Acceptable Usage Policy (AUP)

Netports Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") has been designed to assist in protecting Netports and it's clients from improper and/or illegal activity over the Internet and to further compliance with all relevant laws and regulations. This AUP is also intended to establish a clear understanding of what Netports expects of clients using our services.

Netports AUP is applicable to any and all access or use of Netports services (the "Service") or Netports network (the "Network"). This includes, but is not limited to, any use or access by (a) Netports clients, (b) Netports clients' clients, members, end-users, and agents and (c) any other parties who use or access the Service or Network (collectively, "Users").

All Users must comply with this AUP. Any access or usage of the Service or Network constitutes acceptance and agreement to this AUP. Each client of Netports agrees that it is responsible for violations of this AUP by itself and by any party that uses or access the services or the network through such client, whether authorised by such client or not.

Netports supports the uncensored flow of information and ideas and does not exercise editorial control over the content of any web site, e-mail transmission, newsgroups, or other material created or accessible over or through the Service, except for certain proprietary web sites. However, in accordance with our TOS (Terms of Service), we may remove any materials that, in our sole discretion, may be illegal, may subject us to liability, or which may violate this AUP. Netports may cooperate with legal authorities and/or third parties in the investigation of any suspected or alleged crime or civil wrong doing.

Netports believes in communicating with our clients and will try to work with our clients to resolve any AUP violations before taking action which could cause a client's service to become unavailable. However, due to the nature or severity of some violations, such as the injection of illegal phishing sites or pages, this is not always possible or preferable. We reserve the right to immediately suspend or terminate, without warning, services to a client who is in violation of the AUP.

The following activities are expressly prohibited, and are considered violations of the AUP. These descriptions are guidelines and are not intended to be exhaustive. Netports will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes as unacceptable use.

Illegal Activity or Content

The Service shall not be used for any unlawful activities or in connection with any criminal or civil violation. Use of the Service or Network for transmission, distribution, retrieval, or storage of any information, data or other material in violation of any applicable law or regulation (including, where applicable, any tariff or treaty) is prohibited. This includes, without limitation, the use or transmission of any data or material protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret, patent or other intellectual property right without proper authorisation and the transmission of any material that constitutes an illegal threat, violates export control laws, or is obscene, defamatory or otherwise unlawful.

This also includes, without limitation, the use of Services to display illegal phishing sites and or pages whether such sites and or pages exist with or without the knowledge of the website hosting account owner. The hosting account responsible for facilitating the display of illegal phishing sites will be immediately suspended in the first instance to remove the threat then if action has not been taken by Client to rectify matters, the site will be terminated.

Network Abuse

Netports expressly prohibits any activities that, in its sole discretion, constitute network abuse. This includes, but is not limited to: Denial of Service attacks or any activities designed to exhaust the resources of a host or network. Any attempt to monitor data or traffic on any network or system without the authorization of the owner of the system or network. Accessing, illegally or without authorization, computers, accounts or networks belonging to another party, or attempting to penetrate security measures of another individual's system.

Port-scanning, vulnerability scanning, and any other activity that may be used as a precursor to an attempted system penetration. Introducing malicious programs into any network or server, such as viruses, worms, trojan horses, and key loggers. Intentionally or negligently injecting false data into the Internet, for instance in the form of bad routing information or incorrect DNS information.

Forging any e-mail message header, in part or whole, of any electronic transmission, originating or passing through the Network. Executing any form of network activity that will intercept data not intended for the client's server.

Unsolicited Email (Further to our No Spam Policy as detailed in T.O.S.)

Users are prohibited from engaging in improper use or distribution of email. Netports will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Sending of any unsolicited email ("spam"). Any message sent to a recipient from a purchased, rented, licensed, or traded list of email addresses is automatically considered unsolicited.
• Hosting web pages advertised within "spam e-mail" sent from another network ("spamvertising")
  
• Using the Service to receive replies from unsolicited emails ("drop-box" accounts).
  
• Configuring any email server in such a way that it will accept third party emails for forwarding ("open mail relay").
• Running Unconfirmed Mailing Lists. Subscribing email addresses to any mailing list without the express and verifiable permission of the email address owner is prohibited. All mailing lists run by Netports Users must be Closed-loop ("Confirmed Opt-in"). The subscription confirmation message received from each address owner must be kept on file for the duration of the existence of the mailing list.
  
