurement to the extent described below (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). It is not combined with other data sources. We delete the log files themselves after 30 days at the latest; in practice, they are overwritten after about seven days.

Language selection

The website is available in German and in English. When you arrive at a page from outside the website, our web server selects the version based on the language setting that your browser sends with every request anyway, and redirects you to the other version if necessary. If you click “EN” or “DE” within the website, your choice is kept; the server recognizes this from the referrer URL of our own page. Nothing is stored for this purpose and no cookie is set. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in showing you the page in a language you understand (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Audience measurement

We want to know which pages are read and how visitors find their way to us. For this purpose, we evaluate the log data mentioned above on our own server. No third-party service is used, no script is executed in your browser, and no cookies are set and no other information is stored on or read from your device. Consent under § 25 TDDDG is therefore not required.

We include the following in the statistics: page accessed, time, origin (referrer without its search parameters), browser family and operating system family without version numbers, device type, and country, region and city. The geographic assignment takes place locally on our server using a database stored with us; your IP address is not transmitted to anyone in the process.

We do not store your IP address in the statistics. To distinguish returning visits from new ones, we generate a hash value from the IP address and the browser identifier using a secret key that changes daily. The IP address cannot be derived from this value, and because the key changes daily, recognition beyond the same day is ruled out. No link to an identifiable person is established, nor are we able to establish one. The statistics data is deleted after 30 days.

If your browser sends the “Do Not Track” or “Global Privacy Control” signal, your visit is not included in the statistics. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in designing our offering according to demand (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). You can object to this processing at any time (see “Right to object”).

DNS record check tools

At mailbridge.email/en/tools/ you can have the DNS records of a domain checked, namely SPF, DKIM and DMARC. As long as you do not enter anything and do not click “Check”, nothing happens: the page does not load any further content and sends nothing to our server. Only when you click does your browser transmit the domain name you entered to us.

We use it to query the publicly available DNS records of this domain and show you the result. Only public DNS data is queried. We do not see any emails or content, and we do not access anything that anyone could not query anyway.

We do not store the domain name you enter. We do not keep a list of checked domains. The check result is kept in our server’s memory for five minutes so that a second check of the same domain does not trigger new queries, and is discarded afterwards. Requests to the check tool are not written to the access log described above under “Server log files”, and they are not included in the statistics. If you share a result, the domain appears only in the part of the address after the hash sign (#), and browsers, as a rule, do not transmit this part to servers.

To prevent the tool from being misused for mass queries, we limit the number of requests per IP address. For this purpose, the server keeps the IP address in memory for the duration of the time window of one minute or one hour, respectively, and discards it afterwards. There is no permanent storage and no usage profile is created.

The same applies to the SPF record generator at mailbridge.email/en/tools/spf-record-generator.html. Only when you click “Read existing record” or “Generate record” does your browser transmit the domain to us, and when generating, also the hosts, IP addresses and other terms you entered. We use these entries only to build the SPF record and check its DNS lookups. Neither the domain nor your entries are stored: the record that was read stays in memory for five minutes, like a check result, and the generated record is not kept at all. These requests are not written to the access log either, are not included in the statistics, and count against the same per-IP limit as the check tool.

The legal basis is our legitimate interest in providing a functioning service and in protecting it against misuse (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). The tool does not set any cookies.

Report by email

With the check tool, you can choose to have the result sent to you by email. For this we need your address. We first send a confirmation email with a link, and only when you open this link do we check the domain again and send the report. This intermediate step is necessary so that nobody can enter other people’s addresses and cause us to send unsolicited email to third parties.

Until confirmation, we store the address, domain, time, IP address and a hash value of the confirmation link. The link is valid for 24 hours and can only be used once. If you do not confirm, we delete the request completely once these 24 hours have expired. If you confirm, we delete it after 30 days.

