Acceptable Use Policy

The Internet is a vast network with millions of users around the world. Entity Data customers should think carefully and exercise commonsense in both what information they retrieve from the Internet and what information they disseminate to others. Built on cooperation between thousands of providers around the world it's important that nothing you do has the potential to harm anybody else, or infringe on their rights.

In the case of Colocation, Dedicated & Virtual server customers who are choosing to manage their server themselves, it's extremely important that great care is taken as to what daemons are running on your server, proper configuration of your firewall, and ensuring that your server remains up to date. Failure to properly manage your server could put it at risk of being exploited.

The following activities are strictly prohibited:

Spamming
Sending unsolicited bulk and/or commercial messages over the Internet (known as "spamming"). It is not only harmful because of its negative impact on consumer attitudes toward Entity Data, but also because it can overload Entity Data's network and disrupt service to Entity Data Web Hosting subscribers. Also, maintaining an open SMTP relay is prohibited. When a complaint is received, Entity Data has the discretion to determine from all of the evidence whether the email recipients were from an "opt-in" email list.

Intellectual Property Violations
Engaging in any activity that infringes or misappropriates the intellectual property rights of others, including copyrights, trademarks, service marks, trade secrets, software piracy, and patents held by individuals, corporations, or other entities. Also, engaging in activity that violates privacy, publicity, or other personal rights of others. Entity Data is required by law to remove or block access to customer content upon receipt of a proper notice of copyright infringement. It is also Entity Data policy to terminate the privileges of customers who commit repeat violations of copyright laws.

Obscene Speech or Materials
Using Entity Data's network to advertise, transmit, store, post, display, or otherwise make available child pornography or obscene speech or material. Entity Data is required by law to notify law enforcement agencies when it becomes aware of the presence of child pornography on or being transmitted through the Entity Data network.

Defamatory or Abusive Language
Using Entity Data's network as a means to transmit or post defamatory, harassing, abusive, or threatening language.

Forging of Headers
Forging or misrepresenting message headers, whether in whole or in part, to mask the originator of the message.

Illegal or Unauthorized Access to Other Computers or Networks
Accessing illegally or without authorisation computers, accounts, or networks belonging to another party, or attempting to penetrate security measures of another individual's system (often known as "hacking"). Also, any activity that might be used as a precursor to an attempted system penetration (i.e. port scan, stealth scan, or other information gathering activity).

Distribution of Internet Viruses, Worms, Trojan Horses, or Other Destructive Activities
Distributing information regarding the creation of and sending Internet viruses, worms, Trojan horses, pinging, flooding, mailbombing, or denial of service attacks. Also, activities that disrupt the use of or interfere with the ability of others to effectively use the network or any connected network, system, service, or equipment.

Facilitating a Violation of this AUP
Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this AUP, which includes the facilitation of the means to spam, initiation of pinging, flooding, mailbombing, denial of service attacks, and piracy of software.

Other Illegal Activities
Engaging in activities that are determined to be illegal, including advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, fraudulently charging credit cards, and pirating software.

Other Activities
Engaging in activities, whether lawful or unlawful, that Entity Data determines to be harmful to its subscribers, operations, reputation, goodwill, or customer relations.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
IRC activities are forbidden on Entity Data's network due to the protocols long time habit of attracting Denial of Service attacks. Forbidden activities include IRC servers, bouncers, & bots.

System and Network Resource Usage
Entity Data servers and networks are carefully maintained to provide optimum performance for serving web content on the Internet. Subscribers are expected to operate their accounts in such a manner that is not detrimental to system and network performance and stability. Entity Data monitors its servers and networks closely, and failure to comply with the following conditions could result in termination of the subscriber's service and fees assessed against the subscriber:

1. Excessive System Utilization. CGI or PHP scripts utilizing a significant percentage of a server's system resources will, at Entity Data's discretion, be terminated and/or prevented from running. It is the subscriber's responsibility to ensure their processes use a minimum of server resources.

2. Excessive Network Utilisation. While subscribers are allocated a certain amount of data transfers per month, Entity Data generally prefers not to cap subscribers' bandwidth. However, subscribers using an excessive amount of bandwidth in a short period of time will, at Entity Data' discretion, be throttled or have their site and/or account otherwise rendered unusable until the subscriber is able to rectify their usage.

3. Overuse of Scheduled Processes. Scheduled processes (such as cron jobs) can significantly drain server and network resources. Entity Data reserves the right to stop any scheduled process from running or reduce the frequency of operation should it be found to be using more than a reasonable share of a server's resources.

4. Excessive Database Access. Database resources, such as MySQL and MSSQL, are closely monitored by Entity Data. Overuse of database resources, including but not limited to excessive or mismanaged connections, long queries and missing or inappropriate indexing, may result in the database queries being terminated and/or the correlating script being stopped.

5. Sending Bulk Email. Sending unsolicited bulk email or spam, is prohibited by Australian Federal law. Sending solicited or opt-in bulk email is limited to 500 emails per hour from any one account. To facilitate this requirement, subscribers can request that a cron job be set up to batch process large email lists.