Acceptable use policy

Why this exists

Our customers share a network and, on shared plans, a machine. This policy is the short list of things that would damage other customers, our network reputation or us. It forms part of the terms of service.

1. Prohibited outright

These result in immediate suspension, without notice, and a report to the relevant authority where the law requires one:

Material that sexually exploits or endangers children.
Content that incites violence or terrorism, or that promotes or organises it.
Distribution of malware, ransomware, exploit kits, credential stealers or botnet control infrastructure.
Phishing pages, fraudulent stores, and sites impersonating a bank, payment provider or public body.
Unauthorised access to, or scanning of, systems you do not own or have written permission to test.
Denial-of-service attacks originating from, or directed through, our network.

2. Email

Unsolicited bulk email is not permitted from our network, whatever list it came from. You may send to recipients who asked to hear from you and who can unsubscribe in one click.

Purchased, scraped or rented lists are not permitted, regardless of how they are described.
Open relays, open proxies and unauthenticated mail scripts must not run on your service.
Shared hosting has an hourly outbound limit. High-volume senders should use a dedicated relay; we will help you set one up.
You are responsible for the reputation of your own sending. Repeated spam complaints will lead to suspension of outbound mail.

3. Copyright and licensing

Do not host material you do not have the right to distribute. This includes pirated software, media, ebooks and courses, and licence-key generators. We act on properly formed copyright complaints, and we forward them to you first where we lawfully can, so you have a chance to respond before anything is removed.

4. Resource use on shared hosting

Shared plans are sized for websites, stores and mail. The following belong on a VPS or a dedicated server rather than on a shared account:

Sustained heavy CPU work: video transcoding, media conversion, model training, cryptocurrency mining.
Peer-to-peer clients, seedboxes, public file-drop and mirror services.
Public proxies, VPN endpoints and Tor relays.
Long-running daemons, game servers and message queues.
Using the account primarily as bulk storage rather than to serve a website.

Cryptocurrency mining is not permitted on any of our services, shared or dedicated. If a process is affecting other customers, we throttle it and email you the same day. We only suspend without warning where a machine is at risk of falling over.

5. Adult content

Legal adult content is permitted on VPS and dedicated services where all performers are verifiably adults and consenting, where you hold the required documentation, and where you comply with the law that applies to you. It is not permitted on shared hosting, for bandwidth reasons rather than moral ones.

6. Security expectations

Keep your applications and, on unmanaged services, your operating system patched.
Do not leave default or shared credentials in place.
Tell us within twenty-four hours if you find your service has been compromised.
Security testing of your own service is fine. Tell us first so our monitoring does not treat it as an attack.

7. How we enforce this

Except where a machine or another customer is at immediate risk, our order of escalation is: we contact you, we give you a reasonable window to fix it, we throttle or isolate the offending process, and only then do we suspend. We tell you what we found and what we did.

Suspension for a first-time, good-faith breach that you fix promptly does not result in termination. Repeated breaches, or any breach under section 1, do.

8. Reporting abuse

Send reports to abuse@webserv.online with the IP address or domain, the timestamps including time zone, and the relevant log extract. We acknowledge reports within one business day. Reports without evidence cannot be acted on.