Unless you explicitly tick the box, your address therefore does not stay with us. You receive the report, and after that the request is gone. The legal basis for this part is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR, because you requested the delivery yourself, and otherwise our legitimate interest in securing the process (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

If, when requesting the report, you also tick the box for being contacted, we store your address on an ongoing basis, together with the time, the wording of the consent, the IP address and the checked domain. We need this to be able to prove your consent. The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). You can withdraw it at any time without giving reasons: every email contains an unsubscribe link, and one click is enough. After you withdraw your consent, we delete your address within 30 days. If we hear nothing from you for two years and have not contacted you during this time, we delete it on our own initiative.

The emails are sent through our own servers in Germany. We do not pass your address on to anyone, and we do not use it for third-party advertising.

Contact by email or phone

If you contact us by email or phone, we process your details to handle your inquiry. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR if your inquiry relates to the initiation or performance of a contract, and otherwise our legitimate interest in handling inquiries effectively (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). The data remains in Germany and is deleted when you ask us to delete it or the purpose of storage no longer applies. Mandatory statutory retention periods remain unaffected.

Inquiries to our mailboxes

If you write to one of our addresses, such as start@mailbridge.email or hilfe@mailbridge.email, we import this email into our portal so that we can process and answer it there. We store the sender and recipient, subject, text, technical headers and attachments, along with our replies and notes on the case. This way, everyone involved can see at a glance what has already happened with your inquiry, and nobody has to ask twice.

For this purpose, we create a contact record in which the address, name, company and history are brought together. For existing customers, this contact is linked to the customer account. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR if the inquiry relates to the initiation or performance of a contract, and otherwise our legitimate interest in handling your inquiry (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

We do not delete business correspondence automatically, because retention obligations under commercial law may apply to it. A contact that never led to an exchange is deleted automatically after 24 months, along with everything attached to it. If you ask us to delete it, we delete your contact together with the entire history, unless a statutory retention obligation prevents this.

When we answer an inquiry, we may save the text temporarily before it is sent, so that work in progress is not lost. Such a draft contains recipients, subject, text and attachments. It is deleted as soon as the email is sent or the draft is discarded, and at the latest after 180 days without editing.

We do not load images in incoming emails when displaying them. This way, no sender learns whether and when we opened their email; in the other direction, we do not use tracking pixels in our own emails either.

Product news and operational notices to customers

As a customer, you receive two kinds of bulk emails from us. Operational notices concern your sending, for example a planned maintenance window or an outage. They are part of the contract, and you cannot unsubscribe from them, because otherwise you would not learn about an interruption of your own sending. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.

Product news is advertising for our own services. We send it to the address you provided and confirmed when registering or when accepting an invitation. The legal basis is § 7(3) of the German Unfair Competition Act (Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb, UWG) in conjunction with our legitimate interest in informing our customers about our own similar services (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). We inform you of this when you set up your access, and every such email contains an unsubscribe link; one click is enough, without giving reasons and without any costs other than the transmission costs. You can also unsubscribe at any time in your account settings.

After you unsubscribe, you will no longer receive product news. You will continue to receive operational notices and emails about your account, such as billing notices or a password reset. To be able to honor your objection permanently, we keep a record of the unsubscription. For this, we do not store an address, only a hash value generated with a secret key, from which the address cannot be derived. We keep this entry permanently: if we deleted it, the advertising channel would be open again, and that is precisely what Art. 21(3) GDPR requires us to prevent. The entry contains no address and no name.

We do not use addresses from our customers’ sending logs for bulk emails. They belong to our customers’ customers, and we act only as a processor for them. Likewise, we do not contact agencies’ end clients; they do not have access to our service.

For each bulk email, we store how many recipients it was sent to, on which legal basis, and whether delivery succeeded. We keep the details of the mailing for 36 months, because we must be able to prove that it was lawful. We delete the text of the email after 12 months and its attachments after 6 months; the subject, date and number of recipients remain. We delete the recipient address from this record 90 days after sending; after that, the record only shows that the email was sent to one person on a specific legal basis, without naming anyone.

If your mail server permanently refuses to accept such an email, we make a note of this and stop sending bulk emails to that address. You will see a notice about this in your account settings so that you can check the address. We continue trying to deliver emails about your account, because otherwise you could no longer access your account.

