Villa Hosting Acceptible Use Policy (AUP)

This Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) provides an overview of the terms and actions that are prohibited while utilizing the services of Villa Hosting or its infrastructure. This is inclusive of, and not limited to, use of the Villa Hosting (VH) Services. While utilizing the Villa Hosting network and services, the conditions which this policy sets remain in effect at all times.

Compliance with this Acceptable Use Policy is a contractual requirement. If you fail to observe the terms of this policy your account or service may be liable to termination or suspension. In the event that an account is suspended, VH may be prepared, at its sole discretion, to restore the account on receipt of a written statement that the user will not commit any further abuse of the service.

VH may change this policy to include changes in the law or in the acceptable practice of internet use and reserves the right to make such changes without notice and whenever required. The current version of the VH Acceptable Use Policy will be published on the web at http://aup.villah.com/ and all users are responsible for ensuring that they have read and understand the current policy.

VH's relationship with its clients, its partners and network providers depends on responsible conduct from all users. VH will not hesitate to protect itself and other clients and networks should any form of abuse be found to be occurring.

Security

The VH network is a resource made available to VH customers for private and commercial purposes. As a customer of VH, you are solely responsible for any misuse of the services provided to you via the VH infrastructure. This is inclusive of and not limited to:

Denial of Service Attacks sourced from addresses provided by VH.
Attempts to circumvent, 'Hack', attack or disrupt the services provided to VH customers or any other service providers.
Port scanning, SNMP scanning, network probes.
Trojan attacks or vulnerability scans.
Use or distribution of password cracking programs.
Use or distribution of packet sniffers.
Execution of an attack using a known vulnerability.
Theft, or attempted theft, of personal information or violation of personal privacy.
Any act that explicitly tries to gather information on a particular, host, network, or end-user without previous authorization.

In order to mitigate against any potential threats, you must take the appropriate measures to safeguard your use of VH-provided Internet services, and your systems, from misuse or attack from hackers on the Internet. VH will investigate any issue related to security violations that are reported to abuse@villah.com. VH will cooperate with any ISP in identifying any violations sourced from VH provided IP address space, domains or email addresses. VH reserves the right to investigate all security incidents. This may involve network monitoring of individual host, or network traffic flows to identify the source of any violations. Any subscribers involved in any activity that violates or attempts to violate the security of another subscriber or Internet host risks termination of their services and possible legal actions.

Illegal Activity

It is strictly prohibited to utilize the services of Villa Hosting in any way that is in contradiction of local Dutch or international Laws. This is inclusive of and not limited to:

Violation of residential or commercial service agreements.
Publishing of unlawful content as determined by local Bahamian or International Law.
Reproduction, plagiarism, or theft of intellectual property. It is the responsibility of the end-user to identify any material that may be copyrighted or owned by another party. The end-user assumes all risks in this regard.
Hoaxes, Pyramid schemes, chain letters, or electronic threats of any form.
Intentional forgery or theft of identity.

VH will cooperate fully with Law Enforcement Agencies to identify any violations.

Inappropriate Content

The Internet is a free and open medium with no individual or watch group governing its use or content. Villa Hosting provides as a service, a network that may provide access to published content that may be deemed to be inappropriate in a personal, cultural, and legal context. Villa Hosting assumes no risk or liability as to the appropriateness of any particular content as it relates to any legal, personal or cultural contexts. In cases where content is sourced from the VH Network and is in direct violation of Dutch or international laws. VH reserves the right to terminate services without remediation to the subscriber. Further to which, all service fees assessed to the subscriber for use of the VH network up to the time of service termination are due payable to VH.

Electronic Mail

VH has a Zero-Tolerance policy for, and not limited to, Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (UCE), SPAM mail, e-mail harassment or e-mail threats. Additional examples of prohibited practices are:

Bulk mailing from non-commercial accounts.
Opt-out bulk mailing from commercial or non-commercial accounts.
Utilizing a VH-owned or VH-hosted domain e-mail address, or operating from VH assigned address space, as the source of UCE, or any other mailing practice that could be characterized, as determined by VH, as SPAM mail.
Utilizing a VH owned domain e-mail address, or operating from VH assigned address space, as the respond-to address of UCE, or any other mailing practice that could be characterized as SPAM mail.
Bulk mailing to any individual or group whom have not specifically, and verifiably, requested to be included in such mailings.
Propagation of known e-mail viruses via electronic mail originating from or destined to any VH user, host or address.
Operating open SMTP relays, insecure proxies, insecure formmail scripts or forwarding e-mail facilities to bulk recipients on behalf of other domains.
Referencing in the e-mail body or headers, a domain name, e-mail address, IP address, or host, belonging to VH in any unsolicited e-mail regardless of source origination ('SPAMvertizing').
Provided bulk mailings from a VH commercial service with no valid return address. All commercial bulk mailings sourced from VH address space must have a valid respond-to e-mail address of the originating domain and host.
Sending any unsolicited electronic mail that may invoke complaints.
Any electronic mail sourced from a VH Address Space that is in violation of another service provider or ISP's AUP.

VH will advise subscribers of any e-mail complaints that are in violation of this AUP. VH will determine, at its sole discretion, whether or not the e-mail in question is in violation of this AUP. If in violation of this AUP the subscriber must respond in writing that the violating bulk mailing has been terminated.

Violation of AUP

If VH is advised, or in the course of network capacity monitoring, identifies any practice that in any way violates any part of this AUP it will reserve the right to take any action it feels appropriate to stop the activity in contradiction of the policies set forth, including and not limited to:

Blocking of a single/multiple, TCP port(s) traffic originating from an address belonging to VH. Blocking of IP port traffic destined for the VH network in violation of this AUP. If the offending practice is continued, VH reserves the right to:

Block all IP traffic destined to or from a host in violation of this AUP. Suspend services of a customer in violation of this AUP without remediation. At its sole discretion VH reserves the right to terminate the account of repeat VH AUP offenders without remediation.

This Usage Policy is subject to change at the discretion of Villa Hosting. More information: aup@villah.com

Latest revision: 20020804

This document resides at http://aup.villah.com/