2. INTRODUCTION

2.1. This Fair Use and Ethics Policy governs your use of all of the services (Whether VPS or Shared Hosting) that we provide (“Hosting Services”). Your use of the Hosting Services means that you accept, and agree to abide by, our entire Fair Use and Ethics Policy that also supplements our Terms and Conditions. poundawebsite Ltd may modify this Fair Use and Ethics Policy at any time without notice.

2.2. The Hosting Services are provided by poundawebsite Ltd (“we”, “us” and “our”). We are registered in England and Wales under Company Number 13612876 and our Registered office is: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AX.

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3. INTERPRETATION

3.1. “Shared Hosting” should be interpreted as relating to clients who lease our Purrfect Linux (and derivatives (including, but not limited to pre-installed Drupal, Linux and WordPress)) packages.

3.2. “VPS Hosting” should be interpreted as relating to our Managed and Unmanaged Virtual Private Server Hosting Customers.

3.3. Where we refer to “our policies”, this should be interpreted as all of our policies, including, the wider Fair Use and Ethics Policy, our Privacy Policy and our Website Terms of Use.

3.4. Some policies apply to Shared Hosting clients and not to Managed and Unmanaged VPS clients, particularly in relation to fair use. Please pay particular attention to the title of each section for clarification as this may also assist you in deciding which of our services to lease from us.

3.5. Our Fair Use Policy applies to all clients, regardless of the price that they pay, that may or may not include promotional discounts.

3.6. You must not allow a third party to access or use your Hosting Control Panel. If you install your own applications, where they are not in breach of any of our policies or terms and conditions, you may grant web interface access at your own risk, limited to your own applications and you must not in any way interfere with the hosting services.

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4. SHARED HOSTING RESOURCE USAGE (NOT APPLICABLE TO MANAGED OR UNMANAGED VPS)

4.1. The Shared Hosting Services comprise the provision of web space on our servers to enable you to upload pages and files for the purpose of publishing websites;

4.2. The Shared Hosting Services allow you ‘unlimited’ server space for normal routine “non-file-distribution” web usage. For websites that allow downloading of video, audio or other files we reserve the right to impose the following limits to ensure the best experience for all of our clients;

4.2.1. 5gb of a shared hosting account can be allocated to music, video or other multimedia files as long as they do not breach copyright and you have all of the necessary permissions including but not limited to .aac, .avi, .mp3, .mp4, .mpeg, .jpg, .png, .gif files;

4.2.2. A maximum of 5GB of a shared hosting account can be allocated to any archive and disk image files containing the complete contents and structure of a data storage medium;

4.2.3. A maximum of 1GB of a shared hosting account can be allocated to Executable files and all other files which are the result of compiling a program as long as they do not breach copyright and you have all of the necessary permissions.

4.2.4. Poundawebsite Ltd reserves the right to remove the following extensions after prior warning and only if instructed to do so by legal takedown request – mp3, mp4, tar.gz, zip, .wpress, .jpa, .exe, wav. Informal requests received regarding takedown shall be forwarded to the end user.

4.3. Non-file-distribution usage will remain unaffected by any limit imposed on downloading of video, audio or other files;

4.4 In your use of the Shared Hosting Services (these do not apply where you are using your own virtual private server), you may not:

4.4.1. Use more than 10% of our platform’s processing capacity. There are numerous activities that could cause such problems, including (but not limited to) CGI scripts and intensive FTP, PHP or HTTP operations. We reserve the right to suspend accounts in excess pending further investigation and consultation with you but without compensation;

4.4.2. In all cases of over usage, we will try to provide an alternative solution, which may incur an alternative charge or service, either by ourselves or a 3rd party recommendation. The requirement to upgrade shall rest solely with poundawebsite Ltd and shall be made in its reasonable discretion.