• Purchasing lists of email addresses from 3rd parties for mailing to from any Netports hosted domain, or referencing any Netports account, is prohibited.
  
• Operating an account on behalf of, or in connection with, or reselling any service to, persons or firms listed in the Spamhaus Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database at www.spamhaus.org.
  
• All IRC activity is prohibited. This includes running any type of IRC software including, but not limited to, IRC client software, IRC server software, web-based IRC software, IRC bots such as "eggdrop", and IRC proxies such as "psyBNC".
  

Proxy Servers

Proxy Servers are prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to, SOCKS proxies, Squid proxies, Bittorrent Proxies, Tor, and any CGI or PHP proxy scripts.

Facilitating a Violation of this Policy
Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this AUP, which includes, but is not limited to, the facilitation of the means to send Unsolicited Bulk Email, initiation of pinging, flooding, mail-bombing, denial of service attacks.

Service Performance & Over Usage Abuse

Netports Shared Hosting: Excessive use or abuse of resources by one hosting account may have a negative impact on other customers. You are prohibited from excessive consumption of resources, including CPU and memory. The definition of this is when a single hosting account consumes in excess of 5% of the total CPU power of the main server for a non-stop excessively long period of time. You may not use resource-intensive programs which negatively impact other customers or the performances of the Service or Network. For the protection of others who utilise Netports services, Netports reserves the right to limit such activities as it sees fit.

Reseller Hosting Accounts: Netports hosts reseller accounts on full dedicated servers. This means you will have available to each of your hosting accounts substantial amounts CPU and RAM resources, well above that if your reseller account was being hosted within a VPS. However, for the protection of our network and other reseller clients the following consumption over usage limits apply:

• Business Budget Reseller Accounts (Global): If any one single website hosting account within your Budget reseller account consumes in excess of 2% of the total CPU power of the main server for a non-stop excessively long length of time it will be considered resource abusive.
• Advanced Premium Reseller Accounts (Australia): If any one single website hosting account within your Advanced Premium reseller account consumes in excess of 5% of the total CPU power of the main server for a non-stop excessively long length of time it will be considered resource abusive.
  

VPS, Hybrid and Dedicated Servers: Client can utilise all resources available on the condition that such resource usage does not negatively impact on the network or main host node.

Website Creation Software

Third party website creation software allows the generation and install of complete websites within a single hosting account - a popular CMS and e-commerce site creation technique. These websites are usually purposely created to be seen as individual websites. Domain name forwarders and/or redirectors that point to a specific directory location of a single hosting account can be used to further ensure multiple sites are viewed as individual websites. Therefore it is possible for a single hosting account to be hosting a great number of individual websites.

You agree that when this occurs within a Netports Advanced Premium reseller account, each individual website will be considered as an individual website and will be taken into account as part of your hosted website/domain/cpanel limit of your particular Advanced Premium reseller account.

Reporting Violations of Netports AUP

Netports requests that anyone who believes that there is a violation of this AUP direct the information to the Abuse Department at abuse@netportsaustralia.com.au

If available, please provide the following information:

• The IP address used to commit the alleged violation
  
• The date and time of the alleged violation, including the time zone or offset from GMT
  
• Evidence of the alleged violation
  
• An E-mail with full header information provides all of the above, as do system log files. Other situations will require different methods of providing the above information.
  

Netports may take any one or more of the following actions in response to complaints:

• Issue written or verbal warnings
  
• Disable access to a client's content which violates AUP
  
• Remove content which violates AUP
  
• Block mail or any other network service
  
• Null-route client's IP address
  
• Suspend the client's account
  
• Terminate the clients's account
  
• Bill the client for administrative costs and/or reactivation charges
  
• Bring legal action to enjoin violations and/or to collect damages, if any, caused by violations
  

The aforementioned list of actions shall not be construed in any way to limit the actions or remedies that Netports may take to enforce and ensure compliance with this AUP. Netports reserves the right to recover any and all expenses, and apply any reasonable charges, in connection with a client's violation of this AUP.

Contact

Please direct all questions regarding this AUP to