YetiHost

Acceptable Use Policy



As a high-quality web hosting provider, YetiHost values its good reputation. Accordingly, it is important to us that our customers use our services responsibly and courteously. Most of our customers do so and seldom need to refer to this policy.


Unacceptable Usage

Unacceptable activities include but are not limited to:
  • spamming (sending unsolicited advertising to those with which the customer has no existing business relationship, posting off-topic advertising in newsgroups)
  • spoofing (using a return e-mail address which is not the valid reply address of the sender or sending an e-mail message which does not contain enough information to enable the recipient to identify the party who is really sending the message
  • passive spamming (promoting a web site hosted by YetiHost by spamming from some other source)
  • trolling (posting controversial messages in newsgroups to generate responses)
  • mail bombing (inundating a user with e-mail without any serious intent to correspond)
  • subscribing someone else to an electronic mailing list without that person's permission.
A message is considered unsolicited if it is posted in violation of a newsgroup charter or sent to a recipient who has not requested the message. Making an e-mail address available to the public does not constitute a request to receive messages. Distribution of mass emailing programs is also prohibited. All recipients on a mailing list must have personally subscribed. Mailing lists may not be used to distribute unsolicited e-mail.

Our standard hosting plans are not suitable for mass mailings. If you are not sure if your actions will be in violation, please contact us first.


Abuse of the legal rights of others.

Examples of unacceptable activities in this regard include:
  • posting private information about a person without their consent
  • infringing intellectual property rights
  • defaming a person or business
  • knowingly making available code which will have a deleterious effect on third-party computers

Abuse of the law.

YetiHost's services may be used for lawful purposes only. Illegality includes but is not limited to:
  • drug dealing
  • attempting without authorization to access a computer system
  • pirating (distributing copyrighted material in violation of copyright law, specifically MP3s, MPEG's, ROMs, and ROM emulators)
  • gambling
  • schemes to defraud (also known as phishing)
  • trafficking in obscene material
  • sending a message or having content that is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another person
  • threatening bodily harm or damage to individuals or groups
  • stalking or violating other state or federal law such as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or the Economic Espionage Act.
Linking to illegal material is also prohibited. YetiHost reserves the right to check system files, e-mail, and other data on our servers for illegal content and materials or for any other reasons deemed necessary.


Adult Material.

Adult Orientated websites are allowed on the YetiHost network on the condition that all material must be legal in both the United States of America and also the United Kingdom. If YetiHost find any content that we deem to be illegal, YetiHost reserve the right to cancel the account and provide the authorities access to the data. All sites with adult orientated material are placed on a dedicated Adult IP range and the cost for this is £5 per year. The client must submit a support ticket within 24 hours of creating the domain to request that the adult orientated website is moved to this IP range.

Sites deemed as Adult Orientated:
  • Any site that contains pornography or links to such material.
  • Sex Toys/Adult Stores
  • Any site that contains ANY content that would be illegal for a minor to view in either the US or UK.

Child Pornography

YetiHost will cooperate fully with any criminal investigation into a Customer's violation of the Child Protection Act of 1984 concerning child pornography. Customers are ultimately responsible for their actions and will be liable for illegal material held within their account.

According to the Child Protection Act, child pornography includes photographs, films, video or any other type of visual presentation that shows a person who is or is depicted as being under the age of eighteen years and is engaged in or is depicted as engaged in explicit sexual activity, or the dominant characteristic of which is the depiction, for a sexual purpose, of a sexual organ or the anal region of a person under the age of eighteen years or any written material or visual representation that advocates or counsels sexual activity with a person under the age of eighteen years.

Violations of the Child Protection Act should be reported to:
  • United States (U.S. Customs Agency): 1-800-BEALERT.
  • United Kingdom (Metropolitan Police): 0808 100 0040
  • If you wish to remain anonymous, please call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
In the event that the offending material is found on the YetiHost network, please contact abuse@yetihost.com with full details immediately. YetiHost will then take appropriate action and will also notify the relevant authorities.


Abuse of YetiHost's Server Resources.

Running programs in the background on a YetiHost's server without YetiHost's prior written authorization, Internet Relay Chat, IRC bots, and the like are not acceptable uses of YetiHost's servers.


Hacking/Cracking.

YetiHost reserves the right to report illegal activities to any and all regulatory, administrative, and/or governmental authorities for prosecution.

The following examples of unacceptable behaviour are non-exclusive, and are provided for guidance purposes. If you are unsure if your actions will be a violation of our policies please contact us first.

  • Server broadcast messages or any message sent on an intrusive basis to any directly or indirectly attached network.
  • Any attempt to circumvent user authentication or security of host, network, or account.
  • Accessing data not intended for user.
  • Using or attempting to use services or features that are not included in your package.
  • Probing the security of any network.
  • Port scans, ping floods, packet spoofing, forging router information, Denial of Service attacks, sniffers, flooding, spoofing, ping bombing, smurfs, winnuke, land, teardrop.
  • Promulgation of viruses.
Any activity, whether or not the intrusion results in the corruption or loss of data, will be investigated and proper action taken. The presence of any of these programs, whether or not run, will result in action against the user including suspension or termination.


Client Responsibility.

The client is responsible for:
  • Any activity originating from the account unless proven to be a victim of outside hacking or address forgery.
  • Securing their username/password.
  • All material on their site that may be put on by a third-party (such as the usage of Free For All links pages).
  • Account data backup
  • Ensuring that payments on the account are kept in good standing.
  • Any over-usage of bandwidth/diskspace used on their account.
  • Settling any balance due on account as soon as notified that payment is due.

System Resource Usage

Any web site that uses a high amount of server resources (CPU time, memory usage) will be given the option to reduce the resources used to an acceptable level or upgrade to a more acceptable plan. We understand that some sites will be more resource-intensive than others. As such, all clients are permitted to use a maximum of 10% of CPU/RAM for no longer than 1 (one) minute at a time. Users repeatedly using 10% or more of resources may be suspended and/or terminated.


Backups.

Full backups are made of the content on our servers on a regular basis. No guarantees are made of any kind, either expressed or implied, as to the integrity of these backups. Backups are made for server restoration purposes only. It is the clients' responsibility to maintain local copies of their account content and any important information. If loss of data occurs due to an error of YetiHost, YetiHost will attempt to recover the data for no charge to the client. If data loss occurs due to negligence of client in securing their account, by an action of the client or any other third-party, YetiHost reserve the right to charge an administrative fee for restoration of data. The client is fully responsible for obtaining any required insurance cover to protect against any possible loss of data held on our servers. Please note that our backups exclude certain file types, including but not limited to .log, .cab, .exe, .zip and .rar.


Calculation of Resource Usage

YetiHost reserve the right at any time to commence or cease the monitoring of bandwidth or disk space on any service offered. In the event that YetiHost commence monitoring of CPU/Memory/Disk Space or bandwidth on a service that was previously not monitored, it is the client's responsibility to ensure that they stay within the allocated resources or purchase adequate resources to cover any usage.


Disk Overages.

If the client exceeds their allocated disk space quota, the client will be required to either upgrade to a higher package or to purchase additional quotas to cover the overage. In the event that a quota overage exists and action is not taken within a reasonable time determined by YetiHost, YetiHost reserve the right to automatically apply extra quotas to cover your over-usage or to automatically upgrade the account. Payments for overages must be made within 48 hours to prevent disruption of services.


Bandwidth Overages

YetiHost will alert the client when the bandwidth allocation for the current month is over 70% depleted. It is the client's responsibility to ensure that they do not exceed their quota. If the bandwidth quota is exceeded, an invoice will be automatically created on the last day of the month. Bandwidth overages will incur a 17% administrative fee on the normal cost of bandwidth purchase, however the client may purchase sufficient bandwidth at the normal rate before the end of the month to avoid this fee. Payments for overages must be made within 48 hours to prevent disruption of services.


IP Addresses.

YetiHost maintains control of any and all IP addresses that may be assigned to the client and reserves in its sole discretion the right to change or remove them. If IP addresses are removed from any reason excluding breach of our acceptable use policies, a refund will be made for any monies paid for the IP addresses minus any amount for time the IP addresses were in use by the client. This will be calculated on a pro-rata basis. IP usage must be in accordance to ARIN guidelines. YetiHost reserve the right to request detailed information on the intended usage of IP addresses before they are issued and YetiHost may deny any request for additional IP's.


Coldfusion Custom Tags.

On request of the client, YetiHost will install up to five custom tags per paid account held with us. Further tags will be subject to an administrative fee per tag installed. All tags are checked for security and performance related issues and YetiHost reserve the right to deny installation of any tag for any reason.


Coldfusion Security/Performance.

YetiHost reserve the right to deny usage of any tag or function that is deemed to pose a security risk/Performance issue to our servers or network. Tags/Functions disabled at present can be viewed by clicking here. In the interest of maximum performance, CFSCHEDULE may only be used to trigger an event at a minimum interval of 15 minutes.