4.4.3. Run stand-alone, unattended server-side processes or any daemons; including (but not limited to) IRCd/IRC Bots;

4.4.4. Run any type of web spider or indexer;

4.4.5. Run any software that interfaces with an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network;

4.4.6. Run any bit torrent application, tracker, or client. You may link to legal torrent files off-site, but may not host or store them on our servers;

4.4.7. Participate in any file-sharing/peer-to-peer activities;

4.4.8. Run any gaming servers;

4.4.9. Run entries or other scheduled tasks other than by configuring them through our control panel;

4.4.10. Operate a proxy website or service;

4.4.11. Act as a remote file host for other websites;

4.4.12. Operate self-hosted file sync or similar “cloud storage” based services including (but not limited to) OwnCloud, Pydio and Sparkleshare;

4.5. You must not use the Shared Hosting Services as an offsite backup facility. Therefore, all files uploaded to our servers as part of your usage of the Hosting Services must be visible and accessible to the outside world (web-visible) unless they are needed to operate the website of which they form part; We reserve the right to delete files or directories that are not web-visible and are not system files relating to web services provided for within our terms and conditions without giving notice to you.

4.6. All pages of website stored on our servers as part of the Hosting Services will be available to search engines unless you take action to prevent this. If you wish to optimise your web pages for search engines you agree to use coding and techniques which comply fully with the guidelines issued by Google, Bing, Yahoo and other large search engines.

4.7. MySQL Databases – please raise a support ticket (as opposed to using the online chat) if any database exceeds 1024 megabytes in size, this is so that we can ensure that they run as efficently as possible but an additional charge shall not be levied on shared hosting accounts.

4.8. You may enable SSH access in your account, or by contacting our Support Team. You will be granted Jail / Caged (restricted) access to the system on a provisionary basis but any misuse of the system will result in access being revoked. The use of php or any other means to circumvent this policy will result in immediate account termination. If you are unsure, please ask first.

4.9. If we or you deactivate a web hosting account we will delete it after seven calendar days but you will receive an Emailed notice ahead of time.

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5. PROHIBITED USES FOR BOTH SHARED HOSTING AND VPS

5.1. You may use the Hosting Services only for lawful purposes. You may not use the Hosting Services:

5.1.1. In any way that breaches any applicable local, national or international law or regulation;

5.1.2. In any way that is unlawful or fraudulent, or has any unlawful or fraudulent purpose or effect anywhere in the world where you conduct business;

5.1.3. For the purpose of harming or attempting to harm minors in any way;

5.1.4. To send, knowingly receive, upload, download, use or re-use any material which does not comply with our content standards (see below);

5.1.5. To transmit, or procure the sending of, any unsolicited or unauthorised advertising or promotional material or any other form of similar solicitation (also known as SPAM – see below);

5.1.6. To knowingly transmit any data, send or upload any material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time-bombs, keystroke loggers, spyware, adware or any other harmful programs or similar computer code designed to adversely affect the operation of any computer software or hardware;

5.1.7. To host hacking focused sites/archives/programs;

5.1.8. To provide image, banner-ad or AutoSurf sites;

5.1.9. To provide High-Yield Interest Programs (HYIP) or related services, investment services (FOREX, E-Gold Exchange, etc), Escrow, bitcoin miners, Bank Debentures, Bank Debenture Trading Programs, Prime Banks Programs and lottery sites;

5.1.10. To provide Muds/RPGs;

5.1.11. To sell any controlled substances without providing proof of appropriate permit(s) in advance;

5.1.12. To faciliate IP Scanning and Brute Force Programs.

5.1.13. The services offered by poundawebsite Ltd are not intended to provide a PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant environment and therefore should not be utilized as such without further compliance activity. Poundawebsite Ltd shall have no liability to you or any other person for your use of Poundawebsite Ltd products and/or services in violation of these terms.

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6. CONTENT STANDARDS FOR BOTH SHARED HOSTING AND VPS

6.1. These content standards apply to any and all material that you allow to be hosted through the Hosting Services and to any interactive services associated with it.

6.2. You must comply with the spirit of the following standards. The standards apply to each part of any material as well as to its whole.

