Acceptable Usage Policy

Balliante Limited (hereby referred to as the “Company”) has set out this Acceptable Usage Policy (hereafter referred to as the “AUP”) so as to help protect both the Company and Clients, as well as the general public from certain online behaviours; this mainly includes irresponsible, nuisance, malicious and/or illegal activities. By using the Products and/or Services provided by the Company, the Client agrees to be fully bound by the terms within this Acceptable Usage Policy, along with the Standard Terms and Conditions, and the Privacy Policy.

1. LEGAL

The Client, Authorised Users, Users and/or the Client’s customers will not, and will not permit, enable, or assist others, whether directly or indirectly to:
1.1 Use the Products and/or Services for any purpose that constitutes a breach of regulation, protocol, rule, or law applicable to computing or Internet misuse, including anything connected to and/or any user of it.

1.2 Operate Products and/or Services, whether hardware or software, Internet or Intranet in a manner which is considered an infringement or a violation of any rights of any person(s) or company(s).
1.3 Use copyright, trademarked, or intellectual property or material without the author’s permission.
1.4 Send unsolicited email messages or produce mass mailing of unsolicited material.

1.5 Forge data and/or information such as IP addresses, locations, data fields or data within in IP packets.
1.6 Access or allow access to the Company network management systems and/or equipment without first gaining written permission from the Company, along with providing a detailed reason for the request.
1.7 Do any activity that will, or potentially could, harm the Company network, servers and/or property.
1.8 Display, post or transmit any material which is unlawful, defamatory or constitutes an invasion of privacy to a publicly accessible area to any other person(s) or company(s) without the permission of the author or owner.
1.9 Perform, possess, assist, or allow any activity or material that constitutes a criminal offence or a violation of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 legislation while using Company networks, servers and/or systems.
1.10 Deliberate malicious behaviour which includes but is not limited to traffic flooding, malicious overflows, denial of service attacks, unauthorised attempts to access systems and transmission of computer viruses.
1.11 Breach any intellectual property right, or a right of publicity in any jurisdiction.
1.12 Display, post, transfer or transmit any material that is confidential or is a trade secret, and/or that breaches the General Data Protection Regulation Act 2018 or that of any similar legislation in any other country, and/or which affects security, exposes the Company to any retribution or penalty.
1.13 Conduct any activity that once it has been brought to the attention of the Company, at its absolute discretion, Balliante Limited deems is an unsuitable use of its Products and/or Services.

2. CLIENT RESPONSIBILITY
2.1 The activities of the Client’s customers and staff are the responsibility of the Client at all times. By accepting Product(s) and/or Service(s) from the Company, the Client agrees to ensure that its customers and staff abide by this Policy at all times. Where Clients choose to implement their own AUP, they agree to insure that as a minimum, all points in this AUP are covered to at least the same level or higher.
2.2 Where irresponsible or illegal activity is identified, the Company will communicate directly with the Client to ensure the activity ceases. The Company may also need to take further appropriate action where necessary or in cases where after the first communication failed to stop the activities.
2.3 Clients who take Hosting Services from the Company are responsible for ensuring the creation and maintenance of the email addresses ‘postmaster@client.domain’ and ‘abuse@client.domain’ for the purpose of receiving complaints regarding network abuse activities, as detailed in the Official Internet Protocol Standard RFC 2142. Although required, the email addresses can be set up to forward the incoming emails to the User(s) responsible for dealing with network misuse complaints.
2.4 The Client agrees that it will respond to any abuse complaints within 48 hours.

3. NETWORK MISUSE
3.1 Where a complaint needs to be raised to the Company regarding misuse, these should be directed to abuse@balliante.com.
3.2 Internet Relay Chat (IRC) services (or related services) are only permitted only where they do not connect using either EFnet and/or Undernet connections. This includes, but is not limited to IRCd servers, eggdrops, bots, and/or bouncers. This is to prevent attacks on the Company servers due to malicious activity that has been known to occur on the EFnet and Undernet IRC networks.
3.3 The use of Camfrog services (or related services) are not permitted, to prevent attacks on the Company servers due to malicious activity that has been previously identified.