ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY

An Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) is a set of rules and conditions established by the owner of a network, system, or website, which defines and restricts the ways in which the network, system, or website can be used.

The AUP of AVA Hosting, owned by Advanced Virtual Applications, S.A. (AVA), a Panamanian company headquartered in Panama City, Republic of Panama, aims to explicitly detail the purposes for which customers CANNOT use our hosting services or store data on our network servers.

This Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) is accepted as part of the Web Hosting Terms of Service that each user agrees to abide by when signing up for an account with our hosting services. Any violation of these AUP terms will be considered a violation of our Web Hosting Terms of Service.

We, AVA Hosting, shall be the final authority to determine whether an act constitutes a violation of this AUP and misuse of our services. We reserve the right to respond accordingly and/or immediately terminate the provision of services if we become aware, and/or have sufficient evidence, of any prohibited conduct outlined in this AUP, or any other action that threatens the secure environment of our hosting customers and/or network servers. We shall be the sole arbitrator to determine the sufficiency of the evidence presented.

To protect our company's reputation and responsibilities, and to guarantee a solid and reliable hosting service for all our customers, as well as the privacy and security of all our individual users, we, AVA Hosting, declare the following AUP conditions that will come into effect for each user signing up for a web hosting account with our hosting services:

SYSTEM ABUSE

Any customer who violates our system or network security is subject to criminal and civil liability, as well as immediate account termination. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

- Unauthorized access, use, probing, or scanning of our system’s security, authentication measures, data, or traffic. Interference with service to any user, host, or network including, but not limited to: email bombing, flooding, deliberate attempts to overload the system, and broadcast attacks, falsifying any TCP/IP packet header or any part of the header information in an email or newsgroup posting.
- Any attempt to harm a server or customer of AVA Hosting’s services:
AVA Hosting will immediately and decisively react to any attempt to misuse an internet account or computer, or any attempt to gain access to an internet account or computer by an AVA Hosting customer without the authorization of the account/computer owner. Such attempts include, but are not limited to, the following: "Internet scamming" (tricking people into revealing their passwords, etc.), password theft, security hole scanning, running proxy lists, and any type of proxy scripts (including but not limited to PHP proxy and NPH proxy), introduction of any computer programs (viruses, Trojan horses, trap doors, back doors, worms, time bombs, packet bombs, cancel bots, etc.) that are intended to negatively interfere with, intercept, irreversibly damage, or take control of any system, data, or personal information. It WILL NOT matter whether the attacked account or computer belongs to AVA Hosting’s services or not. Fraud will be subject to actions based on the nature of the attack and may result in warnings, account suspension, or cancellation, and/or civil or criminal legal actions.

- Background operations/programs on servers:
A "background process" is a program that runs in the background of the operating system. What is specific to a background process is that, once started, it runs simultaneously with other foreground processes. This means that the shell executing the background operation does not wait for it to finish or terminate, as it does with foreground processes, but is free to start executing more operations along with the background one. Typical background processes are ircd, irc bot, bnc, and many others.

Background processes are not allowed on any of our cloud hosting servers, as they typically lead to CPU overload and can be used for malicious and/or illegal activities. As our primary task is to provide the highest quality web hosting service to all our customers, we cannot allow any background processes to be executed that may threaten the performance of our server network. Our cloud hosting system does not permit a large number of users to simultaneously use the system memory and processing time of our servers.

- Excessive use of system resources:
To ensure higher server performance and hosting service quality, all cloud hosting plans are subject to certain resource limitations, including but not limited to server CPU usage, memory usage, disk space, and traffic. If a hosting account exceeds the allowed amount of system resources, the account owner will be immediately notified to take action to reduce usage. If such action is not promptly taken by the owner, the account will be suspended. If excessive CPU usage is detected, the account owner will be offered the option to upgrade their CPU usage or switch to a plan that allows for higher CPU usage.

If any hosting account is found to be causing server degradation and/or performance issues on our hosting network, regardless of the reason, the account will be subject to suspension or immediate removal, depending on the situation. AVA Hosting will be the sole arbiter in determining whether a given account is excessively using server resources and/or causing server degradation.

SPAM AND SPAMVERTIZING

SPAM IS PROHIBITED

Users MAY NOT use our hosting services to transmit, distribute, or deliver unsolicited bulk or commercial messages over the internet (an action known as "spam" or "spamming").

Spam is a violation of ethical norms and will be interpreted as an infringement. AVA Hosting will not tolerate the sending of unsolicited bulk or commercial messages through our services, or through another service that mentions, in any way, our customer’s domain name or implies the use of our network or email services for sending unsolicited bulk messages.