6.3. Material must:

6.3.1. Be accurate (where they state facts);

6.3.2. Be genuinely held (where they state opinions);

6.3.3. Comply with applicable law in the UK and in any country from which they are posted;

6.4. Material must not:

6.4.1. Contain any material which is defamatory of any person;

6.4.2. Contain any material which is obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory or promote or link to the same;

6.4.3. Contain any material that is pornographic or link to such material without consulting us first;

6.4.4. Contain material promoting, linking to or directly promote violence;

6.4.5. Discriminate, or promote discrimination based on age (unless it is in relation to the forming of a contract where you, of course, can’t legally do so with a person under the age of 18 years old but limited to this), economic status (the act of excluding poorer people (our Director remembers his roots)), disability, gender identity (including those that do not allow for the title Mx (that has been around since the 1970’s) and/or who do not recognise and make an effort to use gender pronouns), nationality, political view (unless it would contradict this policy) race, religion, sex, subculture (Our Director is, for example, from a Skateboarding/Greb culture), or sexual orientation;

6.4.6. Infringe any copyright, database right or trade mark of any other person including hosting Warez and topsites;

6.4.7. Be likely to deceive any person;

6.4.8. Be made in breach of any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of confidence;

6.4.9. Promote any illegal activity;

6.4.10. Be threatening, abuse or invade another’s privacy, or cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety;

6.4.11. Be likely to harass, upset, embarrass, alarm or annoy any other person;

6.4.12. Be used to impersonate any person, or to misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person;

6.4.13. Give the impression that they emanate from us, if this is not the case;

6.4.14. Advocate, promote or assist any unlawful act such as (by way of example only) copyright infringement or computer misuse;

6.4.15. Promote, link to or endorse any business, charity or organisation associated within the dairy, fish or meat industry, including your own. We do not do business with organisations that operate within these industries. Retailers that are not selling such products in isolation are welcome on the platform, for example retailers (including shops and supermarkets) but not Butchers, Fishmongers or farms that exploit living beings for the fish, meat or dairy;

6.4.16. Promote, link to or endorse any business, charity or organisation, including your own, associated with those that, in our opinion, harm living creatures including those that directly test on animals (for medical or any other form of research) and companies that commission animal testing;

6.4.17. Promote, link to or endorse any business charity, or organisation, including your own, associated with the nuclear power industry, including your own. We do not do business with organisations that operate within these industries, including those that work in disposal (because this indirectly facilitates the industry) but we are fully supportive of alternative types of genuinely green energy;

6.4.18. Promote, link to or endorse any business, charity or organisation, including your own, operating within the legal industry unless they offer pro-bono services/legal aid services for those on low incomes in all of the same areas of law, equal in quality/service level, in our opinion, to fee-paying clients;

6.4.19. Promote, link to or endorse any business, charity or organisation, including your own associated with the public sector, including the DWP, Police or Social Services or advisory charities who have signed gagging clauses or who refuse to call out the DWP over unethical treatment of people on welfare benefits;

6.4.20. Promote, link to or endorse any business, charity or organisation, including your own who refuse employment or voluntary opportunities to those with debts, including those subject to Bankruptcy (unless it would be unlawful to do so), Debt Relief Orders, IVA’s, or who are on low incomes;

6.4.21. Promote, link to or endorse any business, charity or organisation, including your own, relating to insurance companies that do not offer cover for all disabilities, including pre-existing ones, to the same extent as those without pre-existing disabilities;

6.4.22. Endorse, sell or promote any financial product without first contacting us with copies of the appropriate licenses.

6.4.23. Promote, link to or endorse any business, charity or organisation, including your own who refuse to offer insurance, paid employment and voluntary opportunities, as a blanket policy, to people either going through the criminal justice system or who have historic convictions:

6.4.23.1. This does not apply to those with convictions for deception or fraud related offences but this exclusion is limited to positions or voluntary opportunities within a business, charity or organisation that constitute a position of trust or those who cannot provide certain positions to those who have convictions for abuse of vulnerable people, deception or fraud related offences where the role is not made available to prevent people or businesses from harm. For example, a role where a person would have access to confidential and sensitive information, be able to conduct financial transactions or be in direct contact with vulnerable people would be exempted from para 9.4.22 but if you refused to hire a cleaner (or any role where there is, in our opinion, no risk of harm, it would not be exempt from para 5.4.23;

6.4.23.2. A clear statement about this, that is easily accessible and clearly displayed, must appear in application forms and on websites in these circumstances and we recommend contacting the charities, Unlock and the Howard League for Penal Reform (we are not affiliated at all to these charities), for further guidance on how to amend your policies to conform. There are also legal requirements surrounding the Rehabilitation of Offenders within the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act but this paragraph is not intended to constitute legal advice.

