ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY

This AUP is incorporated by reference in your hosting services agreement with HOSTmethod.

Your services may be suspended or terminated for violation of this AUP in accordance with your hosting services agreement with HOSTmethod.

Capitalized terms used in this AUP shall have the meaning given in your hosting services agreement.

Inquiries regarding this policy should be directed to abuse@HOSTmethod.com.

Abuse
You may not use HOSTmethod's network or services to engage in, foster, or promote illegal, abusive, or irresponsible behavior, including:

Unauthorized access to or use of data, systems or networks, including any attempt to probe, scan or test the vulnerability of a system or network or to breach security or authentication measures without express authorization of the owner of the system or network;
Monitoring data or traffic on any network or system without the express authorization of the owner of the system or network;
Interference with service to any user of the HOSTmethod or other network including, without limitation, mail bombing, flooding, deliberate attempts to overload a system and broadcast attacks;
Use of an Internet account or computer without the owner's authorization;
Collecting or using email addresses, screen names or other identifiers without the consent of the person identified (including, without limitation, phishing, Internet scamming, password robbery, spidering, and harvesting);
Collecting or using information without the consent of the owner of the information;
Use of any false, misleading, or deceptive TCP-IP packet header information in an email or a newsgroup posting;
Use of the service to distribute software that covertly gathers information about a user or covertly transmits information about the user;
Use of the service for distribution of advertisement delivery software unless: (i) the user affirmatively consents to the download and installation of such software based on a clear and conspicuous notice of the nature of the software, and (ii) the software is easily removable by use of standard tools for such purpose included on major operating systems; (such as Microsoft's "ad/remove" tool); or
Any conduct that is likely to result in retaliation against the HOSTmethod network or website, or HOSTmethod's employees, officers or other agents, including engaging in behavior that results in any server being the target of a denial of service attack (DoS).

Bulk Email
You may not use a HOSTmethod Mail Service (such as HOSTmethod® Email or HOSTmethod's Microsoft Exchange®) to send bulk mail. Please see the applicable Product Terms and Conditions for those services. You may use your dedicated hosted system to send bulk mail, subject to the restrictions in this Acceptable Use Policy.

Mail Requirements
You must comply with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and other laws and regulations applicable to bulk or commercial email. In addition, your bulk and commercial email must meet the following requirements:

Your intended recipients have given their consent to receive email from you via some affirmative means, such as an opt-in procedure;
Your procedures for seeking consent include reasonable means to ensure that the person giving consent is the owner of the email address for which consent is given;

You retain evidence of each recipient's consent in a form that can be promptly produced on request, and you honor recipient's and HOSTmethod's requests to produce consent evidence within 72 hours of receipt of the request;
You have procedures in place that allow a recipient to revoke their consent - such as a link in the body of the email, or instructions to reply with the word "Remove" in the subject line; you honor revocations of consent within 48 hours, and you notify recipients that the revocation of their consent will be implemented in 48 hours;

You must post an email address for complaints (such as abuse@yourdoman.com) in a conspicuous place on any website associated with the email, you must register that address at abuse.net, and you must promptly respond to messages sent to that address;
You must have a Privacy Policy posted for each domain associated with the mailing;
You have the means to track anonymous complaints;

You may not obscure the source of your email in any manner, such as omitting, forging, or misrepresenting message headers or return addresses. Your email must include the recipients email address in the body of the message or in the "TO" line of the email;
The subject line of the email must clearly describe the subject matter contained in the email, and the message must include valid contact information; and
You must not attempt to send any message to an email address if 3 consecutive delivery rejections have occurred and the time between the third rejection and the first rejection is longer than fifteen days.

These policies apply to messages sent using your HOSTmethod services, or to messages sent from any network by you or any person on your behalf that directly or indirectly refer the recipient to a site or an email address hosted via your HOSTmethod service. In addition, you may not use a third party email service that does not practice similar procedures for all its customers. These requirements apply to distribution lists prepared by third parties to the same extent as if the list were created by you.

