Important Note: This document is updated often. Please make a habit of reviewing it from time to time to stay abreast of acceptable as well as inappropriate uses of your HostingRails account. Reports of activity in violation of this policy may be sent via e-mail to abuse _at_ hostingrails.com
This document is divided into the following sections:
Introduction
General Information
Adult Content Not Allowed
Shell Account Policies
Electronic Mail
Web Sites
Security
Network Management
Network Performance
Illegal Activity
HostingRails Forums
Privacy Statement
Introduction - [Back to Top]
When you open your HostingRails account, you join two communities. First is the community formed by our network and our customers; the second community is the one made up of all networks and users connected to each other to form the Internet. Becoming a member of these communities gives you certain rights and privileges, but also imposes certain duties and responsibilities. HostingRails has established an Acceptable Use Policy in order to make these duties and responsibilities more clear. This document is intended to provide a general understanding of HostingRails' Acceptable Use Policy. The following factors guide the establishment and enforcement of HostingRails' usage policies:
- Ensure reliable service to our customers
- Ensure security and privacy of our systems and network, as well as the networks and systems of others
- Comply with existing laws
- Maintain our reputation as a responsible service provider
- Encourage responsible use of the Internet and discourage activities which reduce the usability and value of Internet services
- Preserve the value of Internet resources as a conduit for free expression and exchange of information
- Preserve the privacy and security of individual users
We do not routinely monitor the activity of accounts except for measurements of system utilization and the preparation of billing records. However, in our efforts to promote good citizenship within the Internet community, we will respond appropriately if we become aware of inappropriate use of our service.
If a HostingRails account is used to violate the Acceptable Use Policy, we reserve the right to terminate your service without notice and you agree to indemnify HostingRails and its affiliates against any claims threatened or brought by third parties as a result of your violation of this Acceptable Use Policy and/or the content of your website. We prefer to advise customers of inappropriate behavior and any necessary corrective action. However, flagrant violations of the Acceptable Use Policy will result in immediate termination of service. Our failure to enforce this policy, for whatever reason, shall not be construed as a waiver of our right to do so at any time.
If you have any questions regarding this policy, please contact us at abuse _at_ hostingrails _dot_ com
General Information - [Back to Top]
HostingRails customers are prohibited from transmitting on or through any of HostingRails' services, any material that is, in HostingRails' sole discretion, unlawful, adult-oriented, obscene, threatening, abusive, defamatory, libelous, or encourages conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability, or otherwise violate any local, state, federal or international law.
In general, you may NOT use your HostingRails account:
- In a manner which violates any law, regulation, treaty or tariff;
- In a manner which violates the rules, regulations and policies of any network, server, web site, database or service provider that you access through your HostingRails account;
- In a manner which is defamatory, fraudulent, indecent, offensive or deceptive;
- To threaten, harass, abuse or intimidate others;
- To damage the name or reputation of HostingRails;
- To break security on any computer network, or to access an account which does not belong to you; or
- In a manner which interferes with other customers' use and enjoyment of the services provided by HostingRails.
The customer is responsible for keeping his billing data with HostingRails up-to-date and accurate. Furnishing false data on any contract or application, including fraudulent use of credit card numbers, is grounds for immediate termination, and may subject the offender to civil or criminal liability.
HostingRails reserves sole discretion to determine whether any use of the service is a violation of this policy. Guidelines for using your account follows. This information is only a guideline, and is not intended to be all-inclusive.
Adult Content Not Allowed - [Back to Top]
Pornography and sex-related merchandising are prohibited on our servers. This includes sites that may infer sexual content or provide links to adult content elsewhere. This is also true for sites that promote any illegal activity or content that may be damaging to our servers or any other server on the Internet, or provide links to such sites.
Shell Account Policies - [Back to Top]
(the shell account policies below apply shared hosting accounts only)
- Shell accounts may not be used to do any type of compilation of any sort from C, C++ programs.
- IRC are not permitted on any of the accounts given.
- Hacking attempts, scanning will result a termination of your account.
- High load average during your shell session, or at any other time, will not be permitted or tolerated.
- Bouncers, BNC are not permitted on shell accounts given.
- Snooping through system files or directories is consider a "hacking" attempt and will result in account termination.
- Shell access is a privilege to use and should not be abused, suspension of shell will result if abused.
Electronic Mail - [Back to Top]
Certain HostingRails accounts give you the ability to send and receive electronic mail. Misuse of electronic mail may result in termination of service. The following examples are non-exclusive and are provided for your guidance.
- You may not use your account to send unsolicited bulk or commercial messages ("spam"). This includes,
but is not limited to, bulk mailing of commercial advertising, informational announcements, charity requests,
petitions for signatures, and political or religious tracts. Such messages may only be sent to those
who have explicitly requested it.
- You may not use your account to collect responses from unsolicited bulk or commercial e-mail sent
from accounts with other providers.
- Forging, altering or removing electronic mail headers is prohibited.
- You may not send numerous copies of the same or substantially similar message, nor may you send very
large messages or files to a recipient, with the intent to disrupt a server or account ("mail bombing").
- You may not use electronic mail to harass or intimidate others. Harassment, whether through language,
frequency of messages, or size of messages, is prohibited. Sending a single unwelcome message may be considered harassment.
If a recipient asks to stop receiving e-mail, you must not send that person any further messages.
- You may not forward or otherwise propagate chain letters, whether or not such messages solicit money or
other items of value, and whether or not the recipient wishes to receive such mailings.
- HostingRails accounts may not be used to collect replies to messages sent from another Internet
service provider if those messages violate this Acceptable Use Policy or the acceptable use policy of the other service provider.