SPAMVERTIZING IS PROHIBITED

'Spamvertizing' refers to the practice of sending unsolicited spam messages to advertise a particular website.

If such emails are relayed through third parties (email spoofing) and/or are promoting a domain hosted on our servers, this will lead to immediate account suspension unless evidence of legitimacy proving the non-involvement of the domain owner in the illegal action is provided.

"Email spoofing" is a fraudulent email activity in which the sender’s (third party) email address and other parts of the email header are changed to make it appear as though the email was sent from a different source (email address owner/server).

An "unsolicited message" is a message sent against the privacy policy of a newsgroup or sent to a recipient without their explicit permission. We, at our sole discretion, shall determine whether any of the messages you are sending are spam or spamvertizing. For your information, spam generally includes but is not limited to the following:

- Sending unsolicited messages in bulk, or sending unsolicited emails that provoke complaints from recipients;
- Sending junk mail;
- Using distribution lists that include people who have not given explicit prior permission to be involved in such a distribution process;
- Posting commercial ads to USENET newsgroups that do not permit it;
- Posting articles containing binary-encoded data to non-binary newsgroups;
- Excessive and repeated posting of off-topic messages to newsgroups;
- Excessive and repeated cross-posting;
- Email harassment of another Internet Customer or Customers, including but not limited to transmitting any threatening, defamatory, or obscene material, or material of any nature that may be deemed offensive;
- Emailing age-inappropriate communications or content to anyone under the age of 18.

INAPPROPRIATE OR UNLAWFUL CONTENT

Content published or transmitted via AVA Hosting’s hosting services includes website content, email content, forum/blog postings, chat content, and/or any other type of content hosted on our servers, published online, or transmitted through our network’s services.

The user of our services is NOT permitted to post online content or have links to content that:

- is defamatory, abusive, or obscene, violates a person’s reputation/privacy, is reasonably deemed offensive by the web community, is anti-religious or anti-human rights, or contains any type of threatening or hate speech, encourages harassment or physical harm to any group or individual, or is otherwise malicious/fraudulent and may result in complaints/liabilities/or retaliation against AVA Hosting by offended viewers;
- promotes or encourages illegal activities (e.g., illegal drugs, illegal gambling, arms trafficking, etc.) or violates any applicable law, statute, ordinance, or regulation, including but not limited to the laws and regulations governing export control, unfair competition, false advertising, consumer protection, etc.;
- represents pornography: any type of pornographic/adult material, including child pornography, or advertisements of pornographic websites;
- represents infringement on copyright, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, or third-party intellectual property or proprietary rights, including pirated computer programs, hacking/phreaking software, warez, or any type of software/content (including also ROMs, ROM Emulators, media files - MP3, AVI, .RM, etc., torrent files, and others) that is copyrighted, is NOT uploaded in compliance with its license agreement, or is NOT freely available for distribution.

COPYRIGHTS

Copyrighted material must not be placed on customers' accounts without the explicit permission of the copyright owner or a person specifically authorized to give such permission on behalf of the copyright owner. Upon receipt of a claim for copyright infringement, or a notice of such violation, we will immediately conduct a full investigation and, upon confirmation, promptly remove the infringing material from the Services. Further procedures (in accordance with our corrective measures stated below) will be carried out if necessary. We assume no liability to any customer of the Services for the removal of such material.

CORRECTIVE ACTIONS

We reserve the right to be the sole arbitrator in determining the

seriousness of each infringement and to immediately take corrective actions.

We will disable the customer’s account if we deem it necessary, at our sole discretion. Upon closing the customer’s account, we will send an email notification to the customer stating the reason for termination and quoting the section of our terms that has been violated. The customer will be given an opportunity to respond and take measures to remedy the situation if they believe they were abused by a third party. Upon fulfilling this obligation, we may reactivate the customer’s account, if we find, at our sole discretion, sufficient evidence supporting the customer’s side.

Closed accounts due to repeated violations will not be reactivated. A backup may be requested, but it will be subject to certain penalty fees imposed according to the breach of this AUP. The final penalty fee will be determined based on the type and frequency of the violations.

REPORTING VIOLATIONS

If you need to report a violation of this AUP agreement or believe that you or your system has been subject to an attack originating from our system, please contact us immediately. Our team will fully investigate the situation and provide you with professional assistance.

REVISIONS

We reserve the right to change this AUP at any time, without prior notice. We encourage our users to periodically review this Acceptable Use Policy and our Web Hosting Terms of Service.

Last updated: October 8, 2024