HOSTmethod may test and otherwise monitor your compliance with its requirements. HOSTmethod may block the transmission of email that violates these provisions. HOSTmethod may, at its discretion, require certain customers to seek advance approval for bulk and commercial email, which approval will not be granted unless the customer can demonstrate that all of the requirements stated above will be met.

Sensitive Information
HOSTmethod is not responsible for any sensitive information stored on its's servers. Such information may include credit card numbers, personal information such as social security numbers or personal addresses and phone numbers.

Unsolicited Communications
You may not use your service to send email or any other communications to a person who has indicated that they do not wish to receive it. If the communication is bulk mail, then you will not be in violation of this section if you comply with the 48 hour removal requirement described above.

Vulnerability Testing
You may not attempt to probe, scan, penetrate or test the vulnerability of a HOSTmethod system or network, or to breach HOSTmethod's security or authentication measures, whether by passive or intrusive techniques, without HOSTmethod's express written consent.

Newsgroup, Chat Forums, Other Networks
You must comply with the rules and conventions for postings to any bulletin board, chat group or other forum in which you participate, such as IRC and USENET groups including their rules for content and commercial postings. These groups usually prohibit the posting of off-topic commercial messages, or mass postings to multiple forums.

You must comply with the rules of any other network you access or participate in using your HOSTmethod services.

Offensive Content
You may not publish, transmit or store on or via HOSTmethod's network and equipment any content or links to any content that HOSTmethod reasonably believes:

Constitutes, depicts, fosters, promotes or relates in any manner to child pornography, bestiality, or non-consensual sex acts;
is excessively violent, incites violence, threatens violence, or contains harassing content or hate speech;
is unfair or deceptive under the consumer protection laws of any jurisdiction, including chain letters and pyramid schemes;
is defamatory or violates a person's privacy;
creates a risk to a person's safety or health, creates a risk to public safety or health, compromises national security, or interferes with a investigation by law enforcement;

improperly exposes trade secrets or other confidential or proprietary information of another person;
is intended to assist others in defeating technical copyright protections;
infringes on another person's copyright, trade or service mark, patent, or other property right;
promotes illegal drugs, violates export control laws, relates to illegal gambling, or illegal arms trafficking;
is otherwise illegal or solicits conduct that is illegal under laws applicable to you or to HOSTmethod; or
is otherwise malicious, fraudulent, or may result in retaliation against HOSTmethod by offended viewers or recipients, or is intended to harass or threaten.

Content "published or transmitted" via HOSTmethod's network or equipment includes Web content, email, bulletin board postings, chat, tweets, and any other type of posting or transmission that relies on the Internet.

Live Events
You may not use your HOSTmethod services to stream live sex acts of any kind, even if the content would otherwise comply with the AUP. HOSTmethod may prohibit you from streaming other live events where there is a special risk, in HOSTmethod's reasonable discretion, that the event may violate the Offensive Content section above.

Copyrighted Material
You may not use HOSTmethod's network or services to download, publish, distribute, or otherwise copy or use in any manner any text, music, software, art, image, or other work protected by copyright law unless:

you have been expressly authorized by the owner of the copyright for the work to copy the work in that manner; or
you are otherwise permitted by established copyright law to copy the work in that manner.

It is HOSTmethod's policy to terminate in appropriate circumstances the services of customers who are repeat infringers.

Shared Systems
You may not use any shared system provided by HOSTmethod in a way that unnecessarily interferes with the normal operation of the shared system, or that consumes a disproportionate share of the resources of the system. For example, we may prohibit the automated or scripted use of HOSTmethod Mail Services if it has a negative impact on the mail system, or we may require you to repair coding abnormalities in your Cloud-hosted code if it unnecessarily conflicts with other Cloud customers' use of the Cloud. You agree that we may quarantine or delete any data stored on a shared system if the data is infected with a virus, or is otherwise corrupted, and has the potential to infect or corrupt the system or other customers' data that is stored on the same system.

