This AUP describes activities that are not allowed on the Rackspace® network. This AUP is part of your Agreement with Rackspace and we may suspend or terminate your Services for violation of this AUP. Capitalized terms used in this AUP shall have the meaning given in the Hosted Services Agreement.

Inquiries regarding this policy should be directed to abuse@rackspace.hk.

Amendments to the AUP

The Internet is still evolving, and the ways in which the Internet may be abused are also still evolving. Therefore, we may from time to time amend this AUP by posting a revised AUP at www.rackspace.hk. Any revised AUP shall take effect 15 days from the date of posting, provided that we inform you at least 15 days in advance via the online ticketing system. In the event that the change materially and adversely affects your ability to use the Services, then you may terminate the Agreement by 30 days' advance written notice.

General Statement

The provisions of this AUP are intended as guidelines. You must also comply with applicable law and regulations, and with general standards of behaviour for the Internet.

Abuse

You must not use your Services to engage in, foster, or promote illegal, abusive, or irresponsible behaviour, including but not limited to:

unauthorised access to or use of data, services, 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 written authorisation of the owner or operator of the system or network;
monitoring data or traffic on any network or system without the written authorisation of the owner or operator of the system or network;
interference with service to any user, host or 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 written authorisation;
collecting information by deceit, including, but not limited to Internet scamming (tricking other people into releasing their passwords), password robbery, phishing, security hole scanning, and port scanning;
use of any false, misleading or deceptive TCP-IP packet header or any part of the header information in an e-mail or a newsgroup posting;
use of the Services to distribute software that covertly gathers information about a user or covertly transmits information about the user;
any activity or conduct that is likely to result in retaliation against our network;
any activity or conduct that is likely to be in breach of any applicable laws, codes or regulations including data protection;
introducing intentionally or knowingly into the Services any virus or other contaminating code;
the omission, deletion, forgery or misreporting of any transmission or identification information, such as return mailing and IP addresses, or any activity intended to withhold or cloak identity or contact information; or
any activity or conduct that unreasonably interferes with any other customers' use of our services.

Security

You must take reasonable security precautions, including, without limitation:

You must comply with best business practices for password security; and
You must scan all materials stored or transmitted using the Services for viruses, worms, Trojan, horses and other malicious code using a commercially recognized and up-to-date scanning program or service. You must remove or quarantine any content that is corrupted with malicious code immediately upon discovery.

Bulk Commercial E-Mail

You must obtain our advance approval for any commercial e-mails, which approval will not be granted unless you are able to demonstrate the following to our reasonable satisfaction:

You have complied with the requirements of Unsolicited Electronic Messages Ordinance (Cap. 593 of laws of Hong Kong) and the relevant regulations and Hong Kong governmental policies;
Your intended recipients have given their consent to receive e-mail via some affirmative means, such as an opt-in procedure;
Your procedures for soliciting consent include reasonable means to ensure that the person giving consent is the owner of the e-mail address for which the consent is given;
You retain evidence of the recipient's consent in a form that may be promptly produced within 72 hours after receipt of recipient's or our requests to produce such evidence;
The body of the e-mail must include information about where the e-mail address was obtained, for example, "You opted in to receive this e-mail promotion from our Web site or from one of partner sites," and information on how to request evidence of the consent, for example, "If you would like to learn more about how we received your email address, please contact us at abuse@rackspace.hk;
The abuse@rackspace.hk must be posted in a conspicuous place on any website associated with the e-mail;
You have procedures in place that allow a recipient to revoke their consent – such as a link in the body of the e-mail, or instructions to reply with the word "Remove" in the subject line and such revocations of consent are implemented within 72 hours after receiving the recipient's revocation of consent;
You must post an abuse@rackspace.hk e-mail address on the first page of any Web site associated with the e-mail, 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 e-mail in any manner. Your e-mail must include the recipients e-mail address in the body of the message or in the "TO" line of the e-mail.
This AUP applies to messages sent using your service or network provided to you or your customers through or by the 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 hosted via the Services. You may not use third party e-mail services that do not have similar procedures for all its customers.
We may test and monitor your compliance with these requirements, including requesting opt-in information from a random sample of your list at any time and you shall undertake to provide all supporting information upon our requests.

Unsolicited E-Mail

You shall not send any unsolicited e-mail, whether commercial or non-commercial in nature, to any person who has indicated that they do not wish to receive it unless otherwise allowed by law.

Vulnerability Testing

You shall not attempt to probe, scan, penetrate or test the vulnerability of a Rackspace system or network or to breach our security or authentication measures, whether by passive or intrusive techniques without our prior 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 the Services.