Blocklist of undeliverable recipients

For customers, we maintain a list in the portal of recipient addresses to which delivery permanently failed. It is built from the bounce messages of the customer’s own sending and contains the address, the reason, the date and the number of attempts. Only final failures are added: an unknown address or a non-existent domain. Temporary errors such as a full mailbox, and rejections that concern our sending rather than the address, are not added to the list.

These addresses belong to our customers’ customers; we act as a processor for them, and the legal basis for the processing lies with the customer. For us, it is the performance of our contract with the customer (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). We do not use these addresses for anything else, in particular not for our own bulk emails.

The list is for information and does not block anything: we do not hold back any email, but show the customer which addresses are dead so that they can remove them from their own system. Each address can be released again individually. If there is no new delivery attempt, we delete an entry after 24 months; when the customer account is deleted, the entire list is deleted with it.

Abuse detection

To keep our relays from being misused for spam or phishing, we derive metrics per SMTP access from the delivery logs every five minutes: volumes, delivery status, number of recipient domains, share of freemail recipients, categories of rejection reasons, and submitting networks as a non-reversible hash. Recipient addresses, plain IP addresses and content are not part of this. We also check new sender domains for resemblance to well-known brands, their age, and listings in the Spamhaus Domain Blocklist. The assessment follows fixed rules; borderline cases may be triaged by a language model on our own server at Hetzner in Germany, using pseudonymised metrics only. No data goes to any further provider.

If the assessment shows a clear breach of the terms of use, we pause sending for the account. A staff member reviews the case within one business day and decides; the pause can be fully reversed. The portal shows you that your account is on hold for review, and you can contact us about it at any time. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in a sending service that is not misused for fraud and spam (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). We delete the metrics after 30 days and records of confirmed abuse after 12 months.

Customer account and contract data

For your account in the portal, we store the company name, contact address, the users with their names and email addresses, your projects, sender domains and SMTP credentials, and the status of your contract. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR, because we need this data to perform the contract, and for the billing records Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR.

When the business relationship ends, we delete the account. We do this in two steps and notify you in advance.

After termination, your account becomes dormant from the end of the paid period: sending stops, but you can still log in to the portal. 90 days after the end of the contract, we lock the account and mark it for deletion; after another 7 days, we delete it along with everything attached to it. Before that, we write to you twice and state the date.

After a trial without a subscription, your account also becomes dormant. In this case, it is 30 days until the account is locked and marked for deletion, and then likewise 7 days until deletion. The period is shorter because without a subscription there is no contractual relationship that would justify longer retention. Here, too, we notify you of the deletion twice.

If you subscribe during this time, the deletion mark is removed and your account is kept in full. Only what has been announced in advance is deleted.

Your invoices are held by our payment service provider and remain available there. They are subject to their own statutory retention periods of up to ten years (§ 147 of the German Fiscal Code, Abgabenordnung, AO; § 257 of the German Commercial Code, Handelsgesetzbuch, HGB; § 14b of the German VAT Act, Umsatzsteuergesetz, UStG); deleting your portal account does not affect them. Business correspondence that may be subject to retention obligations under commercial law is likewise retained.

Fonts

To display this website, we use fonts that are stored locally on our own server. External services such as Google Fonts are not integrated; no connection to third-party servers is established when the fonts are loaded.

Storage period

Unless a more specific period is stated in this privacy policy, personal data remains with us until the purpose of the processing no longer applies, or until you submit a legitimate request for deletion or withdraw your consent. The data is then deleted, unless statutory retention obligations (e.g., retention periods under tax or commercial law) prevent this.

Right to object (Art. 21 GDPR)

If the processing of your data is based on Art. 6(1)(e) or (f) GDPR, you have the right to object to the processing at any time on grounds relating to your particular situation. We will then no longer process the data concerned, unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override your interests, rights and freedoms, or the processing serves the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims.

Your other rights

You have the right to obtain information about your stored data free of charge, and the rights to rectification, erasure, restriction of processing and data portability (Art. 15–20 GDPR). You can withdraw any consent you have given at any time with effect for the future. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, e.g., the Hessian Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (Der Hessische Beauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit).