Acceptable Use Policy

This Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”) governs your use of the Services and is incorporated by reference into Superior Host’s Terms of Service. Unless otherwise stated, defined terms in this AUP have the meanings provided in the Terms of Service. Superior Host may modify this AUP at any time without notice.

The Services provided by Superior Host may only be used for lawful purposes. You agree to comply with all applicable laws, rules and regulations in connection with your use of the Services. Superior Host reserves the right to refuse service to anyone. Any material that in our judgment violates this AUP in any manner may be removed from our servers (or otherwise disabled), with or without notice. Failure to respond to an abuse ticket within the specified time period in our email to you may result in the suspension or termination of the Services.

a. Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights.

i. Use of the Services to infringe upon another party’s intellectual property rights is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to, the unauthorized copying or distribution of movies, music, books, photographs, software/warez, or any other copyrighted work. Selling or offering to sell any counterfeit merchandise will result in the immediate termination of your account. Any account found to be infringing on the intellectual property rights of others will be expeditiously removed or access to the material will be disabled. Any account found to be in repeated violation of this prohibition will be suspended or terminated.

ii. If you believe that your intellectual property rights are being infringed upon, please email support@superior-host.com. For copyright infringement claims, Superior Host follows the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) notice and takedown procedures.
Using a shared account as a backup/storage device.

b. You may not use a shared hosting account as a backup/storage device with the exception of one cPanel backup of the same account. Please do not take backups of your backups.

a. Unacceptable material on our servers include without limitation:

• Topsites
• IRC Scripts/Bots
• IRCD (irc servers)
• Proxy Scripts/Anonymizers
• Image Hosting Scripts (similar to Photobucket or Tinypic)
• AutoSurf/PTC/PTS/PPC sites
• IP Scanners
• Bruteforce Programs/Scripts/Applications
• Mail Bombers/Spam Scripts
• Banner-Ad services (commercial banner ad rotation)
• File Dump/Mirror Scripts (similar to rapidshare)
• Commercial Audio Streaming (more than one or two streams)
• Escrow/Bank Debentures
• High-Yield Interest Programs (HYIP) or Related Sites
• Investment Sites (FOREX, E-Gold Exchange, Second Life/Linden Exchange, Ponzi, MLM/Pyramid Scheme)
• Sale of any controlled substance without prior proof of appropriate permit(s)
• Prime Banks Programs
• Lottery/Gambling Sites
• MUDs/RPGs/PBBGs
• Hacker focused sites/archives/programs
• Sites promoting illegal activities
• Forums and/or websites that distribute or link to warez/pirated/illegal content
• Bank Debentures/Bank Debenture Trading Programs
• Fraudulent Sites (Including, but not limited to sites listed at aa419.org & escrow-fraud.com)
• Mailer Pro
• Push button mail scripts
• Broadcast or Streaming of Live Sporting Events (UFC, NASCAR, FIFA, NFL, MLB, NBA, WWE, WWF, etc)
• Tell A Friend Scripts
• Anonymous or Bulk SMS Gateways
• Bitcoin Miners
• PayDay Loan Sites (including any site related to PayDay loans, PayDay loan affiliate progams, etc)

b. Child Pornography Prohibited

Content that is potentially harmful to minors, as determined in Superior Host’s sole discretion, is strictly forbidden, including but not limited to, child pornography or content perceived to be child pornography. Any website found to host child pornography or linking to child pornography will be suspended immediately without notice.

c. Other Prohibited Content.

We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Any material that, in our judgment, is obscene, threatening, illegal, or violates our Terms of Service or this AUP in any manner may be removed from our servers (or otherwise disabled), with or without notice.

a. You may not:

1. Use twenty-five percent (25%) or more of our system resources for longer than ninety (90) seconds at a time. Activities that could cause this excessive use, include but are not limited to: CGI scripts, FTP, PHP, HTTP, etc.
2. Run stand-alone, unattended server-side processes at any point in time on the server. This includes any and all daemons, such as IRCD.
3. Run any type of web spider or indexer (including Google Cash / AdSpy) on shared servers.
4. Run any software that interfaces with an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network.
5. Run any bit torrent application, tracker, or client. You may link to legal torrents off-site, but may not host or store them on our shared servers.
6. Participate in any file-sharing/peer-to-peer activities
7. Run any gaming servers such as counter-strike, half-life, battlefield1942, etc.
8. Run cron entries with intervals of less than fifteen (15) minutes.
9. Run any MySQL queries longer than fifteen (15) seconds. MySQL tables should be indexed appropriately.
10. Include the local file rather than the URL when using PHP, include functions for including a local file. Instead of including “http://yourdomain.com/include.php”), use “include.php”.
11. Force html to handle server-side code (like php and shtml) to help reduce usage.
12. Use https protocol unless it is necessary; encrypting and decrypting communications is noticeably more CPU-intensive than unencrypted communications.

b. INODES

The use of more than two hundred and fifty thousand (250,000) inodes on any shared or reseller account may result in a warning, and if no action is taken to reduce the excessive use of inodes, your account may be suspended. If an account exceeds one hundred thousand (100,000) inodes it will be automatically removed from our backup system to avoid over-usage, however, databases will still be backed up as a courtesy in our sole discretion. Every file (i.e. a webpage, image file, email, etc.) on your account uses up one (1) inode.

User accounts that constantly create and delete large numbers of files on a regular basis, have hundreds of thousands of files, or cause file system damage may be flagged for review and/or suspension. The primary cause of excessive inodes is typically due to Users leaving their catchall address enabled, but never checking their primary account mailbox. Over time, tens of thousands of messages (or more) build up, eventually pushing the account past an acceptable amount of inodes. To disable your default mailbox, login to cPanel and choose “Mail”, then “Default Address”, “Set Default Address”, and then type in: “:fail: No such user here”.

In our effort to combat the ever increasing problem with Unsolicited Bulk E-mail (UBE), a.k.a. “SPAM”, we reserve the right to limit the number of recipients per hour to which customers can send e-mail messages.

There is an outgoing email hourly limit per domain, based on the Hosting Plan or Service that you have. This limit is also applied towards Mailman. If you send over this amount in any hour, most of the e-mails will bounce back with an undeliverable error. If this occurs, it will then take some time for your account to be able to send again so we recommend waiting at least 1 hour after this issue occurs to begin sending email again.

• Starter Plan: 100 recipients per hours
• Established Plan: 150 recipients per hours
• Deluxe Plan: 200 recipients per hours
• Superior Plan: 300 recipients per hours
• VPS, Cloud and Dedicated packages: Unlimited number of Mailman mailing lists

Any mailing list over 500 email addresses is only allowed to be sent to during off-peak times to prevent high server loads. Off peak times qualify as all day Saturday and Sunday, and 1AM – 8AM Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday. 5,000 addresses will require a Dedicated server, VPS, or Cloud Server solution from us. Note: Dividing one large list into smaller lists to get below this limit is not allowed.

There is also a limit to the number of Mailman mailing lists permitted as follows (NOTE: This does not apply to other mailing list programs such as PHPList. This only applies to Mailman.)

• Starter Plan: 5 Mailman mailing lists
• Established Plan: 10 Mailman mailing lists
• Deluxe Plan: 20 Mailman mailing lists
• Superior Plan: 30 Mailman mailing lists
• VPS, Cloud and Dedicated packages: Unlimited number of Mailman mailing lists

Any time you’re sending a message no matter how large your e-mail list is you must throttle it to ensure you do not exceed your account limit. If the mailing list software you’re using does not allow you to throttle you must switch to an application or script that will. We recommend PHPList, which can be found in your CPanel, under Softaculous.

IMPORTANT: If you do not throttle and you try sending 500 emails, the server will try sending all 500 in 1 second which is not possible on our shared servers. This will cause a very high load on the server and the entire server will be sluggish, potentially affecting your sites and service, until this sending process is completed. It is our job to keep the server up and running without being sluggish or experiencing issues. Anyone who causes the server’s load to go high will be suspended and the process will be terminated. If you choose not to throttle, you will most likely be suspended for crashing the server.

The list must be a Double Opt-In list. This means a user has subscribed for a newsletter or other email marketing messages by explicitly requesting it and confirming the email address to be their own. Confirmation is usually done by responding to a notification/confirmation email sent to the email address the end user specified. The double opt-in method eliminates the chance of abuse where somebody submits someone else’s email address without their knowledge and against their will. You will not be permitted to mail any mailing list that you were given or purchased. In doing so, this will also be considered spamming and may result in termination of the offending account.

