Acceptable Use Policy

To report junk email or abuse issues, please email: abuse@HertsHosting.co.uk

This Acceptable Use Policy governs your use of the web hosting and cloud services we provide (“Hosting Services”). Your use of our Hosting Services means that you accept, and agree to abide by, all the policies in this Acceptable Use Policy, which supplement our Terms and Conditions. Herts Hosting is managed in Watford, Hertfordshire, UK, and may modify this Acceptable Use Policy at any time without notice.

You must not allow an unauthorized third party to access or use the Hosting Services. If you have purchased one of our hosting packages, you are responsible for monitoring any third-party access you grant (such as web developers or team members) and ensuring they abide by this policy. A breach of this Acceptable Use Policy by a third party using your account will be deemed a breach by you.

A. Resource Usage

1. Our Shared Hosting Services comprise the provision of web space on our secure UK servers to enable you to upload pages and files for the purpose of publishing websites.
2. The Shared Hosting Services allow you ‘unlimited’ server space for normal, routine, non-file-distribution web usage. For websites that allow downloading of video, audio, or other large files, we reserve the right to impose a bandwidth limit of two hundred and fifty (250) gigabytes per calendar month.
3. Normal non-file-distribution usage will remain unaffected by any limit imposed on the downloading of video, audio, or other files.
4. In your use of our Shared Hosting Services, you may not:
   • a. Use more than 10% of our platform’s processing capacity. Activities that cause this include intensive CGI, PHP, or HTTP operations.
   • b. Run stand-alone, unattended server-side processes or any daemons, including (but not limited to) IRCd.
   • c. Run any type of web spider, indexer, or automated scraper.
   • d. Run any software that interfaces with an Internet Relay Chat network.
   • e. Run any bit torrent application, tracker, or client. You may link to legal torrent files off-site, but you may not host or store them on our servers.
   • f. Participate in any file-sharing or peer-to-peer activities.
   • g. Run any gaming servers.
   • h. Run cron jobs or scheduled tasks other than by configuring them through our hosting control panel.
   • i. Operate a proxy website or proxy service.
   • j. Use our platform as a remote file host or storage drive for other websites.
   • k. Operate self-hosted file sync or similar “cloud storage” based services including (but not limited to) OwnCloud, Pydio, and Sparkleshare.
5. You must not use the Hosting Services as an offsite backup facility. All files uploaded to our servers must be visible and accessible to the outside world (web-visible) unless they are strictly required to operate the active website. We reserve the right to delete non-web-visible backup files or directories without notice.
6. All website pages stored on our servers will be available to search engines unless you explicitly configure them otherwise.
7. MySQL Databases are limited to 1024 megabytes in size. We will notify you when your database approaches this limit.

B. Prohibited Uses

You may use the Hosting Services only for lawful purposes. You may not use the Hosting Services:

1. In any way that breaches any applicable local, national, or international law or regulation.
2. In any way that is unlawful, fraudulent, or has any unlawful or fraudulent purpose or effect.
3. For the purpose of harming or attempting to harm minors in any way.
4. To transmit, or procure the sending of, any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising or promotional material (SPAM).
5. To knowingly transmit any data, or upload any material, that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time-bombs, keystroke loggers, spyware, adware, or any other harmful programs designed to adversely affect the operation of computer software or hardware.

C. Content Standards

These content standards apply to any and all material hosted through our Hosting Services. Material must be accurate (where stating facts), genuinely held (where stating opinions), and comply with applicable laws in the United Kingdom.

Material must not:

1. Contain any material which is defamatory, obscene, offensive, hateful, or inflammatory.
2. Contain pornographic or sexually explicit material.
3. Promote violence or discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age.
4. Infringe any copyright, database right, or trademark of any other person.
5. Be likely to deceive any person, or be used to impersonate any person or misrepresent your identity.
6. Advocate, promote, or assist any unlawful act, such as copyright infringement or computer misuse.

D. Zero-Tolerance Spam Policy

1. Herts Hosting takes a zero-tolerance stance against the sending of unsolicited email, bulk emailing, and spam. We reserve the right to terminate or suspend the account of any user who sends out spam, with or without notice.
2. Websites advertised via spam may not be hosted on our servers. Any user account that results in our IP range being blacklisted will be immediately suspended and/or terminated.
3. Herts Hosting reserves the right to require changes to, or disable as necessary, any website, account, database, or component that does not comply with our email policies.
4. Herts Hosting reserves the right to charge the holder of the account used to send unsolicited email a cleanup fee or any direct charges we incur for blacklist removal.

E. Suspension and Termination

We will determine, at our sole discretion, whether there has been a breach of this Acceptable Use Policy through your use of the Hosting Services. When a breach occurs, we may take immediate action, including:

1. Immediate, temporary, or permanent withdrawal of your right to use our Hosting Services.
2. Immediate, temporary, or permanent removal of any violating material uploaded to our servers.
3. Issuance of a formal warning.
4. Legal proceedings against you for reimbursement of all administrative and legal costs on an indemnity basis resulting from the breach.
5. Disclosure of such information to law enforcement authorities as we reasonably feel is necessary.

F. Governing Law & Jurisdiction

This policy, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with it, shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of England and Wales. Users of Herts Hosting irrevocably agree that the courts of England and Wales (under the local jurisdiction of Hertfordshire) shall have exclusive jurisdiction to settle any dispute or claim.**