6.5. We give you permission to copy and reproduce paragraphs 5.4.15 – 5.4.23.2 of this policy (regardless of whether you are a client of poundawebsite or not) (but no other part of our website unless specified within our Website Terms of Use Policy as they are subject to copyright), either in full or part, as long as you credit our company and our website (https://www.poundawebsite.com) as the original author but we accept no liability whatsoever under any circumstances relating to such reproduction.

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7. SHARED HOSTING AUTOMATED BACKUPS AT NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE (NOT APPLICABLE TO MANAGED OR UNMANAGED VPS)

7.1. We take full, granular backups of your web hosting space, Emails and databases 4 times a day and retain these for 30 days.

7.1.1. Softaculous backups will be removed from the server and no copy will exist.

7.1.2. Plugins used for backups may not store local backups within the account quota and may only be stored ‘offsite’ with an arranged cloud storage provider, such as Google Drive or S3. Any backups left on the system, or excessive backups retained may lead to account suspension or removal with the exception of those backups that we specify shall remain on the server but be excluded from automatic backups.

7.2. The following are excluded from our automated backups (essentially to avoid backups of backups clogging our servers) but will be retained on the server unless removed by you:

7.2.1. *.swf;

7.2.2. *.flv;

7.2.3. *.exe;

7.2.4. *.xen;

7.2.5. *.iso;

7.2.6. *.7z;

7.2.7. *.tar;

7.2.8. *.jpa;

7.2.9. *.wpress;

7.2.10. *.tar.gz;

7.2.11. *.zip;

7.2.12. *.mp4;

7.2.13. *.mp3;

7.2.14. *.wav;

7.2.15. backup-*.tar.gz;

7.2.16. cpmove-*.tar.gz;

7.2.17. site-*.tar.gz;

7.2.18. .MirrorSearch;

7.2.19. */com_akeeba/backup/*;

7.2.20. */backupbuddy_backups/*;

7.2.21. */.wysiwygPro_*;

7.2.22. */core.[0-9]*;

7.2.23. public_html/cache/*;

7.2.24. tmp/*;

7.2.25. .logs/*;

7.2.26. .cagefs;

7.2.27. .cagefs*;

7.2.28. .cpan;

7.2.29. .cpanel/caches;

7.2.30. .cpanel/datastore;

7.2.31. .cpcpan;

7.2.32. .sqmailattach;

7.2.33. .cpanel/*.sock;

7.2.34. .public_ftp/*;

7.2.35. softaculous_backups/*;

7.2.36. */wp-content/uploads/wpcf7_captcha/*;

7.2.37. */wp-content/widget-cache/*;

7.2.38. */wp-content/cache/*;

7.2.39. */wptsc-cachedir/*;

7.2.40. mail/*/*/.Trash/*;

7.2.41. mail/*/*/.Drafts/*;

7.2.42. mail/.Drafts/*;

7.2.43 .mail/.Trash/*;

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8. ZERO TOLERANCE SPAM POLICY FOR BOTH SHARED HOSTING AND VPS

8.1. We take a zero tolerance stance against the sending of unsolicited email, bulk emailing and spam. We may terminate the account of any user who send out spam with or without notice;

8.2. Websites advertised as spam may not be hosted on our servers. This provision includes, but is not limited to, spam sent via fax, phone, postal mail, email, instant messaging or newsgroups.

8.3. For IMAP/POP3 mailboxes, You may perform up to 100 email checks per hour.

8.4. For POP3, You may perform up to 10 concurrent connections to email system per IP address on Shared and Reseller servers, and up to 20 concurrent connections to email system per IP address on Business and Email servers.

8.5. For IMAP, You may perform up to 30 concurrent connections to email system per IP address on Shared, Reseller, Business and Email servers.

8.6. Poundawebsite Ltd may, at its sole discretion:

8.6.1. Limit the volume of Email messages that you can deliver through our services.

8.6.2. Limit Email volume by queuing your Email messages internally, or by temporarily rejecting requests to send Email through our services.

