Introduction
SAFE Hosting has created this Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) for hosting customers to protect our resources, and the resources of our customers and peering networks in order to provide a high speed network, high availability services and to ensure that SAFE Hosting complies with all relevant UK laws. This AUP must be read in conjunction with our General Terms of Service.
It is the responsibility of all customers of the SAFE Hosting network and services to ensure that they comply with the latest edition of the AUP at any given time.
This AUP may be revised, without notice, at any time, at the sole discretion of SAFE Hosting. Completion of the relevant application form, or connection to the service for the first time, is deemed to be an agreement to our Terms and Conditions and this AUP.
In the event of a breach of this policy, SAFE Hosting reserve the right to terminate all or part of any service with immediate effect, without recompense, and delete any files held on our servers.
If you have any questions about any of our policies, please contact the Customer Service Team.
Compliance with UK Law
It is an offence under UK law to transmit, receive or store certain types of files.
Customers may not use our services to engage in activities, or store, transfer or receive material of an indecent, offensive or otherwise illegal nature. Any such activities may result in prosecution by the UK authorities under the relevant Criminal Acts including, but not limited to, the Computer Misuse Act 1990, the Protection of Children Act 1978, the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and the Prevention of Harassment Act 1997.
It is also a criminal offence under UK law to knowingly infringe intellectual property rights, such as copyright, patents, database rights and registered trademarks. Customers are reminded that sharing copyright material through the use of peer-to-peer software may consequently constitute a criminal offence if done without permission of the right owner in question. SAFE Hosting will co-operate with any agency or rights holder wishing to assert their rights in these matters and SAFE Hosting reserve the right to withdraw service under such circumstances.
The Data Protection Act 1998 imposes numerous duties on any organisation that processes personal data relating to third parties. Failure to comply with many of these duties constitutes a criminal offence. Customers who are not merely processing personal data for domestic (including recreational) reasons are reminded of their likely duty to register with the Information Commissioner.
Under the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002, SAFE Hosting is in general not liable to any criminal or pecuniary penalty for any unlawful acts carried out using our service unless we have actual knowledge of those unlawful acts. Accordingly, if we become aware of credible evidence that a customer has carried out any unlawful acts, we will take preventative measures to bring those acts to an end.
Compliance with foreign law
The Internet is global in reach. Consequently, it is possible for anyone using the internet to break the laws of foreign countries. Customers are therefore advised to take all reasonable steps to avoid breaching relevant foreign laws.
Warranties and Disclaimers
Our service warranties and the extent of our liability are explained fully in our General Terms of Service.
By connecting to the SAFE Hosting network, customers agree to hold SAFE Hosting harmless in the event of any legal claim regarding our services.
Irresponsible usage
Customers acknowledge that they have a responsibility to ensure that their connection is not used in an irresponsible manner. SAFE Hosting deem irresponsible use of the services to include, but not be limited to, sending unsolicited email (“spamming”), attempting to breach the security of a 3rd party machine or if a service with unlimited or uncapped data usage is abused to the extent that it detrimentally affects other customer’s services.
Customers may not use SAFE Hosting’s web storage to host or link to torrents of any nature, for the archiving, back up or storage of the customer’s website or to back up any other device, the storing of streaming media or the storing of private media such as private photographs. The web storage may also not be used as a platform for sending or receiving emails and all files stored in the web storage must be http accessible.
Customers are advised that statistical analysis programs can be resource intensive and SAFE Hosting advises that only data relevant to the customer’s website should be stored. Customers are responsible for monitoring the resources used by statistical analysis packages, and for identifying and resolving any issues that may arise. In the event that a customer’s services are used for any purpose that SAFE Hosting deem irresponsible, then SAFE Hosting reserve the right to suspend the service while the usage is investigated in consultation with the customer. Should the investigation determine that the service has been used irresponsibly, SAFE Hosting reserve the right to terminate the customer’s account with immediate effect. Wherever possible the customer will be notified in advance of any termination.
