Laurel Hosting Terms of Service

Service Usage
Usage of our services requires agreement with the following policies. You are expected to use the Internet with respect, courtesy, and responsibility, giving due regard to the rights of other Internet users. We expect you to have a basic knowledge of how the Internet functions, the types of uses which are generally acceptable, and the types of uses which are to be avoided. Common sense is the best guide as to what is considered acceptable use. 

General Conduct
1. Customers may not engage in tortuous conduct including, but not limited to, posting of defamatory, scandalous, or private information about a person without their consent, pornography, intentionally inflicting emotional distress, or making physical threats against another person via email, news, or any other electronic media/service we provide.
2. Customers are prohibited from transmitting on or through any of LAUREL HOSTING services, any material that is, in LAUREL HOSTING sole discretion, unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, or encourages conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability, or otherwise violate any local, state/provincial, national or international law, statute or regulation.
3.LAUREL HOSTING services may only be used for lawful purposes. Transmission, distribution, or storage of any information, data or material in violation of United States or territories, state/provincial, or local regulation or law, or by the common law, is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to, material protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret, or any other statute, law or regulation. LAUREL HOSTING reserves the right to remove such illegal material from its servers. Users/accounts cannot represent (in the sole judgment of LAUREL HOSTING an unusually large burden on the network. EZ AD HOST also reserves the right to discontinue services to servers which compromise the network integrity.


Abuse
1. Harassment, whether through language, frequency, or size of messages, is prohibited.
2. Customers may not send any email that has not been explicitly solicited. If a recipient asks to stop receiving email, the customer must not send that person any further email.
3. Customers are explicitly prohibited from sending unsolicited bulk mail messages ("junk mail" or "spam"). This includes, but is not limited to, bulk-mailing of unsolicited commercial advertising, informational announcements, and political tracts. Such material may only be sent to those who have explicitly requested it.
4. Customers may not forward or otherwise propagate chain letters, whether or not the recipient wishes to receive such mailings.
5. Malicious email, including but not limited to "mail bombing" (flooding a user or site with very large or numerous pieces of email) and "trolling" (posting outrageous messages to generate numerous responses) is prohibited.
6. Forging of header or any other information is not permitted.
7. Subscribing someone else to a mail list or removing someone else from a mail list without that person's permission is prohibited.
8. LAUREL HOSTING accounts or services may not be used to collect replies to messages sent from another Internet Service Provider, where those messages violate this Usage Policy or the usage policy of that other provider.
9. These rules apply to other types of Internet-based distribution mediums as well, such as RLG's Ariel system (a system for sending FAX-like documents over the Internet).
10.Customers may not send Usenet spam (i.e. publicizing their site in a large number of newsgroups that are irrelevant to the topic of the site).
11.Customers may not operate an Open-relay mail server.
12.Customers may not operate or host any website or service promoting illegal activity such as: warez, illegal pornography, hacking, cracking, phishing, scams, credit card harvesting websites, illegitimate ecommerce websites (those which defraud consumers of funds), or any material illegal in the USA or Canada. If you are not sure if your content is illegal in the USA or Canada, seek legal counsel before ordering hosting. We reserve the right to discontinue service due to any violation and without refund. NOTE: LAUREL HOSTING operates under a strict one-warning policy regarding unsolicited e-mail, unless the violation is of such nature that the account, in our sole discretion requires immediate termination, in which event service will be immediately terminated.
13. LAUREL HOSTING reserves the right to charge an administration fee, not to exceed $50.00, per abusive report or occurrence which negatively effects our network integrity and/or provider reputation. 

Security
1. Customers may not attempt to circumvent user authentication or security of any host, network, or account ("cracking"). This includes, but is not limited to, accessing data not intended for the customer, logging into a server or account the customer is not expressly authorized to access, or probing the security of other networks.
2. Customers may not attempt to interfere with service to any user, host, or network ("denial of service attacks"). This includes, but is not limited to, "flooding" of networks, overload of a service, and any activity resulting in the "crash" of a host.
3. Customers may not use any kind of program/script/command, or send messages of any kind, designed to interfere with a user's terminal session, via any means, locally or by the Internet.
4. Customers must safeguard their account passwords and keep all websites, code, scripts, programs, etc up to date to prevent unauthorized access to their account. Customer is liable for all resource fees incurred under customer's account. If customer grants public write permissions to customer's account, customer is liable for fees for disk space consumed by any others writing to the account.
5. Users who violate systems or network security may incur criminal or civil liability. LAUREL HOSTING will cooperate fully with investigations of violations of systems or network security at other sites, including cooperating with law enforcement authorities in the investigation of suspected criminal violations.


