Acceptable Use Policy

Acceptable Use Policy

Introduction

The purpose of this document is to provide an understanding of ITNT Acceptable Use Policy. This policy serves to define the accepted behaviour of users on ITNT network. This allows ITNT to:

• Maintain the integrity and quality of their services,
• Protect their customers and infrastructure from abuse,
• Adhere to the current laws and regulations governing organisations and service providers in the countries that they operate in
• Co-exist within the global internet community as a responsible service provider.

The Network

1. The user acknowledges that ITNT is unable to exercise control over the data passing over the infrastructure and the Internet, including but not limited to any websites, electronic mail transmissions, news groups or other material created or accessible over its infrastructure. Therefore, ITNT is not responsible for data transmitted over its infrastructure.

2. ITNT infrastructure may be used to link into other networks worldwide and the user agrees to conform to the acceptable use policies of these networks.

3. Users of the ITNT network include not only the ITNT customers, but in the case of resellers of the ITNT services, the customers of the resellers too. Resellers of ITNT services are responsible for the activities of their customers.

4. The user may obtain and download any materials marked as available for download off the Internet, but is not permitted to use their Internet access to distribute any copyrighted materials unless permission for such distribution is granted to the user by the owner of the materials.

5. The user is prohibited from obtaining, disseminating or facilitating over ITNT network any unlawful materials, including but not limited to:

• Copying or dealing in intellectual property without authorisation,
• Child pornography, and/or
• Any unlawful hate-speech materials.

6. To help ensure that all customers have fair and equal use of the service and to protect the integrity of the network, ITNT reserves the right, and will take necessary steps, to prevent improper or excessive usage thereof.

7. The action that ITNT may take includes, but is not limited to:

• Limiting throughput
• Preventing or limiting service through specific ports or communication protocols; and/or
• Complete termination of service to customers who grossly abuse the network through improper or excessive usage.

8. This policy applies to and will be enforced for intended and unintended (e.g., viruses, worms, malicious code, or otherwise unknown causes) prohibited usage.

9. Online activity will be subject to the available bandwidth, data storage and other limitations of the service provided, which ITNT may, from time to time, revise at its own discretion and without prior notice to the customer.

Uncapped Services

1. It is our goal to protect the integrity of our network, in order to provide the best possible internet experience for all of our clients using all Uncapped services and as such we reserve the right to manage uncapped users who are deemed to be causing an unusually large burden on the network. We are committed to managing our network in a way that allows us to provide all users with the best experience possible, however we cannot guarantee that the allocated capacity will always be available.

2. Home Uncapped / Premium Uncapped
Home Uncapped services are best suited for average home users who make little to no use of high bandwidth services such as NNTP, Peer-to-Peer and Torrents (and similar but not limited to). Home Uncapped services are proactively managed by the ITNT Protocol Manager. Premium Uncapped services are better suited to more advanced users, and are managed proactively by the ITNT Protocol Manager.

3. Premium Uncapped (DSL and Fibre) - ITNT Protocol Manager
The ITNT Protocol Manager is used to provide all uncapped users on our network with the best possible internet experience. During peak network times, we give priority to real time services (such as browsing, email, streaming etc), high bandwidth services such as NNTP, Peer-to-Peer and Torrents (and similar but not limited to) will receive less priority. Clients deemed to be continuously uploading/downloading or using the service for unattended automated processes will be managed by the ITNT Protocol Manager. The ITNT Protocol Manager may be used to manage clients by rate limiting (slowing down speed) and limiting or preventing service using specific protocols or ports. We reserve the right to use the ITNT Protocol Manager to manage the integrity of our network should network capacity not be available at any time, we assure our clients that we will do this in a responsible manner should the need arise. Any user that is found attempting to bypass or circumvent the ITNT Protocol Manager will be suspended and could have their service cancelled.

4. Home Uncapped (DSL and Fibre) – ITNT Protocol Manager
Home Uncapped services are managed according to the last 7 days usage projected to 30 days as well as the available capacity on the network at all times.

5. There are predefined thresholds set and when exceeded the account speed will be managed down to a maximum of 50% of the account speed. Should the demand on the network exceed available capacity these thresholds may be managed more aggressively by the ITNT Protocol Manager.

6.Business Uncapped (DSL and Fibre)
This is an uncapped service that is prioritised for Business Users based on available network capacity where high priority is required for typical business protocols.

Clients deemed to be continuously uploading/downloading or using the service for unattended automated processes or non-typical business protocols (such as but not limited to NNTP, Peer-to-Peer, Https Downloading and Torrents) will be managed by the ITNT Protocol Manager. The ITNT Protocol Manager may be used to manage clients by rate limiting (slowing down speed) and limiting or preventing service using specific protocols or ports. ITNT reserves the right, to at its discretion manage non typical business protocols such as but not limited to NNTP, Peer-to-Peer, Https Downloading and Torrents and/or rate limit service speed.

We reserve the right to use the ITNT Protocol Manager to manage services in order to protect the integrity of our network according to the available network capacity, we assure our clients that we will do this in a responsible manner should the need arise.