Hosting Plan Features

In the event of a hosting plan feature being offered as unlimited (Including but not limited to E-mail and Databases), YetiHost will impose no standard physical limit on the usage of that feature. YetiHost would like to ensure that clients understand that these features are however still limited by some physical aspects, including but not limited to CPU usage, Memory usage, Drive Space and Bandwidth.


Access Databases

Access databases are not designed for nor recommended for use on busy websites. Due to this, our support scope is severely limited in any issues relating to Access databases. We recommend using MySQL or MSSQL for increased performance and reliability.


E-Mail Accounts.

E-Mail accounts allocated to a shared hosting package are supplied for your personal/business use within your organisation only. You are strictly forbidden from advertising these accounts to the general Internet whether for free or as a paid service. YetiHost reserve the right to request detailed information from you if we suspect that you are in breach of this clause.


Refunds.

Refunds do not apply to accounts terminated for inappropriate, illegal content or for any other breach of our acceptable use policy. Refund will not include any over-quota charges or any premium service that you have requested from us, this includes but is not limited to domain registration. In the event of a free domain name being offered with a package, if you cancel our services within 30 days the refund will exclude the cost of registering the domain name at our current prices. Guarantee period applies from the moment you sign up for our service and lasts for 30 days, subsequent sign ups from the same domain name / account / household / e-mail will not qualify for this guarantee. Site package upgrades/downgrades are assumed to have already evaluated our services and are excluded from this guarantee. Money-back guarantee only applies in the event that YetiHost fail to provide the services advertised at time of signup. Notification must be made within 30 days by opening a support ticket and directing it to our billing department. Refunds will only be made in accordance with our 30 day money-back guarantee. After this time period has expired, no refunds will be made. All refunds are at the discretion of YetiHost.


Late Payments

In the event of an outstanding balance for 5 days, a late payment fee of £10 will be applied to your account. In the event that the full balance is not settled within 7 days, your account will be suspended. Account reactivation after suspension may take up to 24 hours and YetiHost reserve the right to delay or refuse reactivation at their sole discretion. After suspension, YetiHost may remove your account and any data from their servers at any time without further notice. Late payment suspensions are treated on a customer level and not on a domain/package level. Account data backups will only be provided after payment has been settled in full, including any suspension/reactivation fees payable. YetiHost reserve the right at their sole discretion to invoke suspension at any time on delinquent accounts.


Fraudulent Chargebacks

Fraudulent chargebacks are illegal and all chargebacks will be sent to the account holders credit card company with proof of service. You will be charged a minimum amount of £100 for filing a fraudulent chargeback or payment dispute. This is our administration charge for handling the chargeback. All fees accrued from fraudulent chargebacks/payment disputes will be turned over to a collection agency and this may affect your credit rating. We take chargebacks seriously and will not tolerate fraudulent chargebacks. We record all IP's for possible proof to a credit card company along with all logs of use.


Abuse of YetiHost Staff

YetiHost will not tolerate any abuse of our staff, we treat our clients with respect and expect to be treated the same way. Any abuse of our staff will result in instant account termination without prior notice. Abuse of staff includes but is not limited to wasting the time of staff by repeatedly reporting non-existent problems, use of foul language or any type of threat against a member of staff or the company.


Special Offers.

Special offers are only available to new signups unless explicitly stated otherwise. Accordingly, current accounts or any account which has been held on our servers within the last 3 months does not qualify for new signup special offers. Special offers that are made available to existing clients will be announced as such in the forums or control panel newsletters.


Application Packs

YetiHost may offer application packs that allow simple installation of certain scripts from within the control panel. YetiHost does not however provide support on the usage or configuration of any script. As with any other script the client may install on their webspace, the client is fully responsible for keeping all scripts up to date with the latest security patches. Some application packs require specific database/programming languages and YetiHost makes no warranty that all packages will allow the install of all available scripts. If you are in doubt that your chosen package will support a specific script, please contact our sales department.


Same Day Setup Guarantee

YetiHost guarantee that all shared and reseller hosting accounts will be setup within 24 hours of ordering and in the event that this guarantee is not met, YetiHost will credit the equivalent of one month hosting fee to the account. This guarantee applies only to instant online payment, it does not apply to any method of non-instant payment. The 24 hour period will be reflected directly against the time that YetiHost have actually taken to setup the account, in the event that YetiHost require information from the customer regarding fraud checks or for any other reason, the period of time calculated will be halted when the customer is first contacted and will resume when YetiHost receive the information requested.


Domain Registration.

