Acceptable Use Policy

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Acceptable Use Policy

The Network Usage Policies define acceptable activities on our network. The service contract is the fixed portion of our service conditions.

We urge all prospective clients to read through all our Terms of Service before placing their order with us.

WebWolf offers Professional Web Solutions to all our clients. Every client on WebWolf’s network is important to us as they entrust us with their entire site content and online process. We will not, under any circumstances tolerate activities outside these network policies and risk degradation of services for our clients.

Domain Registrations

We will not accept lame delegations.

The following points apply with regard to the support of domain names for “virtual hosting” and “parking”.

Nameservers for all domains including all secondaries, which may not be shared with a third party, (unless by prior special arrangement), must be selected and approved by WebWolf.

WebWolf reserves the right to refuse to host, register, or support domain names that it finds offensive or libelous. Judgement of what constitutes “offensive” or “libelous” shall be at the sole discretion of WebWolf.

WebWolf makes no attempt to exercise control over its customers’ domains, and will not make modifications to administrative, billing, organization, or other associated records, without prior permission, except in cases of emergency or violation of this policy.

Registering any domain to our nameservers without the intent of paying our fees or the authoritative NIC’s fees is expressly prohibited. Registering multiple domains with no intent of using those domains for service is forbidden. Anyone found to be “warehousing” domain names for resale or not in “good faith” will have their services terminated at our discretion, and we may contact the appropriate NIC and advise them of the situation.

The use of any domain name that is considered offensive, defamatory, libelous or violative of any local, state, federal or international law including any violation of intellectual property, copyright, trademark, trade secret, misappropriation and anti-dilution laws is strictly prohibited. It is the sole responsibility of the domain name owner to take all steps necessary to ensure that the domain name selected is not violative of any law or any other party’s rights.

You agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless WebWolf from any and all liability, penalties, losses, damages, costs, expenses, attorneys’ fees, causes of action or claims caused by or resulting from your registration, acquisition or use of a domain name which damages either you, WebWolf or any other party or parties, without limitation or exception.

Domain names that have been registered with WebWolf as the Billing Contact and that have not been paid for within the period specified on the WebWolf invoice will be deleted or reregistered into WebWolf’s ownership.

Domains purchased, are required to be made active within 3 months after purchase.

Additional Information

We are strongly opposed to anyone collecting large numbers of domain names and selling them off. If you need to hold onto a couple of names for future projects, that’s fine; if you are registering hundreds of names just because they’re combinations of words, or because you think someone might want the names from you in the future, you’ll have to find service elsewhere.

Security & Hacking

Security and Hacking is strictly prohibited on WebWolf servers.

Use of WebWolf services to participate in any type of fraud, “cracking & hacking”, malicious behavior, or harassment is strictly not allowed. Any interference with the normal operation of our systems reachable via the Internet is forbidden. Compliance with the acceptable use policies of any network or system through which you connect with our service, is required. Forging e-mail, Usenet postings, or other messages is forbidden. Trafficking in pirated software is forbidden. Port scanning or the use of similar tools is forbidden.

We do not condone, encourage and will not tolerate any illegal material or behavior. If we detect any inappropriate or suspicious activity, all accounts pertaining to the user will be terminated until the investigation is complete. Prior notification to the user is not guaranteed. In extreme cases, legal proceedings will be instituted.

Additional Information
Our policies which are in force are to encourage you do use your accounts responsibly. Cyber crimes such as breaking into systems whether our own or others using brute force, forging messages, swapping games are all illegal and you will not fit into our userbase profile of Internet professionals by engaging in such activities. Undermining the integrity of our services, causing potential legal and technical risks will result in your account being terminated immediately without prior notice or warning and forfeiting any refunds of any nature whatsoever.

Our policies which are in place serves to protect our service for all our customers ensuring that you receive superior, uncomplicated web hosting in a hassle free environment.

Server Side Processes

Daemons and other resident programs are not welcome for shared hosting.

With the exception of cron jobs which are subject to their own policy, the installation or operation of any stand-alone, unattended server-side process (daemons) on WebWolf servers, is forbidden, unless by prior arrangement and consent. This specifically includes IRC bots or clients as well as any redirector programs. WebWolf does not allow the use of processes which accept network connections, for any purpose whatsoever. Violation of this policy will result in immediate account termination without warning.

Additional Information
This policy exists for several reasons:

To protect the CPU and memory resources available on each server.
To protect and enhance system security by not allowing unapproved third-party programs to accept connections from the outside world.
To allow us to be aware of any such programs, by requiring that special arrangements be made.

Cron Usage

Automated tasks may run but are subject to these conditions.

The use of “cron jobs”, which are processes that are run automatically at certain times, in accordance with a “crontab” file set up by each user, are allowed on WebWolf servers, subject to the following conditions and restrictions:

The user’s account must be Basic or better.
The job must not execute more often than every two hours.
The job must generate no greater impact than a CGI script. See the guidelines on CGI resource usage.
The job must be “niced”. For details, read about the nice command (through telnet, with “man nice”). The preferred value is 10 or greater.

Additional Information
This policy exists to protect the servers from abuse. However, it does still allow reasonable usage of cron, which is forbidden by most providers.

Database Usage

Certain database usages will require a dedicated server.

MySQL databases are provided free-of-charge, subject to the conditions and restrictions below.

