Acceptable Use Policy
M5 HOSTING ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY
This Acceptable Use Policy document, including the following list of Prohibited Activities, is an integral part of your Hosting Agreement with M5 Hosting. If you engage in any of the activities prohibited by this AUP document M5 Hosting may suspend or terminate your account.
M5 Hosting’s Acceptable Use Policy (the “Policy”) for M5 Hosting Services is designed to help protect M5 Hosting, M5 Hosting’s customers and the Internet community in general from irresponsible or, in some cases, illegal activities. The Policy is a non-exclusive list of the actions prohibited by M5 Hosting. M5 Hosting reserves the right to modify the Policy at any time, effective upon posting at https://www.m5hosting.com/acceptable-use-policy.php
I. Prohibited Uses of M5 Hosting Systems and Services:
1. Transmission, distribution or storage of any material in violation of any applicable law or regulation is prohibited. This includes, without limitation, material protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret or other intellectual property right used without proper authorization; material that is obscene or defamatory, material that constitutes an illegal threat or which advocates national, racial or religious hatred which constitutes incitement to hostility or violence; or violates export control laws.
2. Sending Unsolicited Bulk Email (“UBE”, “spam”). The sending of any form of Unsolicited Bulk Email through M5 Hosting’s servers is prohibited. Likewise, the sending of UBE from another service provider advertizing a web site, email address or utilizing any resource hosted on M5 Hosting’s servers, is prohibited. M5 Hosting accounts or services may not be used to solicit customers from, or collect replies to, messages sent from another Internet Service Provider where those messages violate this Policy or that of the other provider.
3. 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 M5 Hosting customers 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 M5 Hosting-hosted domain, or referencing any M5 Hosting account, is prohibited.
4. Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this AUP or the AUP of any other Internet Service Provider, 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.
5. Unauthorized attempts by a user to gain access to any account or computer resource not belonging to that user (e.g., “cracking”) without a signed authorization and defined rules of engagement as part of an authorized penetration test or security assessment.
6. Unauthorized access, alteration, destruction, or any attempt thereof, of any information of any M5 Hosting customers or end-users by any means or device.
7. Knowingly engage in any activities designed to harass, or that will cause a denial-of-service (e.g., synchronized number sequence attacks) to any other user whether on the M5 Hosting network or on another provider’s network.
8. Using M5 Hosting’s Services in such a way as to interfere with the use of the M5 Hosting network by other customers or authorized users.
9. IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is not allowed on M5 Hosting’s Network. We once did allow it, however due to a string of Denial of Service attacks and other problems which were directly related to IRC related activity, we have had to disallow it. A small number of customers who have demonstrated responsible use of IRC before this policy was enacted, have been “grandfathered in”. If in any case or circumstance, a customer receives a DoS attack aimed at or originating from their server and IRC services are determined ot have been in use or related, service will be terminated immediately and no refunds will be made. In addition, at our option, we may demand compensation for damages relating to the related Denial of Serivce.
II. Customer Responsibility for Customer’s Users
Each M5 Hosting customer is responsible for the activities of its users and, by accepting service from M5 Hosting, is agreeing to ensure that its customers/representatives or end-users abide by this Policy. Complaints about customers/representatives or end-users of an M5 Hosting customer will be forwarded to the M5 Hosting customer’s postmaster for action. If violations of the M5 Hosting Acceptable Use Policy occur, M5 Hosting reserves the right to terminate services with or take action to stop the offending customer from violating M5 Hosting’s AUP as M5 Hosting deems appropriate, without notice.
III. Additional Spam Definitions:
From time to time there can be some dispute as what contitutes a spam message, especially when there are many complaints regarding a sender, or a specific mail campaign, but the email sender claims to only send mail that is “CAN-SPAM compliant”, to “opt-in” lists and follow all the best practices for sending email (such as a “remove” link option, etc). This section is intended to provide some disambiguation in these cases.
If any of the below listed Spam Email Content Types can describe the email which initiated the complaint or RBL listing, and the complaint or RBL listing can be validated or confirmed, the sender will be deemed in violation of the M5Hosting Acceptable Use Policy, regardless of if the sender claims the messages were “CAN-SPAM compliant” and only to “Opt-in lists”, etc.
Additionally, in all cases it is a violation of the M5Hosting Acceptable Use Policy to send, proxy/relay or allow to be sent over 100 messages in any one day with the characteristics listed in this section, even if no complaints are received.
Spam Email Content Types:
Containing no meaningful text content
Containing only or mostly a document file (.pdf or .doc) or image file
Containing intentionally misleading subject lines
Designed to obfuscate it’s origin
Designed to avoid accurate classification by spam filters
Designed to poison Bayesian filters
“FROM” a domain that does not have a web site
Other definitions or classification may be added at any time. See this web page for updates.