Domain names registered through YetiHost are registered in the client's name unless otherwise stated. Fees for domain transfers are non-refundable in the event that the transfer fails due to configuration issues on the client's or losing registrar's side. In the event of a transfer request being submitted to YetiHost, it is the responsibility of the client to ensure that the domain is not held under registrar-lock at the time of request, in the event of registrar-lock being enabled on the domain, the transfer request will fail. Whois details for new registration requests are taken from the account details of the user submitting the registration request, updating your details in the control panel does not update the Whois information. In the even that you wish to update the whois information associated with your domain, please submit a support ticket with the new details.


Private Label Reseller.

In the interest of our reseller's privacy, we make every attempt to private label all reseller facilities. While we will do our best to uphold this, we do however need to make it clear that it may be possible for advanced users to find out details through third-parties that may route back to us.


Support Scope

YetiHost assume that all customers have the basic understanding of the Internet and how to use basic functions like FTP. YetiHost will provide support to you only in relation to your account on our servers. The scope of our support services does not however include web design, coding or any other issue not related directly to the services we provide. While YetiHost permit the use of third-party software (FTP clients etc) to be used by clients to access their account, YetiHost cannot provide support on how to use or configure these programs. Resellers are responsible for providing support to their own customers, it is our company policy that we will not respond to any support requests from our reseller's customers while a contract is in progress with the reseller, unless previously agreed in writing or under extenuating circumstances. Support will only be provided through the advertised means, which can be found in your welcome e-mail or on the contact page of the YetiHost main website. Support is provided in English only, YetiHost cannot cater for receiving/sending support requests in any foreign language.


Fraud Prevention.

In the event that YetiHost have reasonable grounds to suspect fraudulent use of our servers or an attempted fraudulent signup, you agree that YetiHost may pass your details on to any third-parties as YetiHost deems appropriate. This includes but is not limited to alerting other webhosts of your IP address and domain used when you registered with us. In this regard, only information that can be found publicly on the Internet will be shared.


Cancellations.

All cancellation requests must be submitted from within your control panel account. In the event of a cancellation request being received by YetiHost, unless requested otherwise cancellation will take place immediately. Cancellation results in all data under the affected account(s) being removed and this is non-reversible, due to this you should ensure you have a backup of your files before requesting cancellation. The latest future date that can be submitted for cancellation is the day that your current payment period expires. No prepaid funds will be refunded in event of requested cancellation before the current payment term expires. This section does not affect our 30 day money-back guarantee.


Scheduled/Emergency Maintenance

To maintain the highest level of security and performance, from time to time it is necessary that YetiHost perform maintenance on our network or servers. YetiHost aim to provide at least 14 days notice of any scheduled work however please note that this is not always possible nor guaranteed in any way. Notice of such maintenance will be posted in the YetiHost community forums and it is the responsibility of the client to ensure that they are up to date with any announcements made. It is the client's responsibility to ensure that they have checked to ensure that any current issues are not caused as a result of maintenance before submitting a support request.


Limitation of Liability.

YetiHost shall not be responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental and consequential damages, other than that permitted by our Service Level Agreement, which may arise from YetiHost's servers going off-line or being unavailable for any reason whatsoever. Further, YetiHost shall not be responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental or consequential damages, resulting from the corruption or deletion of any complete or partial web site from one of YetiHost's servers. Where permitted by law, YetiHost's maximum liability to the client under all circumstances relating to YetiHost's provision of the service will be equal to the fees paid by the client for the service giving rise to the claim. In the event that the law does not allow the exclusion or limitation of liability for consequential or incidental damages, in such circumstances YetiHost's liability is limited to the extent permitted by law.

YetiHost shall be the sole arbiter of what is and is not a violation of these acceptable use policies. YetiHost reserves the right to terminate an account at any time and for any reason that causes harm to any YetiHost customer's web sites or the company. YetiHost reserves the right to withhold any pre-paid funds for any site removed for violations of these policies. YetiHost reserves the right to refuse, cancel, or suspend service at our sole discretion.

YetiHost reserves the right to change the Acceptable Use Policy and any other documentation relating to our services without prior notice or warning. Non-enforcement of any part of the Acceptable Use Policy does not constitute consent.


Governing Law

The YetiHost web site, YetiHost Global Network and all services provided on or through the YetiHost web site, or the YetiHost Global Network are subject to the laws of Canada.

Violations of these Acceptable Uses Policies should be reported to abuse@yetihost.com

All complaints will be investigated promptly and action taken will be at the sole discretion of YetiHost.