Other

You must have valid and current information on file with your domain name registrar for any domain hosted on the HOSTmethod network.
You may only use IP addresses assigned to you by HOSTmethod in connection with your HOSTmethod services.
You agree that if the HOSTmethod IP numbers assigned to your account are listed on an abuse database like Spamhaus, you will be in violation of this AUP, and HOSTmethod may take reasonable action to protect its IP numbers, including suspension and/or termination of your service, regardless of whether the IP numbers were listed as a result of your actions:

SLA
No credit will be available under a HOSTmethod service level guaranty or agreement for interruptions of service resulting from AUP violations.

©2010 HOSTmethod
September 30, 2009 revision

Privacy Statement

HOSTmethod respects your privacy and is committed to maintaining the privacy and confidentiality of personal data we collect. The purpose of our Privacy Statement is to demonstrate our firm commitment to the privacy and protection of all persons who provide personal data to HOSTmethod and its affiliates. This Privacy Statement describes the ways we collect information from and about you, and what we do with the information, so that you may decide whether or not to provide information to us.

By visiting HOSTmethod websites or are otherwise providing your personal information to HOSTmethod via any other means, you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this Privacy Statement.

For purposes of this Privacy Statement, the term “visitor” includes visitors to our websites who are not yet customers, those who become customers, as well as those who do not become customers; whether you upload information to our websites, download it, or are merely visiting our websites. You can choose not to provide certain information when using our websites but then you might not be able to take advantage of many of its features.

1. WHAT DO WE COLLECT AND WHERE?

The information we collect may include your personal information, such as your name, contact information, financial account numbers, IP addresses, Live Chat Messages, Telephone conversations, product and service selections and orders or other things that identify you individually.

Generally, we may collect information about you in the following manners:
• you may provide your personal information to us via chat, email or other written correspondence, telephone calls, web based forms, or other means;
• we use automated technical means to collect information about all website visitors for example by use of cookies;
• via third party providers; and
• HOSTmethod affiliates located in the European Union may provide HOSTmethod with personal information about their prospective or current customers.

Web Visit

You may visit our Websites in any of the following ways:

• By using your browser to navigate to our Websites including (but not limited to) www.HOSTmethod.com; www.HOSTmethod.net;
• By viewing an advertisement displayed on a third party website that is served content by our web server;
• By viewing an email that is served content by our or a third party web server.

When you visit our Website, our server logs your IP address (unique network addresses), the time and duration of your visit, and the time and duration of the pages on our website you view. If you arrive at our website by clicking a paid advertisement (including a paid search engine result) or a link in an email, then we will capture information that tracks your visit from that link. If you arrive at our Website by clicking a non-paid source, such as link in a non-paid search engine result or an unsponsored link on another website, we may capture information that tracks your visit from that source, to the extent we are able to do so. We may also capture information about your computer system, such as your browser type and operating system.

We will likely place a cookie on your hard drive during the web visit. A cookie is a unique alphanumeric identifier that we use to help us identify the number of unique visitors to our Website, whether or not those visitors are repeat visitors, and the source of the visits. Cookies cannot be executed as code or used to deliver a virus. Other servers cannot read them and personal information cannot be gathered from them. They are simply an identifier shared between you and us to allow us to improve the services we offer to you through our Website. If you do not wish cookies to be placed on your computer, then they can be disabled in your web browser. The option to do so is normally found in your browser's "security settings" section. However, please note, permanently disabling cookies in your browser may hinder your use of our Website as well as other websites and interactive services.

A web beacon, also known as a web bug, is a small graphic (usually 1 pixel x 1 pixel), that is embedded in a web advertisement, email, or page on our web site, but is invisible to you. When you view a page on our web site, an email or an advertisement your web browser will request the web beacon from a web server, which in turn will set a cookie in your web browser containing a unique identifier. This unique identifier will be linked to log information that is used to track your movements on our web site in order to determine the effectiveness of content and advertising campaigns.

We do not collect personal information about you as part of a web visit, but web visit information may be tied to other information (including personal information) we collect from you via chat, web forms, and the other means we describe in this Privacy Statement.