Bandwidth Use/Abuse
1. If the customer wishes to change their bandwidth allocation, they must notify LAUREL HOSTING before the next billing cycle.
2. Customer is responsible for their own bandwidth use. Your bandwidth usage is available in our control panel at all times; if you are unsure of your usage, please contact us. Bandwidth overages are billed at $0.01/MB; should you approach your bandwidth limit, we advise you to contact us to avoid an overage. Bandwidth consists of the summation of all bytes transferred in and out of your server. If you transfer 20 Gigabytes out and 15 Gigabytes into your server within your billing period, your bandwidth usage is 35 Gigabytes.
3. Customer may not participate in P2P networks such as bittorrent, kazaa, streaming video, public proxy services, napster, IRC, gnutella, edonkey, instant message proxying, http/https proxy, or any other proxy protocol. Attempts to circumvent these rules through a proxy, non-conventional ports, encryption or otherwise any other method will result in account termination without refund. These rules are to protect our network and also the quality of service we can deliver to clients. You may operate a private and secured proxy service, such as an encrypted authenticated vpn, authenticated socks proxy, authenticated http proxy for private or corporate use. Overall, we do not allow any type of anonymous/unrestricted/unauthenticated proxying in or out of our network. 


Privacy
1. LAUREL HOSTING will not sell or knowingly disclose its customer lists or customer email address lists. We will attempt to protect the privacy of our customers and their information that is stored on our network. LAUREL HOSTING will only access and disclose information as necessary to comply with applicable laws and government requests, to operate and maintain our systems and services, or to protect ourselves or our customers.
2. LAUREL HOSTING will not monitor or disclose a customer's private email messages unless required by court order or law. We will cooperate with the authorities and will notify such authorities if it suspects that a customer is engaged in illegal activities.
Material and Product Requirements 3. Customers must ensure that all material and data placed on LAUREL HOSTING equipment is in a condition that is "server-ready," which is in a form requiring no additional manipulation on LAUREL HOSTING part. We shall make no effort to validate this information for content, correctness or usability. In the event that the Customer's material is not "server-ready", we have the option at any time to reject this material. LAUREL HOSTING will notify the customer immediately of its refusal of the material and afford the customer the opportunity to amend or modify the material to satisfy the needs and/or requirements of LAUREL HOSTING.
4. Use of LAUREL HOSTING service requires a certain level of knowledge in the use of Internet languages, protocols, and software. This level of knowledge varies depending on the anticipated use and desired content of the customer's Web space. Customers must have the necessary knowledge to create and maintain a Web space. It is not the responsibility of LAUREL HOSTING to provide this knowledge or customer support outside of the service defined in the Service Agreement.


Delinquent Accounts
1. LAUREL HOSTING reserves the right to discontinue hosting service to an account immediately for delinquent invoices.
 Payment for the service is due on the first day of the billing cycle. Please email support@laurelhosting.com if you are uncertain as to what your billing cycle is.
2. Once an account is delinquent and taken offline, there will be a $15 reactivation charge to put the account back online.
3. Once an account  is offline for 7 days, you forfeit your site and all graphics and site will become the property of LAUREL HOSTING. If, at this point, the customer wishes to be re-setup, they will be responsible for paying a $50 reactivation fee.
 All payments to LAUREL HOSTING are credited towards the oldest due account. For example, if you have two past-due accounts, the account which has been past due will be paid off with any payments first. 



Customer Contact Info
It is the customers responsibility to keep their contact information up to date. And use a contact email address that is not associated on their domain name that is hosted with us, or email accounts hosted on their web server. It is always suggested that clients have emergency accounts with a gmail.com system. This will also ensure that when you submit a support ticket that you will be able to get a reply even if your server is down or email is not functioning.


Backups
The customer is responsible for maintaining a backup copy of customer's files elsewhere to ensure recovery in the event of loss or damage to customer's files. At customer request LAUREL HOSTING may make periodic backups of all files, but makes no guarantees of any kind, either expressed or implied, as to the integrity of these backups. Should the file loss be due to some error on the part of LAUREL HOSTING, LAUREL HOSTING will attempt to recover the files from their most recent archives at no cost to the customer. Should the file loss be due to some action of the customer, or due to vandalism brought on by the customer's negligence of securing their account, LAUREL HOSTING will attempt to recover the files from their most recent archives at a $45 fee. IT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE TO STORE ALL OF YOUR DATA ON OUR SERVERS WITHOUT OFF-SITE BACKUPS. Please store a copy of your critical data on a computer you are local to. 


Additional Policies
1. The Customer is responsible for providing and maintaining accurate and up-to-date billing information. Furnishing false data on the signup form, contract, or online application, including fraudulent use of credit card numbers, is grounds for immediate termination, and may subject the offender to civil or criminal liability.
2. LAUREL HOSTING reserves the right to discontinue service to any customer without any advance notice.
3. LAUREL HOSTING reserves the right to discontinue (without refund) any account/server that hosts any illegal, copyrighted or TOS violating content without notice or refund.
4. Standard and special service prices subject to change after their monthly or annually rate has been fulfilled.
5. Cancellation requests must be made to our billing department 24 hours prior to your next renewal date. Requests made after will be processed on the next renewal date. For example, if you are due on the 10th of the month, you must inform us that you wish to cancel the service before the 9th of that same month.
6. We reserve the right to disable any content on our servers which we deem liable, abusive, or threatening to our network, company reputation, or server resources. 
7. Any type of email marketing, opt in mailings, or other mass emailing systems are prohibited on the shared hosting packages. Non-spam mass mailing is fine on all other hosting service types. 
8. Customer understand and agree that in the event of payment default, to pay all reasonable collection charges and/or attorney fees.