Web Sites - [Back to Top]
You are solely responsible for any information contained on your web site. However, if complaints are received regarding language, content or graphics contained on your web site, HostingRails may, at its sole discretion, remove the web site hosted on HostingRails servers and terminate your Web Hosting service. You agree to promptly reimburse HostingRails for any reasonable expenses it incurs (including attorney's fees) in defending itself form third party claims relating to any of the content or behavior (whether created by you, your customers or your users) contained on your website.
You may not use your web site to publish material which HostingRails determines, at its sole discretion, to be unlawful, indecent or objectionable. For purposes of this policy, "material" refers to all forms of communications including narrative descriptions, graphics (including photographs, illustrations, images, drawings, logos), executable programs, video recordings, and audio recordings.
Unlawful content is that which violates any law, statute, treaty, regulation, or lawful order. This includes, but is not limited to: obscene material; defamatory, fraudulent or deceptive statements; threatening, intimidating or harassing statements, or material which violates the privacy rights or property rights of others (copyrights or trademarks, for example).
Objectionable content is otherwise legal content with which HostingRails concludes, in its sole discretion, it does not want to be associated in order to protect its reputation and brand image, or to protect its employees, shareholders and affiliates.
Examples of prohibited web site content:
- Materials which hold HostingRails including its affiliates, employees or shareholders up to public scorn or ridicule.
- Materials which encourage the commission of a crime; or which tends to incite violence; or
which tends to degrade any person or group based on sex, nationality, religion, color, age, marital status,
sexual orientation, disability or political affiliation.
Security - [Back to Top]
- You are responsible for any misuse of your account, even if the inappropriate activity was committed by a friend,
family member, guest or employee. Therefore, you must take steps to ensure that others do not gain access to
your account. In addition, you may not use your account to breach security of another account or attempt
to gain unauthorized access to another network or server.
- You must adopt adequate security measures to prevent or minimize unauthorized use of your account.
- You may not attempt to circumvent user authentication or security of any host, network or account ("cracking").
This includes, but is not limited to, accessing data not intended for you, logging into or making use of a server or
account you are not expressly authorized to access, or probing the security of other networks. Use or distribution of
tools designed for compromising security is prohibited. Examples of these tools include, but are not limited to,
password guessing programs, cracking tools or network probing tools.
- You may not attempt to interfere with service to any user, host, or network ("denial of service attacks").
This includes, but is not limited to, "flooding" of networks, deliberate attempts to overload a service, and attempts to
"crash" a host.
Network Management - [Back to Top]
You are responsible for ensuring that the services obtained from HostingRails are used in an appropriate manner by your customers and users. Therefore, you must take steps to manage the use of the services obtained from HostingRails in such a way that network abuse is minimized. You must also make information publicly available about how to contact you, and you must respond in a timely manner to complaints concerning misuse of the services obtained from HostingRails. Failure to responsibly manage the use of the services obtained from HostingRails may be cause for termination of services to you.
Every customer who allows third party access to the services provided by HostingRails, whether such third parties are employees, users or customers, must maintain a postmaster address for the receipt of complaints by e-mail. Messages delivered to the postmaster address must be reviewed and handled in a timely manner.
Network Performance - [Back to Top]
HostingRails shared hosting accounts operate on shared resources. Excessive use or abuse of these shared network resources by one customer may have a negative impact on all other customers. Misuse of network resources in a manner which impairs network performance, as determined by HostingRails, whether caused by you or by traffic to your account (via any port), is prohibited by this policy and may result in suspension or termination of your account at any time.
You are prohibited from excessive consumption of resources, including CPU time, memory, disk space and session time. You may not use resource-intensive programs which negatively impact other customers or the performance of HostingRails systems or networks. HostingRails reserves the right to terminate or limit such activities at any time without warning.
Illegal Activity - [Back to Top]
Any activity on our network that is a violation of any state or federal law is a violation of this policy and will result in immediate termination of service. Prohibited activities include, but are not limited to:
- Transmitting obscene materials or child pornography
- Intentionally spreading or threatening to spread computer viruses
- Gaining or attempting to gain unauthorized access to any network, including HostingRails's private network infrastructure
- Accessing or attempting to access information not intended for you
- Transmitting pirated software
- Conducting or participating in illegal gambling
- Soliciting for pyramid and other illegal schemes.
- HostingRails does not permit any site that contains: (i) images (including on banner ads) of nude models that
appear to be under the age of 18 (in HostingRails's sole judgment), (ii) sexually explicit images
(including on banner ads) of models that appear to be under the age of 18 (in HostingRails's sole judgment); or
(iii) sites containing language promoting child pornography together with any sexually explicit or nude images.
As required by federal law in the United States, HostingRails will forward all offenders of this policy to the appropriate
federal agency. NOTE! This is in addition to the fact that HostingRails does not allow adult-content of any kind on its servers
(as described above).
HostingRails Forums - [Back to Top]
All active HostingRails accounts are granted access to their support and community forums. The content you post on the forums must comply with the website content rules as outlined above, as if it were your own site on their servers. HostingRails reserves the right to cancel your forum account at any time without notice. HostingRails reservers the right to add, delete, or modify any content you post at anytime without notice.
Privacy Statement - [Back to Top]
HostingRails has a policy to respect and protect the privacy of its customers and their information that is stored with HostingRails. HostingRails will only access and disclose information as necessary to comply with applicable laws and government requests, to provide the HostingRails Services, to operate or maintain its systems, or to protect itself or its customers.
HostingRails reserves the right to add, delete, or modify any provision of its Terms and Condition, Acceptable Usage Policy at any time without notice.