Our advertising agencies may also use web beacons and cookies to track your activity on our website originating from the advertisement. However, we will not provide your personal information to our advertising agencies. Our advertising agencies maintain their own privacy policies, and you should also review those.

Links to non-HOSTmethod Websites
We may provide links to third-party websites for your convenience and information. The privacy practices of those sites may differ from HOSTmethod practices and are not controlled by HOSTmethod and covered by this Privacy Statement. We do not make any representations about third-party websites. We encourage you to review their privacy policies before submitting your personal data.

Personal information received from the EU


• When HOSTmethod is a data processor
HOSTmethod’s obligations with respect to personal data for which HOSTmethod is solely a data processor, such as personal data that HOSTmethod’s customers store or transfer using HOSTmethod’s technology hosting services, are defined in its agreements with its customers and are not included in this Privacy Statement. In those circumstances HOSTmethod receives personal data from the EU as an agent of the customer merely for processing and is not required to apply Safe Harbor principles to that information. The customer will remain responsible for the personal data that it collects and processes and for the compliance with applicable data protection laws.

Sensitive Information

We will not intentionally collect or maintain, and do not want you to provide, any information regarding your medical or health condition, race or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs or other sensitive information.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection

Our services are not designed for or directed to children under the age of 13, and we will not intentionally collect or maintain information about anyone under the age of 13.

2. WHAT DO WE USE THIS INFORMATION FOR?

Personal Information
We may use your information to process your service requests, handle orders, deliver products and services, process payments, communicate with you about orders, provide access to secure areas of the Website, recommend merchandise and services that might be of interest to you, to personalize your visit to our Website, and to enable us to review develop and continually improve the products services and offers we provide online. We also use this information to prevent or detect fraud or abuses of our Website and to enable third parties to carry out technical, logistical or other functions on our behalf.

Contact Information
We use visitor information to send information about our company to visitors and to get in touch with them when necessary. We also use the information we collect to improve the content of our websites and as training aides for our employees. Visitors are given the choice at the point when we request their information.

Financial Information and payment card details
We may ask visitors to enter credit card or account information in order to process orders for services placed with HOSTmethod or its affiliates. Financial information provided via our website or via the MyHOSTmethod® portal is transferred over a secure connection. We collect this information on a transaction-by-transaction basis and will not authorize the release of the information with anyone not directly involved in processing the transaction. This information may be encrypted and stored for logging purposes in accordance with applicable regulatory requirements.

Credit card numbers are used only for processing payments and are not used for any other purposes. When we use third party service providers for credit card processing services we will enter into a written agreement with such third party ensuring appropriate security and confidentiality measures are in place in safeguarding your personal data.

We use web visit information to measure interest in and develop our web pages and marketing plans, customize the content you view on your web visits based on your activity on past visits, and administer our Website.

• We use the visitors’ IP address to help diagnose problems with our servers, and to administer our Websites.
• We use cookies to help us recognise visitors as unique visitors (just a number) when they return to our websites For example, if there are 1,000 visits to our website on a certain day, we can use cookies to discover how many of those visits were made via the same browser (same visitor). We may also use the cookie to discover whether a certain visitor has visited our site more than once, and the source for each visit. We also use cookies to: allow us to tailor content or advertisements to match your preferred interest; avoid showing visitors the same advertisements repeatedly; compile anonymous, aggregated statistics that allow us to understand how users use our site and to help us improve the structure of our Website (we cannot identify visitors personally in this way); count the number of anonymous users of our sites.
• We use web beacons to count the number of times that our advertisements and web-based email content are viewed. We combine web beacon information with cookies to track activity on our website originating from advertisements and web-based email content.

We use information you provide to us via telephone calls, chat, email, web forms and other communications to correspond with you about services you may be interested in purchasing. If you elect to purchase a service online using a web form, we will use the information to establish your account. Information you submit in writing, such as chat, email, and web form information is archived and may be tied to information that we collect about your web visits. Your telephone call may be recorded for training purposes and we may enter information you provide via telephone into our systems to use for the purposes described in this paragraph.