8.6.3. May block any message that you attempt to submit using our services, for any reason whatsoever, with or without notifying you of such blocking.

8.6.4. Under no circumstances will Poundawebsite Ltd be liable to you or any other party for any indirect, special, economic or consequential damages (including without limitation lost profits) arising out of Email blocking or queuing.

8.7. Any user account which results in our IP space being blacklisted will be immediately suspended and/or terminated.

8.8. poundawebsite Ltd reserves the right to require changes or disable as necessary any website, account, database or component that does not comply with our policy.

8.9. poundawebsite Ltd reserves the right to charge the holder of the account used to send any unsolicited email or for conduct that has led to the blacklisting of a poundawebsite (or supplier) IP address, a clean-up/remediation fee or any charges incurred for blacklist removal at our sole discretion with the cost valued by us and billed to the payment method(s) on file.

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9. RESELLING POLICY FOR BOTH SHARED HOSTING AND VPS

9.1. You agree not to re-sell or offer for the use of third parties any part of our Hosting Services.

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10. SUSPENSION AND TERMINATION – FOR BOTH SHARED HOSTING AND VPS

10.1. We will determine, in our sole discretion, whether there has been a breach of this Fair Use and Ethics Policy and our wider policies and terms and conditions through your use of the Hosting Services. When a breach of our policies and/or terms and conditions has occurred, we may take such action as we deem appropriate but we will try and work with you, if, in our sole discretion, we believe that we can.

10.2. In the event of us asking you to take specific action to have your service reinstated from suspension, if such actions are not taken within 7 calendar days, your hosting services shall be terminated without guarantee of a backup being available and no refund shall be due.

10.3. Once we have made the decision to terminate an account, you accept that this is our final and binding decision.

10.4. Failure to comply with this Fair Use and Ethics Policy or any of our policies constitutes a material breach of our terms and conditions of sale upon which you are permitted to use the Hosting Services. Such failure may result in us taking all or any of the following actions:

10.4.1. Immediate termination of any promotion across our company which will result in you paying the same prices and enjoying the same features that are included for our standard customers;

10.4.2. Immediate, temporary or permanent withdrawal of your right to use the Hosting Services;

10.4.3. Immediate, temporary or permanent removal of any Material (as defined in this policy) uploaded to our servers;

10.4.4. Issuing a warning to you;

10.4.5. Issuing legal proceedings against you for reimbursement of all costs on an indemnity basis (including, but not limited to, reasonable administrative and legal costs) resulting from the breach;

10.4.6. Further legal action against you;

10.4.7. Disclosure of such information to law enforcement authorities as we reasonably feel is necessary.

10.5. Poundawebsite Ltd reserve the right to terminate your use of the hosting services if they are used to unnecessarily or illegally harass poundawebsite Ltd Employees, Volunteers, Contractors, Suppliers or third parties more widely.

10.6. Poundawebsite Ltd reserves the right to terminate your use of the hosting services if your use of the hosting services may result in, results in, or is the subject of, legal action or threatened or proposed legal action, against Poundawebsite Ltd or any of its contractors or suppliers without consideration of whether such legal action or threatened or proposed legal action is eventually determined to be with or without merit.

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11. CHANGES TO OUR FAIR USE AND ETHICS POLICY – IN ALL CASES

11.1. We may revise this Fair Use and Ethics Policy at any time by amending this page. You are expected to check this page from time to time to take notice of any changes we make, as they are legally binding on you including our wider policies. All policies are part of our Terms and Conditions of hosting.

11.2. Although we will not remove the restrictions on who we do business with, as customers, charities and grassroots charitable projects will have joined on the basis of their existence, we may add to them or clarify them. Clarifying our ethics may result in you perceiving our ethics to have effectively removed a particular consideration but our right to change any of our policies (including this one) and our right to change Terms and Conditions remain at our sole discretion.

11.3. Changes shall take effect, in the case of clients who pay monthly, from the date of the next invoice being due, in the case of all other clients, they shall apply with immediate effect.

11.4. This policy was last updated on 28 January 2022.

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