Offensive Content

You shall not publish, display or transmit via our network and equipment any content or links to content that we reasonably believe:

constitutes, facilitates or encourages child pornography, bestiality, non-consensual sex acts, or is otherwise morally repugnant;
is excessively violent, incites or encourages 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 or any right of publicity;
creates a risk to a person's safety or health, creates a risk to public safety or health, compromises national security, is likely to cause or encourage public disorder, or interferes with an investigation by law enforcement bodies;
improperly exposes trade secrets or other confidential or proprietary information of another person;
constitutes unfair competition;
is discriminatory, or encourages or incites hatred or discrimination or adversely affect the equal opportunities in any way, including by way of sex, race, or age, colour, nationality, national origin, ethnicity;
involves theft or, fraud,
involves drug-trafficking, money laundering, arms-trafficking, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, or terrorism;
denounces political or religious beliefs;
is otherwise malicious, fraudulent, abusive, menacing, misleading, vulgar, of doubtful propriety, is likely to damage public morals, or may to result in retaliation against Rackspace by offended viewers;
may adversely affect Rackspace's commercial reputation and goodwill;
is otherwise illegal or solicits or is likely to encourage conduct that is illegal under laws applicable to you or to Rackspace; or
states or implies an affiliation with, or sponsorship or support of any prohibited content or activity.
Content "published or transmitted" via our network or equipment includes Web content, e-mail, bulletin board postings, chat, and any other type of posting, display or transmission that relies on the Internet.

Data Privacy

You shall ensure that all the personal data collected, accessed, processed and used by you and hosted through the Services shall comply with the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (Cap. 486 of laws of Hong Kong).

You shall not engage in any activities or actions that would violate the personal privacy rights of others, including but not limited to, collecting and distributing information about Internet users without their permission, except as permitted by applicable law.

You acknowledge and agree to inform your customers about our possible use of the data collected by necessary for our provision of the Services.

Export Control

The Services may not be used by in violation of the Import and Export Ordinance (Cap 60 of laws of Hong Kong), the Weapons of Mass Destruction (Control of Provision of Services) Ordinance (Cap. 526 of laws of Hong Kong) and Chemical Weapons (Convention) Ordinance (Cap. 578 of laws of Hong Kong), or any other export laws, controls or sanction policies of Hong Kong, or the export laws or regulations of the United States.

Intellectual Property and Other Proprietary Rights

You may not use our Services in a manner that infringes on or misappropriate the rights of a third party in any work protected by copyright, trade or service mark, invention, or other intellectual property or proprietary information. For example:

you may not use the Services to download, publish, distribute, use, or otherwise copy in any manner any text, music, software, art, image, or other work protected by copyright law unless you have permission from the owner of the work to use or copy the work in that manner, or you are otherwise permitted by established intellectual property law to copy or use the work or rights in that manner;
you may not use the Services to publish content intended to assist others in defeating technical copyright protections; and
you may not display another person's trademark without permission.

In addition, you may not use the Services to publish another person's trade secrets, or to publish information in violation of a duty of confidentiality.

Cooperation with Investigations and Legal Proceedings

We may monitor any content or traffic transmitted via the Services as part of our investigation of a suspected AUP violation. If we are legally required to permit any relevant authority to inspect your content or traffic, you agree we can do so; provided however that, where possible without breaching any legal or regulatory requirement, we give you reasonable prior notice of such requirement.

We may, without notice to you:

report to the appropriate authorities any conduct by you that we believe violates applicable law or regulations, and
provide any information we have about you, or your users or your traffic and cooperate in response to a formal or informal request from a law enforcement or regulatory agency investigating any such activity, or in response to a formal request in a civil or criminal action that on its face meets the requirements for such a request.

Other

You must have valid and current information on file with your domain name registrar for any domain hosted on our network.

You may only use IP addresses assigned to you by our staff.

You must not take any action which directly or indirectly results in any of our IP space being listed on any abuse database.

Third Party Conduct

You are responsible for violations of this AUP by anyone using your Service on an unauthorized basis as a result of your failure to use reasonable security precautions. Your use of the Services to assist another person in an activity that would violate this AUP if performed by you is a violation of the AUP.

Consequences of Violation of AUP

If you breach the AUP we may suspend your Services without prior notice. We may also block any traffic that we reasonably believe is in violation of this AUP.

In addition to any other remedy we may have, we will charge you our standard hourly rate together with our reasonable legal fees, and the cost of equipment and material needed to:

investigate or otherwise respond to any suspected violation of this AUP;
remedy any harm caused to us or any of our customers by the use of the Services in violation of this AUP;
respond to complaints; and
have our Internet Protocol numbers removed from any "blacklist".

You agree that you will immediately notify us and take all necessary actions at your disposal to prevent activities in breach of the AUP from continuing or happening again once you become aware of the activities.

No credit will be available under your Rackspace Service Level Agreement for interruptions of Service resulting from an AUP violation.

Disclaimer

We are under no duty, and by this AUP are not deemed to undertake a duty, to monitor or police your activities or any of your customer's activities and disclaim any responsibility for any misuse of our network.