Security and privacy
Login names and passwords must be kept secret and not be communicated to any third party. SAFE Hosting must be notified immediately if they are compromised. If a customer forgets or loses their password, they will need to contact support to have it changed.
Customers are responsible for all traffic that is sent from their server. It is therefore the customer’s responsibility to ensure that all software is virus-free and up-to-date with all relevant security patches. In particular, server software running on public-facing ports, such as mail servers, CRM systems and blogging software must not be remotely exploitable.
If SAFE Hosting find malicious traffic emanating from a customer’s server, SAFE Hosting have an obligation to our other customers and peering networks to take urgent measures to block that traffic. In many cases, this can be achieved by selective port blocking, but in other cases, this will involve disconnecting and suspending the account until the issue has been resolved. SAFE Hosting understand that in many cases a customer may not be responsible for or aware of the problem, and therefore SAFE Hosting will work with the customer to resolve the issue as efficiently as possible to restore normal service.
Proxy servers and services are not permitted on SAFE Hosting’s network under any circumstances.
Email and Email Marketing Service
Customers may not use SAFE Hosting services to send unsolicited commercial email (UCE, also known as ‘Spam’). SAFE Hosting will block the mail services of any customer found to be sending such mail. This applies to all emails sent by or on behalf of the customer directly and to any emails and/or SMS text messages sent as part of the Email Marketing Services.
Customers using the Email Marketing Services who receive an abnormally high rate of spam email reports may have their use of the Email Marketing Services suspended without notice.
Customers may not have ‘open mail relays’. SAFE Hosting will close the relay or connection of any customer found with an open mail relay.
Opt-in mailing lists are allowed, where it can be proved that subscribers did opt-in and that a suitable opt-out mechanism is available. Customers must ensure that the use and maintenance of any such lists are carried out in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998.
It is the customer’s responsibility to ensure that mail is regularly collected and removed from SAFE Hosting’s POP3 server. SAFE Hosting strongly advise against the use of the POP3 option to keep mail on the server. If a POP3 mailbox contains an excessive amount of mail, SAFE Hosting reserve the right to remove older mails from the mailbox to reduce its size. All emails stored on SAFE Hosting’s servers with a delete flag may be purged by SAFE Hosting at any time. Any emails held in ‘spam’ or ‘deleted’ folders may be deleted by SAFE Hosting where such email is over 30 days old.
Customers must access emails within 30 days of receipt, failing which the mailbox may be considered abandoned and SAFE Hosting reserves the right to delete such mailboxes.
Hosting (Shared)
By uploading to the services, the customer will be deemed to have accepted and agreed to SAFE Hosting’s General Terms of Service.
The customer will be responsible for the content of their website, including obtaining the legal permission for any works they include and ensuring that the contents of these pages do not violate UK law. SAFE Hosting reserve the right, without notice or explanation, to remove material which does not comply with this AUP or our Terms and Conditions, such as material of an adult nature or pirated software.
SAFE Hosting reserve the right to suspend any or all of the service at any time, without prior notice, explanation, or recompense.
Customers will be held solely responsible for any defamatory, confidential, secret or other proprietary material made available via their website. SAFE Hosting reserve the right to suspend any sites containing such material. Customers must be careful when using peer-to-peer networking software to ensure that they do not download or transfer material which they do not have the right to download or transfer.
You may not use our services in any way that would disrupt, impair, or interfere with our servers or with other customers’ use and enjoyment of our services. This includes, but is not limited to, employing applications such as Shoutcast and Minecraft utilities that consume excessive CPU time, memory or storage space. Any file you store on the Server will be reachable via a hyperlink from a page. Chat/IRC, web proxy and mailing list scripts are not allowed on our network under any circumstances. Streaming media can be a drain on web server resources, and, as such, is not allowed. CGI based message forums which use flat file databases are often found to use excessive system resources. To avoid disappointment, please use a PHP/ASP message forum. The use of web cam applications that maintain a constant FTP connection uploading an image at regular intervals is forbidden.
