Acceptable Usage Policy

Definitions

We, Us, BitFolk, BitFolk Hosting

BitFolk Limited.

You, The Customer

The named contact for a service and anyone identified by the named contact as responsible for the service.

The Service

Any service provided to you by BitFolk, whether paid for or at no charge.

Policies

• Although BitFolk endeavours to provide the most reliable service possible, we shall not be held liable for any loss or damage caused by the unavailability of our services or hardware.

• BitFolk reserves the right to block access to any service or to terminate a service at any time at our discretion. We hope that this extreme measure never becomes necessary, but our right to use it is essential in order to deal with situations such as (but not limited to) when the customer becomes a target or cause of network abuse.

• The customer is responsible for all material hosted by them at BitFolk, and all use of the services provided by BitFolk. It is their responsibility to ensure they do not violate English law (if hosted in London, UK), or the laws of the state of California, USA (if hosted in San Francisco, USA).

• Any justified complaint of "spam", denial of service or any other form of attack will result in immediate termination of account and all associated services.

• Unless the customer is taking advantage of BitFolk's backup service they should assume that none of their data is backed up. While BitFolk makes every effort to ensure that the backup service functions and is available, BitFolk cannot accept any loss or damage related to these or any other services. It is the customer's responsibility to ensure they have backups of important data.

• The customer is free to cancel their account at any time. The minimum contract period is equivalent to the payment schedule chosen (either 1 month, 3 months, or 12 months) and no refunds will be issued for the unused portion of the contract period. If the customer wishes to provide sufficient writable DVD/CD media and prepaid envelope then customer data can be returned on this media. No customer data will be returned while there is an outstanding amount on the customer's account. Customer data will be retained for a minimum of 3 months after account closure unless BitFolk is advised otherwise.

• Due to the nature of virtual services, customers contend with each other for use of bandwidth, IO and CPU. The memory allocated to each customer is however completely dedicated to that customer. The customer acknowledges that their use of the service can affect other users and agrees, at request of BitFolk, to cease any activity which BitFolk deems to be degrading the service that can be supplied to other customers.

• The customer shall pay invoices within 30 days of the due date. Reminders are sent by email one week in advance, on the due date, two weeks after the due date, and finally 30 days past the due date. BitFolk reserves the right to suspend any and all services for accounts 30 or more days overdue on any invoice. Customer data will not be returned until all bills are paid, at which time the customer may supply sufficient writable CD/DVD media and a prepaid envelope for return of the customer data. Customer data will be retained for a minimum of 3 months after account suspension.

• All services are billed for in advance except for bandwidth overage charges which are invoiced at the end of the period during which they were accrued. Customers receive a weekly email update regarding their bandwidth usage and have access to real-time data also. Controlling bandwidth usage is the responsibility of the customer.

• Notifications of scheduled downtime, post mortems of outages and other important information will be communicated via the users' mailing list. Membership of this mailing list is voluntary but strongly advised for all customers.

Additional policies in force in San Francisco, USA

The following additional policies apply to customers whose service is hosted in San Francisco, USA, as they are also subject to the AUP of our suppliers:

• The customer must not utilise the services in connection with any tortious or actionable activity.

  Without limiting the general application of this rule, customers may not:

  • Utilise the services to publish or disseminate information that (A) constitutes slander, libel or defamation, (B) publicizes the personal information or likeness of a person without that person's consent or (C) otherwise violates the privacy rights of any person.

  • Utilise the services to threaten persons with bodily harm, to make harassing or abusive statements or messages, or to solicit the performance of acts or services that are illegal under applicable law.

• The customer must not utilise the services in connection with any other disruptive or abusive activity.

  Without limiting the general application of this rule, customers may not:

  • Utilise the services to (A) forge the signature or other identifying mark or code of any other person, (B) impersonate or assume the identity of any other person, or (C) engage in any other activity (including "spoofing") to attempt to deceive or mislead other persons regarding the true identity of the User (excluding the use of anonymous remailers or Internet nicknames).

  • Utilise the services to conduct port scans or other invasive procedures against any server (except any server for which the customer is an authorised system administrator).

  • Operate a mailing list without providing subscription management information in each email.

Updates

This AUP is subject to change and the current version can always be found at http://bitfolk.com/policy/. The users' list will be notified of any updates. It was last updated on Wed Aug 29 10:29:17 2007.