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HOME / Legal Information / Acceptable Using Policy

Acceptable Usage Policy

In order to provide a professional service, we have set up a few guidelines for users of our service. Some of these guidelines may seem strict, but they ensure a safe, functional, and trusted environment for all our customers to publish their information on the Web.

Many of our competitors do not require their customers to comply with these guidelines. If any of our potential customers are unwilling or unable to comply with these guidelines, we respectfully invite them to visit one of our competitors.

Use Of Our Service

Whether directly or indirectly using our services, constitutes your acceptance of these terms and agreement to abide by them. We reserve the right to amend or adjust these terms at any time, though we'll do our best to notify you in advance. Your continued use of our services constitutes your acceptance of any changes we make.

Any client using the services of Affordable Domains has by action of acceptance agreed to all terms and policies set forth. You are solely and fully responsible for the content of your account. Any and all repercussions will be borne solely by you as the account holder.

And whilst we don't want to make a whole pile of rules, in essence if you obey the laws of the country or state in which your hosting server is located we shouldn't have any problems. However, there are certain things we will not tolerate and these need to be spelt out in plain English.

Things We Will Not Tolerate

You may not publish/host any material that is grossly offensive, including , exploitation of children, blatant expressions of bigotry, hatred, harassment, defamation, or invasion of privacy.

Obscene publications* include but not limited to Child Pornography, Beastality, golden/scat (NZ), abduction/rape/snuff films.

Hacking, cracking, piracy, phreaking, phishing, scamming, warez, pyrotechnics, exploitive software or text that educates or encourages this activity and/or use.

Anything Tor related Eg: Tor hidden servers, exit nodes, relays, directories.

You may not store or index any material that violates or infringes on the copyright, intellectual property rights or trademark rights of any individual or organisation, this includes housing a seed box for torrenting infringing content or any hosting of ROMs or Emulators.

IRC clients are OK. If you attract attention to yourself by spamming or getting DDoS'd your service will be terminated immediately. If we find that your hosting server is being used to direct/control any botnet, malicious content or traffic it will also be terminated immediately.

You are solely and fully responsible for the content of your account. Any and all repercussions will be borne solely by you as the account holder.

Denial Of Service

Any activity to implement or assist in the implementation of denial of service attack. Affordable Domains absolutely prohibits the use of Services for the origination, propagation or control of denial of service attacks ("DoS") or distributed denial of service attacks ("DDoS"). Customers may not utilise the Services to perform DoS or DDoS mitigation activities (such as service proxying or data scrubbing) which may result in attracting inbound denial of service attacks toward the Services. Any relation to DoS or DDoS type activity is a direct violation of Affordable Domains's AUP.

Server Abuse

Any attempts to undermine or cause harm to a Affordable Domains server or subscriber of Affordable Domains is strictly prohibited including, but not limited to:

  • Logging into a server or account that you are not authorised to access.
  • Accessing data or taking any action to obtain services or information not intended for you or your use without the consent of the owner.
  • Tampering, hacking, modifying, or otherwise corrupting or breaching security or authentication measures without proper authorisation.
  • Transmitting material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines or engines with the intent or effect of damaging, destroying, disrupting or otherwise impairing a computers functionality or the operation of the Affordable Domains's systems.
  • Monitoring data or traffic on any network or system without the express authorisation of the owner of the system or network.
  • Interfering with, intercepting or expropriating any system, data or information which you do not have the right to access.
  • Interfering with service to any user, host or network including, without limitation, by means of overloading, "flooding", "mail bombing", or "crashing" any computer system.

You agree that we may quarantine or delete any data stored on the Affordable Domains network if the data is infected with a virus, or is otherwise corrupted, and has the potential to infect or corrupt the network or other customers data that is stored on the network.

Email Usage Policies

Affordable Domains does not support unsolicited email messages sent by users of our system ( also known as junk email or spam ). Users sending unsolicited email messages from our system will have all of their services temporarily suspended. They will then be contacted by Affordable Domains and informed of the suspension before having their services reinstated. A repeated offence may cause cancellation of service without refund of any fees. Affordable Domains does not allow any hosting account to give out free or paid email hosting on a public level. Reseller accounts are exempt from this, however spam guidelines still apply. It is up to the reseller to monitor and control outgoing junk email / spam.

Fraudulent Activities

Affordable Domains prohibits utilising dedicated services or network services for fraudulent activities. Participation in fraudulent activities is in direct violation of state and federal law and Affordable Domains's AUP.

Violation of Intellectual Property Rights

The Services and/or Third Party Services shall not be used to publish, submit/receive, upload/download, post, use, copy or otherwise reproduce, transmit, retransmit, distribute or store any content/material or to engage in any activity that infringes, misappropriates or otherwise violates the intellectual property rights or privacy or publicity rights of Affordable Domains or any other party, including but not limited to any rights protected by any copyright, patent, trademark laws, trade secret, trade dress, right of privacy, right of publicity, moral rights or other intellectual property right now known or later recognised by statute, judicial decision or regulation.