Should your use of our services result in an overly high load on our servers, at our sole discretion, we may suspend your account until the cause of any such overload is determined and resolved, or we may terminate your account if we believe that the situation cannot be satisfactorily resolved. Abuse of an “unlimited” service (e.g. bandwidth or hosting) to the extent that it detrimentally affects other customers’ services will be treated in the same manner; such abuse is to be assessed and decided upon at SAFE Hosting’s sole discretion. We ask customers who intend to use high volumes of data to first discuss their requirements with our Support Team.
Login names and passwords must be kept secret and not communicated to any third party, except for agencies, such as Webpage designers, working on the customer’s behalf. SAFE Hosting must be notified immediately if they are compromised. If someone were to gain access to a customer’s account password, they could tamper with files held on the customer’s website.
The customer has sole responsibility for ensuring that any data is suitably backed-up. SAFE Hosting will not keep backups of customers’ websites. SAFE Hosting will accept no responsibility whatsoever for loss of data or information resulting from the use of this service.
If the account is suspended for any reason, such as non-payment, access to the customer’s website, both for viewing and uploading, may also be suspended.
On closing an account, the relevant data on this Web space will be deleted.
Hosting (Dedicated)
By uploading to a SAFE Hosting dedicated server, the customer will be deemed to have accepted and agreed to SAFE Hosting’s General Terms of Service.
The customer will be responsible for the content on their server, including obtaining the legal permission for any works they include and ensuring that the content on the server does not violate UK law. SAFE Hosting reserve the right, without notice or explanation, to remove from the network a server which does not comply with this AUP or our Terms and Conditions, such as one storing material of an adult nature or pirated software.
SAFE Hosting reserve the right to remove a server from the network if it is deemed to be causing excessive load or traffic, is adversely affecting the performance of other servers on the network, or is being abused by an external entity. It is the customer’s responsibility to ensure that their scripts are not vulnerable to these problems.
The customer agrees not to advertise their Website via unsolicited commercial email. SAFE Hosting reserve the right to suspend a site which has been ‘spamvertised’ at any time.
SAFE Hosting do not impose quotas for data transfer on dedicated servers. However, if a customer is using an excessively high volume of bandwidth for data transfer, SAFE Hosting reserve the right to revert to its terms and conditions and impose a charge for high usage. We ask customers who intend to use high volumes of bandwidth for data transfer to first discuss their requirement with their dedicated Account Manager.
Customers will be held solely responsible for any defamatory, confidential, secret or other proprietary material made available via their dedicated server. SAFE Hosting reserve the right to remove from the network any server containing such material. Customers must be careful when using peer-to-peer networking software to ensure that they do not download or transfer material which they do not have the right to download or transfer.
Login names and passwords must be kept secret and not communicated to any third party, except for agencies, such as Webpage designers, working on the customer’s behalf. SAFE Hosting must be notified immediately if they are compromised. If someone were to gain access to a customer’s account password, they could tamper with files held on the customer’s server.
The customer is ultimately responsible for ensuring that their site is suitably backed-up.
If the account is suspended for any reason, such as non-payment, access to the server may be suspended.
On closing an account, the data on the dedicated server will be deleted.
Hosting (Premium Hosting)
By uploading to the services, the customer will be deemed to have accepted and agreed to SAFE Hosting’s General Terms of Service.
The customer will be responsible for the content of their website, including obtaining the legal permission for any works they include and ensuring that the contents of these pages do not violate UK law. SAFE Hosting reserves the right, without notice or explanation, to remove material which does not comply with this AUP or our General Terms of Service, such as material of an adult nature or pirated software.
SAFE Hosting reserves the right to suspend any or all of the service at any time, without prior notice, explanation, or recompense.