Any user that is found attempting to bypass or circumvent the ITNT Protocol Manager will be suspended and could have their service cancelled.

System and Network Security

1. All references to systems and networks under this section includes the Internet (and all those systems and/or networks to which user is granted access through ITNT) and includes but is not limited to the infrastructure of ITNT itself.

2. The user may not circumvent user authentication or security of any host, device, network, or account (referred to as "cracking" or "hacking"), nor interfere with service to any user, host, device, or network (referred to as "denial of service attacks"). The host, device, network or account shall also not be used for any illegal purpose, including phishing.

3. Violations of system or network security by the user are prohibited, and may result in civil or criminal liability. ITNT will investigate incidents involving such violations and will involve and co-operate with law enforcement officials if a criminal violation is suspected. Examples of system or network security violations include, without limitation, the following:

• Unauthorised access to or use of data, systems or networks, including any attempt to probe, scan or test the vulnerability of any system or network or to breach security or authentication measures without the express authorisation of ITNT.
• Unauthorised monitoring of data or traffic on the network or systems without express authorisation of ITNT.
• Interference with service to any user, device, host or network including, without limitation, mail bombing, flooding, deliberate attempts to overload a system and broadcast attacks.
• Forging of any TCP-IP packet header (spoofing) or any part of the header information in an email or a newsgroup posting.

Hosting

1. ITNT offers a quality hosting service in a shared hosting environment and must assure that frivolous, excessive, or inappropriate use of the resources by a user or company does not degrade performance for the majority of Hosting users. To maintain the integrity of the network service for fair and acceptable usage, ITNT reserves the right to enforce certain rules and may choose to set limits on an individual's use of a resource through quotas, time limits, and other mechanisms to ensure that these resources can be used by the majority of our hosting users to maintain the integrity of the service.

2. The offer for unlimited bandwidth (web traffic) usage on Shared Hosting platforms is subject to reasonable and responsible usage, as determined at ITNT's discretion. Shared Hosting is designed for serving a website with relevant content for personal, small buniness or that of small enterprises, and not medium to large enterprises. ITNT reserves the right to upgrade, correct or move users deemed to have excessive bandwidth usage to an applicable hosting package or a Virtual Cloud product, which will better suit their requirements. Users will be given notice as such, and will be informed of any cost implications.

3. Disk Space on Shared Hosting may only be used for Website Content, Emails and related System Files. General data storage, archiving or file sharing of documents, files or media not directly related to the website content is strictly prohibited. Unauthorised storage or distribution of copyrighted materials is prohibited, via FTP hosts or any other means.

4. For Shared Hosting, ITNT will implement security updates, software patches and other updates or upgrades from time to time, to maintain the best performance, at their sole discretion. ITNT is under no obligation to affect such upgrades, or to rectify any impact such changes could potentially have to Shared Hosting Clients.

5. ITNT will not be liable or responsible for the backing up, restoration or loss of data under any circumstances. Users are solely responsible for ensuring their data is regularly backed up and for restoring such backups in the event of data loss or corruption.

6. ITNT prohibits Clients from doing the following on hosting platforms administered by ITNT:

• 6.1 Monopolizing server resources, including CPU time, memory, network and disk bandwidth.
• 6.2 Maintaining long-running processes and long-running database queries.
• 6.3 Failure to maintain proper “housekeeping” on a shared server including storing or generating useless content, including comment spam, unused cache files, log file and database entries.
• 6.4 Generating significant side-channel traffic from an application, whether by design or otherwise. Databases should be stored locally, and remote content should be cached.
• 6.5 Sending of bulk mail of any form on the Shared Hosting Platform. Particularly sending mail that cannot be efficiently delivered due to volume or incorrect addresses.
• 6.6 Sharing security credentials with untrusted parties and using poor passwords is prohibited.
• 6.7 The use of shared or dedicated hosting services for hosting torrent boxes and/or running proxies is strictly prohibited. Servers continuously running a risk of supporting these types of services will be disabled and cancelled from our network.
• 6.8 Applications on the hosting platform must be production ready with adequate security controls and optimized with respect to memory usage and must have appropriate data indexing and not maintain long-running processes and long-running database queries.
• 6.9 Running Torrents for download or Seed Servers. Running TOR (or other Online Anonymity Services) and storing malicious content, such as malware or links to malware.
• 6.9 Otherwise circumventing the Acceptable Use Policy or intended use of the product.

User Responsibilities

Clients are responsible for any misuse of ITNT's services that occurs through the User's account. It is the User's responsibility to ensure that unauthorised persons do not gain access to or misuse ITNT's service.
ITNT urges Users not to reply to unsolicited mail or "spam", not to click on any suggested links provided in the unsolicited mail. Doing so remains the sole responsibility of the User and ITNT cannot be held liable for the User being placed on any bulk mailing lists as a result.
Where the User has authorised a minor to use any of the ITNT's services or access its websites, the User accepts that as the parent/legal guardian of that minor, the User is fully responsible for: the online conduct of such minor, controlling the minor's access to and use of any services or websites, and the consequences of any misuse by the minor.

e-Mail Use

1. It is explicitly prohibited to send unsolicited bulk mail messages ("junk mail" or "spam") of any kind (commercial advertising, political tracts, announcements, etc). This is strongly objected to by most Internet users and the repercussions against the offending party and ITNT can often result in disruption of service to other users connected to ITNT. In addition, spam is unlawful in terms of the Electronic Communications and Transaction Act 2002, and ITNT is entitled to take appropriate steps against the User in contravention of these provisions of the Act.