Distribution Of Malware

Affordable Domains prohibits the storage, distribution, fabrication, or use of malware including virus software, root kits, password crackers, adware, keystroke capture programs and other programs normally used in malicious activity. The use of such programs in the normal ordinary course of business, however, may be requested by Customer and approved by Affordable Domains on a case by case basis. Example: Security company using the Services to analyse the latest root kit for new security analysis/software.

Phishing

Affordable Domains strictly prohibits any activity associated with phishing or systems designed to collect personal information (name, account numbers, user names, passwords, etc.) under false pretense. Splash pages, phishing forms, email distribution, proxy email or any relation to phishing activities will result in immediate removal or suspension of Customers account.

Vulnerability Monitoring and Testing

You may not attempt to probe, scan, penetrate or test the vulnerability of a Affordable Domains system, subsystem or network or to attempt to breach security or authentication measures, whether by passive or intrusive techniques, without Affordable Domains's express written consent.

IP Address Usage

You may only use IP addresses assigned to you by Affordable Domains in connection with your Affordable Domains Services. You agree that if the Affordable Domains IP addresses assigned to your account are listed on an abuse database, you will be in violation of this AUP, and Affordable Domains may take reasonable action to protect its IP addresses, including suspension and/or termination of your Service, regardless of whether the IP addresses were listed as a result of your actions.

Bulk Mail

You may not use any Affordable Domains Service to send Bulk Mail. Bulk Mail means email messages of similar content that are sent to more than two hundred and fifty (250) recipients. Attempts to circumvent this restriction by breaking up bulk email over time, using multiple accounts, or other means will be a violation of this restriction. A mail message sent to other users within your domain names hosted on the Affordable Domains system is not considered Bulk Mail.

Unsolicited Mail

You may not send unsolicited email. Email is unsolicited if you have no pre-existing relationship with the recipient, unless the recipient has published or otherwise provided his or her email address in a manner which implies consent to receive the email. You may not send email of any kind to a person who has indicated that they do not wish to receive it. This prohibition includes the direct sending and receiving of such messages, support of such messages via web page, splash page or other related sites, or the advertisement of such services. The falsifying of packet header, sender, or user information whether in whole or in part to mask the identity of the sender, originator or point of origin or knowingly deleting any author attributions, legal notices or proprietary designations or labels in a file that the Customer mails or sends. Any such email shall comply with all laws and regulations, including without limitation, The Unsolicated Electronic Messages Act 2007 (the UEM SPAM Act).

Message Source

You may not obscure the source of your email in any manner, including by intentionally omitting, forging, or misrepresenting messages headers or return addresses.

Blacklisting/Retaliation

Affordable Domains may terminate your Services if your email address or related IP number(s) is/are blacklisted by any third-party, or Affordable Domains is retaliated against as a result of your use of the mail system, regardless of whether you are in breach of this AUP or are otherwise at fault.

UseNet SPAM

The use of dedicated services to send, receive, forward, or post UseNet unsolicited email or posts is a direct violation of Affordable Domains's AUP. This includes UseNet services located within the Affordable Domains network or unrelated third party networks.

Illegal Activities

Customers caught using our system for illegal activities, including but not limited to breaking into remote systems, credit card fraud, theft, vandalism, threats, or violence, will have their accounts immediately cancelled without refund of any fees.

Further Terms of Service

In no event will Affordable Domains be liable for any losses or damages arising out of the use of or inability to use Affordable Domains's services or any content thereon. We take no liability in case of data loss, users should always keep their own backups of important data. We do offer a very cost effective backup service that we encourage all our clients to subscribe to as this adds extra data retention in any event of a node or data loss.

Services are set to renew on the anniversary of the day that order was created. An e-mail requesting payment is sent to you every day that your bill is unpaid. Server disconnects begin once the invoice is 3 days past due. We do not telephone or send postal mail notifying about disconnects.

A billing dispute of any kind does not exempt you from paying current and future bills. Billing disputes resolved in the customer's favour will receive account credit for overpayment.

If any chargebacks occur on your credit card or PayPal account we reserve the right to suspend your service without notice and will terminate your service and recycle your server(s) if contact and payment not made within 3 days.

If you have chosen not to subscribe to one of our managed plans you are responsible for the security of your server. If we receive complaints about spam, malware, or other issues that are damaging to us or our upstream service provider we will investigate the report independently and if found to be valid your VPS will be suspended immediately and you will be notified via email. This must take place to ensure our high reputation is maintained as a service provider.

Right To Refuse Service

Affordable Domains reserves the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. We enforce this policy to ensure a professional environment for the users of our system. This includes any programs, such as CGI programs that are using excessive amounts of system resources. Excessive amounts is defined as any amount that results in substantial degradation of server performance. Affordable Domains is the sole determinant of what constitutes degraded server performance. On some occasions, we allow heavy usage depending on the situation. However, additional fees may apply.