Customers will be held solely responsible for any defamatory, confidential, secret or other proprietary material made available via their website. SAFE Hosting reserve the right to suspend any sites containing such material. Customers must be careful when using peer-to-peer networking software to ensure that they do not download or transfer material which they do not have the right to download or transfer.
You may not use our services in any way that would disrupt, impair, or interfere with our servers or with other customers’ use and enjoyment of our services. This includes, but is not limited to, employing applications such as Shoutcast and Minecraft utilities that consume excessive CPU time, memory or storage space. Any file you store on the Server must be reachable via a hyperlink from a page. Chat/IRC, web proxy and mailing list scripts are not allowed on our network under any circumstances. Streaming media can be a drain on web server resources and, as such, is not allowed. CGI based message forums which use flat file databases are often found to use excessive system resources. To avoid disappointment, please use a PHP/ASP message forum. The use of web cam applications that maintain a constant FTP connection uploading an image at regular intervals is forbidden.
References to “unlimited” in respect of Premium Hosting products are to be read in conjunction with the restrictions as to Irresponsible usage as set out above.
Should your use of our services result in an overly high load on our servers, at our sole discretion, we may suspend your account until the cause of any such overload is determined and resolved, or we may terminate your account if we believe that the situation cannot be satisfactorily resolved. Abuse of an “unlimited” service (e.g. bandwidth or hosting) to the extent that it detrimentally affects other customers’ services will be treated in the same manner, such abuse to be assessed and decided upon at SAFE Hosting’s sole discretion. We ask customers who intend to use high volumes of data to first discuss their requirements with our Support Team.
Login names and passwords must be kept secret and not communicated to any third party, except for agencies, such as Webpage designers, working on the customer’s behalf. SAFE Hosting must be notified immediately if they are compromised. If someone were to gain access to a customer’s account password, they could tamper with files held on the customer’s website.
The customer has sole responsibility for ensuring that any data is suitably backed-up. SAFE Hosting will not keep backups of customers’ websites. SAFE Hosting will accept no responsibility whatsoever for loss of data or information resulting from the use of this service.
If the account is suspended for any reason, such as non-payment, access to the customer’s website, both for viewing and uploading, may also be suspended. On closing an account, the relevant data on this Web space will be deleted.
Attempted security breaches
Any attempt to breach the security of any machine is forbidden. Attempting to do so will result in immediate account termination and possible further legal action. Users may not run any program that monitors network packet data or any program that compromises the privacy of network traffic.
It should be noted that attempting to breach security may lead to prosecution under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 or any other relevant criminal legislation.
Attempts to circumvent copy protection technology and encryption are also likely to be illegal under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended).
Non-Specific
Customers may not mount an attack, by whatever means, against our system, or any other systems. Customers may not run unauthorised mailing lists from or through any of our machines or mail servers.
Any IP addresses assigned to customers are owned by SAFE Hosting.
When using a quota-based service, it is the customer’s responsibility to remain within their usage quota. Depending on the service in question, SAFE Hosting reserves the right to charge additional fees for use above any quota and/or delete files for over-quota users if disk space is affecting the normal running of the server.
Using the Services for any activity which adversely affects the ability of other people or systems to use SAFE Hosting’s Services or the Internet is prohibited; this includes “denial of service” (DoS) attacks against another network host or individual user. Interference with, or disruption of, other network users, network services or network equipment is prohibited. It is the customer’s responsibility to ensure that their network is configured in a secure manner. A customer may not, through action or inaction, allow others to use their network for illegal or inappropriate actions. A customer may not permit their network, through action or inaction, to be configured in such a way that gives a third party the capability to use their network in an illegal or inappropriate manner.
A SAFE Hosting affiliate is not eligible to earn commission from products purchased for their own use, whether by clicking through a banner they have placed upon their own website, or by clicking on another website’s SAFE Hosting affiliate banner.