Each qualifying individual account is limited to the allocated quota as published in the price matrix.
No database may be used to act as a “hit counter”, or for logging of information distributed nightly in the raw web logs (including but not limited to browser and page referrer information).
Databases may not be used for circumventing account disk allowances by storing web sites within the database.
Databases may only be used in conjuction with WebWolf hosted accounts. Access to databases from outside our local network is provided strictly for site and database development.
Databases may not be used to store binary files (including but not limited to image and application files). These files should be stored within the user account and referred to in the database by a “pointer”, if needed.
WebWolf reserves the right to require changes to databases and database usage that has an adverse impact on a database server and/or other user databases on that server. In extreme cases, WebWolf reserves the right to disable any database determined to be unacceptably harming performance of a database server.
WebWolf reserves the right to implement further allowances for database usage in the future, as new tools for determining a database’s server impact are developed.

Additional Information
This policy exists in order to protect the integrity and performance of the database servers for all users.

CGI Usage

CGI processes must behave within certain parameters.

CGI scripts and programs are subject to resource limitations and are enforced by the system which are as follows:

Size of Core Files – 0 MB
CPU Time Used – 30 seconds
Data Size – 3 MB
File Size Created – 1 MB
Memory Locked – 1 MB
Number of Open Files – 32
Number of Simultaneous Processes – 8

Only users with the appropriate account types should run CGI scripts. The Advanced and higher account levels are suitable for custom CGI scripting. WebWolf does not allow CGI scripts for the benefit of external sites and these include all variations of web counter services. Automatic monitoring systems enforce resource limits.

Additional Information
The use of system resource limits is intended to prevent runaway CGI scripts on an unattended server. Also, processes with large memory footprints or hungry CPU requirements will incur swapping and other slowdowns that cause problems for every site on the server.

Resource Usage

WebWolf restricts mail delivery for the simple reason that we run web servers and not mail servers. Having to process bulk mail will negatively affect our servers’ performance.

Violation of this policy will result in investigation and following the immediate suspension of your account. Should you need to make use of such a facility, you are advised to send bulk mailings through your local ISP. The majority of such mail servers as used by ISP are equipped to handle bulk mail.

WebWolf does not allow the following to be initiated on servers:

Run any process that requires more than 8MB of memory space.
Run any program that requires more than 30 CPU seconds.
Use find anywhere except in their own directories.
Send out mail to more than 20 addresses in one batch, whether sequentially or in parallel, not exceeding 100 recipients. Such batches must “sleep” for at least three seconds between each delivery attempt.
Send or receive, through mail, any file larger than 10MB. This limit is enforced in our software.
Accumulate more than 2000 mail messages in a single pop mailbox. If the message count is exceeded, new messages will bounce to the original sender.
Run their own mailing list software.
Run an interactive chat application.
Run a banner exchange, remotely accessible web counter, or any other services that perform CGI processes for sites outside our network.
Exceptions are usually granted for Analog, Log resolve, and other special cases.

Anti Spam Policy

We take a strong stand against Spam.

Our first and foremost enforced policy. The practices described here, can cause irreparable damage to an online organisation, overnight, and can easily tarnish any organisation associated with the offending party. We will not tolerate these abuses.

The transmital of unsolicited or prohibited advertising or other content through electronic mail or inappropriate Usenet postings is forbidden.

Any customer that uses WebWolf for unsolicited mass mailing (also known as spam) will result in the immediate termination without prior notice or warning, and the customer will be held legally responsible for the damages to WebWolf, both monetary and in reputation. The use of any other service to make such a mailing or posting, with any reference to WebWolf’s services (including but not limited to mailboxes, autoresponders, and Web pages), shall also be grounds for account termination as described above.

Adult Content

WebWolf forbids any adult orientated sites whether for entertainment or commercial purposes, on its servers.

Forbidden sites are defined as those that provide access to pornography whether free or for payment regardless of adult verification or not.

Exceptions are made for educational sites with the intention of providing educational content relating to sexuality and such matters.

Additional Information
In order to provide a service to our customers which is efficient and reliable we forbid sites of this nature. When one takes into consideration the “hit factor”, of adult orientated sites, it can become impossible to control bandwith usage. Adult orientated sites attract hordes of visitors and the impact on the servers are extreme. Our servers are tuned for general use and this policy serves to protect and is in the interest of our customers.

Misuse of Account Features

All account features are to be used solely in order to develop and implement the Web site(s) associated with that account.

The following is strictly forbidden:

To operate any service enabling an account feature available to third parties for any use other than normal access to that account’s Web site.
Operating any service which enables or assists anonymous or abusive behavior by third parties.
Operating any service which affects and degrades the quality of service and the stability or reliability of any server or network component, impacting other users or the company negatively.

This includes but is not limited to third party access to CGI services, database hosting, counters, banner exchanges, autoresponders, mailboxes, mail forwarding, mail filtering, and content publishing systems.

All account features are to be used solely in order to develop and implement the Web site(s) associated with that account.

Additional Information
This means that, for example, you cannot:

resell autoresponders to third parties
run a service like webmail.co.za
run a service like pobox.com
run a service like geocities.com (free web hosting)
run a service like linkexchange.com (link farms)
run a service like thecounter.com (hit counters)
run CGI scripts for other sites
host a remailer

WebWolf reserves the right to discontinue any service for any system whose maintainer is unable or unwilling to control abuse or related problems.