Email Scripts must be able to handle and document all information from a double opt-in list. This includes recording the sign-up IP address and date/time, double opt-in verification IP address and date/time, processing opt-outs (via web or email), and list removal on bounce backs. All opt-outs or bounce back removals must be handled in a timely manner, and outbound mail must be throttled on shared packages to a maximum of the limit your hosting plan allows. If your account is found to be using a script that does not meet these requirements, we reserve the right to suspend, terminate, or deactivate your script or account.

a. We do not tolerate the transmission of spam. We monitor all traffic to and from our web servers for indications of spamming and maintain a spam abuse complaint center to register allegations of spam abuse. Customers suspected to be using our products and services for the purpose of sending spam are fully investigated. If we determine there is a problem with spam, we will take the appropriate action to resolve the situation. Our spam abuse complaint center can be reached by email at abuse@superior-host.com.

We define spam as the sending of Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE), Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE) or Unsolicited Facsimiles (Fax), which is email or facsimile sent to recipients as an advertisement or otherwise, without first obtaining prior confirmed consent to receive these communications. This can include, but is not limited to, the following:

i. Email Messages

ii. Newsgroup postings

iii. Windows system messages

iv. Pop-up messages (aka “adware” or “spyware” messages)

v. Instant messages (using AOL, MSN, Yahoo or other instant messenger programs)

vi. Online chat room advertisements

vii. Guestbook or Website Forum postings

viii. Facsimile Solicitations

ix. Text/SMS Messages

We will not allow our servers and services to be used for the purposes described above. In order to use our products and services, you must not only abide by all applicable laws and regulations, which include the Can-Spam Act of 2003 and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, but you must also abide by this no spam policy. Commercial advertising and/or bulk emails or faxes may only be sent to recipients who have “opted-in” to receive messages. They must include a legitimate return address and reply-to address, the sender’s physical address, and an opt-out method in the footer of the email or fax. Upon request by us, conclusive proof of opt-in may be required for an email address or fax number.

If we determine the services in question are being used in association with spam, we will re-direct, suspend, or cancel any web site hosting, domain registration, email boxes or other applicable services for a period of no less than two (2) days. The registrant or customer will be required to respond by email to us stating that they will cease to send spam and/or have spam sent on their behalf. We will require a non-refundable reactivation fee to be paid before the site, email boxes and/or services are reactivated. In the event we determine the abuse has not stopped after services have been restored the first time, we may terminate the hosting and email boxes associated with the domain name in question.

We encourage all customers and recipients of email generated from our products and services to report suspected spam. Suspected abuse can be reported by email or through our Contact form on the Web.

B. You agree that we may immediately terminate any Account which we believe, in our sole and absolute discretion, is transmitting or is otherwise connected with any spam or other unsolicited bulk email. In addition, if actual damages cannot be reasonably calculated then you agree to pay us liquidated damages in the amount of $1.00 for each piece of spam or unsolicited bulk email transmitted from or otherwise connected with your Account.

Websites hosted on Superior Host’s servers in the U.S. are regulated by U.S. law. Accordingly, pursuant to Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act, Superior Host’s policy is not to remove allegedly defamatory material from websites hosted on our servers unless the material has been found to be defamatory by a court, as evidenced by a court order. As a webhost, Superior Host is not a publisher of User content and we are not in a position to investigate the veracity of individual defamation claims. We rely on the legal system and the courts to determine whether or not material is indeed defamatory. In any case in which a court order indicates that material is defamatory, libelous, or slanderous in nature, we will disable access to the material. Similarly, in any case in which a U.S. court has placed an injunction against specified content or material being made available, we will comply and remove or disable access to the material in question.

a. Resellers
If there is a violation of this AUP by one of a reseller’s client’s account, Superior Host will suspend the website in question and will notify the reseller so that the reseller can terminate the account. Superior Host may, but is not obligated to, monitor the account or website for any subsequent violations. The occurrence of additional violations may result in the immediate termination of your reseller account.

b. Direct customers
Your Services may be terminated with or without notice upon any violation of this AUP. If applicable, violations will be reported to the appropriate law enforcement agency.

c. A failure to respond to an email from an abuse ticket within forty-eight (48) hours, or as otherwise specified in the email, may result in the suspension or termination of your Services. All abuse issues must be dealt with via trouble ticket/email and will receive a response within forty-eight (48) hours.

If you feel you have discovered a violation of our AUP please report it to: support@superior-host.com.