2. Maintaining of mailing lists by users of ITNT is accepted only with the permission and approval of the list members, and at the members' sole discretion. Should mailing lists contain invalid or undeliverable addresses or addresses of unwilling recipients those addresses must be promptly removed.

3. Users may not forward or propagate chain letters nor malicious e-mail.

4. Public relay occurs when a mail server is accessed by a third party and utilised to deliver mails, without the authority or consent of the owner of the mail-server. Users' mail servers must be secure against public relay as a protection to both themselves and the Internet at large. Mail servers that are unsecured against public relay often become abused by unscrupulous operators for spam delivery and upon detection such delivery must be disallowed.

5. ITNT reserves the right to examine users' mail servers to confirm that their server is not a public relay and the results of such checks can be made available to the user. ITNT also reserves the right to examine the mail servers of any users using ITNT mail servers for "smart hosting", content filtering or similar services at any time to ensure that the servers are properly secured against public relay. All relay checks will be done in strict accordance with ITNT policy of preserving customer privacy.

6. The outgoing mail threshold on any shared hosting or email platform is 120 emails per hour. Failing to comply, ITNT will at its discretion bill the client for email messages sent to the total quantity of email recipients at it's bulk email marketing rate.

Usenet News

1. Users should, before using the service, familiarise themselves with the contents of the following newsgroups: news.newusers.questions, news.announce.newusers, news.answers.

2. Excessive cross-posting (ie, posting the same article to a large numbers of newsgroups) is forbidden.

3. Posting of irrelevant (off-topic) material to newsgroups (also known as USENET spam) is forbidden.

4. Posting binaries to a non-binary newsgroup is forbidden.

5. ITNT reserves the right to delete and/or cancel posts which violate the above conditions.

Interception

1. The User acknowledges that ITNT is lawfully required to intercept communications in accordance with the provisions of the Regulation of Interception and Provision of Communication-related Information Act 70 of 2003 (“the Act”). Any interception of communications shall be strictly in accordance with the requirements of the Act, as and when required under the Act.

Managing Abuse

1. Upon receipt of a complaint, or having become aware of an incident, ITNT reserves the right to:

• Inform the user's network administrator of the incident and require the network administrator or network owner to deal with the incident according to this AUP.
• In the case of individual users suspend the user's account and withdraw the user's network access privileges completely.
• Charge the offending parties for administrative costs as well as for machine and human time lost due to the incident.
• In severe cases suspend access of the user's entire network until abuse can be prevented by appropriate means.
• Take such action as may be necessary to protect the integrity of the system, including, but not being limited to, system monitoring, as well as protocol management and shutting down of ports affected by viruses, worms or other malicious code.
• Implement appropriate technical mechanisms in order to prevent usage patterns that violate this AUP.
• Share information concerning the incident with other Internet access providers, or publish the information, and/or make available the users' details to law enforcement agencies.

2. Any one or more of the steps listed above, insofar as they are deemed necessary by ITNT in its absolute and sole discretion, may be taken by ITNT against the offending party.

Laws and Legislation

1. ITNT infrastructure may be used only for lawful purposes. Users may not violate any applicable laws or regulations of South Africa within the territory of South Africa. Should the user reside outside of South Africa, the laws of the country in which the user resides shall apply.

2. Transmission, distribution or storage of any material on or through the infrastructure 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 authorisation, and material that is obscene, defamatory, constitutes an illegal threat, or violates export control laws.

3. The User undertakes to use ITNT services in accordance with any restrictions imposed under the following legislation:

• Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002
• Electronic Communications Act 36 of 2005
• Films and Publications Act 65 of 1996 (as amended)
• Regulation of Interception and Provision of Communication-related Information Act 70 of 2003

Legal Rights

1. Nothing contained in this policy shall be construed to limit ITNT rights or remedies in any way with respect to any of the aforementioned activities, and ITNT reserves the right to take any action that it may deem appropriate with respect to such activities, including without limitation:

• Investigating suspected violations of this AUP,
• Taking action to recover costs and expenses incurred in identifying and resolving abuse,
• Terminating users' access to and use of the ITNT service;
• Levying cancellation charges to cover ITNT costs in the event of termination of the ITNT service.

2. In addition, ITNT reserves all available rights and remedies with respect to such activities at law or in equity.

3. This AUP may be clarified or modified periodically and ITNT reserves the right to modify this policy at any time, any such changes coming into effect as soon as they are published on the ITNT website.

4. This policy forms part of ITNT standard terms and conditions of service.

All cases of violation of the above Acceptable Use Policy should be reported to ITNT.

abuse@itnt.co.za