3. DISCLOSURE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

Personal information we gather is for internal use only and will not authorize the release of this information to anyone outside HOSTmethod (except to third party service providers to HOSTmethod who perform functions on our behalf but in such event personal information will only be shared to the extent reasonably necessary to perform their functions and they will not be authorized to use it for any other function), unless you have consented to such disclosure.

Should you breach our terms and conditions or website terms, or if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, we may disclose your information to a relevant authority. This may include exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction. In particular, we may release the information we collect to third parties when we believe it is appropriate to comply with the law, to enforce our legal rights, to protect the rights and safety of others, or to assist with industry efforts to control fraud, spam or other undesirable conduct.

We may release the information we collect to third parties, where the information is provided to enable such third party to provide services to us, provided that the third party has agreed to use at least the same level of privacy protections described in this Privacy Statement, and is permitted to use the information only for the purpose of providing services to us.

4. OPTING OUT OF COMMUNICATIONS

HOSTmethod gives you an opportunity to chose to opt-out of personal data being disclosed to third parties for a purpose incompatible with the purpose for which it was originally collected (except for meeting applicable legal requirements or permitting third party service providers who perform functions on our behalf as described in section 3 of this Privacy Statement), including your opting out of receiving future marketing mailings. We will not use your contact information to correspond with you about our services if you ask us not to. Please send your request to privacy@HOSTmethod.com or write us at Compliance Officer, HOSTmethod US, Inc., 5000 Walzem Road, San Antonio, TX 78218. Please note that it may take up to ten days to remove your contact information from our marketing communications lists, so you may receive correspondence from us for a short time after you make your request.

5. SECURITY OF YOUR INFORMATION

HOSTmethod is committed to industry best practices approaches concerning security measures to prevent the loss, misuse and alteration of the information in our possession. We use various security measures to protect the information we collect, as appropriate to the type of information, including encryption, firewalls, and access controls. We store information you provide to us on a computer system located in a controlled facility with a limited access. Visitor textual information is encrypted during transmission, our company databases are accessible only by HOSTmethod employees, contractors and agents on a need to know basis and who have entered into and are bound by a confidentiality and nondisclosure agreement with HOSTmethod.

6. DATA INTEGRITY

Personal data we collect is relevant for the purposes for which it is to be used. HOSTmethod takes reasonable steps to ensure that data is reliable for its intended use, accurate, complete, and current.

7. RIGHT TO ACCESS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

If you believe that any personal information we have about you is incorrect, or is, has been, or might be used inappropriately, please contact us at privacy@HOSTmethod.com, and we will take steps to correct or delete the information, or restrict its use, as appropriate.

8. VERIFICATION

HOSTmethod utilizes the self-assessment approach to assure its compliance with its Privacy Statement. HOSTmethod regularly verifies that the privacy statement is accurate, comprehensive, prominently displayed, completely implemented and in conformity with the Safe Harbor Principles and conducts its self-assessment on an annual basis to ensure that all relevant privacy practices are being followed. Appropriate employee training is in place and internal procedures for periodically conducting objective reviews of compliance are in place. A statement verifying this self-assessment is signed by a corporate officer or other authorized representative at least once a year.

9. INQUIRIES OR COMPLAINTS

If you have a question or complaint about this Privacy Statement or our information collection practices, please contact us at privacy@HOSTmethod.com or write us at Compliance Officer, HOSTmethod US, Inc., 5000 Walzem Road, San Antonio, TX 78218. We will investigate the matter and are committed to resolve any privacy concerns that you may have. If your inquiry has not been satisfactorily addressed and you are a visitor located in the EU, you may contact European Data Protection Authorities, elected as a Dispute Resolution in our Safe Harbor self-certification.

10. CHANGES

Our business changes constantly and our Privacy Statement may also change from time to time. You should check our website frequently to see recent changes, however, we will never materially change our policies and practices to make them less protective of personal information collected in the past without your prior consent.

This Privacy Policy was last updated on February 22, 2010.