# Email Permission: Legal Requirements and Best Practices
Permission to send emails to the contacts on your list is extremely important. Without permission from your contacts you risk the following:

- The emails you send may be classified as spam by ISPs or recipients
- Violating our Terms of Use and Anti-Spam policies and those pertinent to your country. Your account can be terminated as a result
- Violating anti-spam laws and could get sued for doing so
- Generating complaints, resulting in IPs getting blocked at major ISPs all over the world
- Getting blacklisted for sending spam, which could filter down to your own domain and/or your hosting provider. If this happens, your hosting provider could terminate your account and you could lose your website, email and hosting service

## Related Articles

- [Permission-Based Email Marketing: Why It Matters](./permission-based-email-marketing-why-it-matters)
- [Why Purchased Email Lists Hurt Your Business](../list-building/why-purchased-email-lists-hurt-your-business)
- [GDPR and Email Marketing: What You Need to Know](./gdpr-and-email-marketing-what-you-need-to-know)