General Notice
Thank you for reading RSAWEB's Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). By accessing this website, or by contracting with us for service, you agree, without limitation or qualification, to be bound by this policy and the terms and conditions it contains, as well as any other additional terms, conditions, rules or policies which are displayed to you in connection with this service/website.
The purpose of this AUP is to comply with the relevant laws of the Republic; to specify to customers and users of our service/website what activities and online behaviour are considered an unacceptable use of the service/website; to protect the integrity of our network and to specify the consequences that may flow from undertaking such prohibited activities.
This document contains a number of legal obligations which you are presumed to be familiar with. As such, we encourage you to read this document thoroughly and direct any queries to our customer services department at (021) 4626798.
RSAWeb respects the rights of our customers and users of our services to freedom of speech and expression; access to information; privacy; human dignity; religion, belief and opinion in accordance with our constitution. We undertake not to interfere with any of those rights unless required to do so by law; unless those rights are exercised for unlawful purposes; or unless the exercise of those rights threatens to cause harm to another person or affect the integrity of our network.
ISPA membership and Code of Conduct
RSAWeb confirms that in compliance with section 72 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002, RSAWeb is a member of the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) and has adopted and implemented the association’s official Code of Conduct, which can be viewed at http://www.ispa.org.za/code
Unlawful Use
RSAWEB's services/website may only be used for lawful purposes and activities. We prohibit any use of our website/network including the transmission, storage and distribution of any material or content using our network that violates any law or regulation of the Republic. This includes:
1. Any violation of local and international laws prohibiting child pornography; obscenity; discrimination (including racial, gender or religious slurs) and hate speech; or speech designed to incite violence or hatred, or threats to cause bodily harm.
2. Any activity designed to defame, abuse, stalk, harass or physically threaten any individual in the Republic or beyond its borders; including any attempt to link to, post, transmit or otherwise distribute any inappropriate or defamatory material.
3. Any violation of Intellectual Property laws including materials protected by local and international copyright, trademarks and trade secrets. Moreover RSAWeb cannot be held liable if you make any unlawful use of any multimedia content accessed through the search facility provided by RSAWEB's network, or otherwise available through access to our network, whether for commercial or noncommercial purposes.
4. Any violation of the individual’s right to privacy, including any effort to collect personal data of third parties without their consent.
5. Any fraudulent activity whatsoever, including dubious financial practices, such as pyramid schemes; the impersonation of another subscriber without their consent; or any attempt to enter into a transaction with RSAWeb on behalf of another subscriber without their consent.
6. Any violation of the exchange control laws of the Republic.
7. Any activity that results in the sale, transmission or distribution of pirated or illegal software.
8. Failing to respond to a request by a recipient of unsolicited mail to be removed from any mailing or direct marketing list and continuing to send unsolicited mail following such a request for removal.
Where any user resides outside of the Republic, permanently or temporarily, such user will be subject to the laws of the country in which s/he is currently resident and which apply. On presentation of a legal order to do so, or under obligation through an order for mutual foreign legal assistance, RSAWeb will assist foreign law enforcement agencies (LEA) in the investigation and prosecution of a crime committed using RSAWEB's resources, including the provisioning of all personal identifiable data.
Prohibited Activities
The following sections outline activities that are considered an unacceptable use of RSAWeb's services/network/website and also detail the guidelines for acceptable use of certain facilities/services, as the case may be.
Threats to Network Security
Any activity which threatens the functioning, security and/or integrity of RSAWEB's network is unacceptable. This includes:
Any efforts to attempt to gain unlawful and unauthorized access to the network or circumvent any of the security measures established by RSAWeb for this goal;
Any effort to use RSAWEB's equipment to circumvent the user authentication or security of any host, network or account (“cracking” or “hacking”);
Forging of any TCP-IP packet header (spoofing) or any part of the header information in an email or a newsgroup posting;
Any effort to breach or attempt to breach the security of another user or attempt to gain access to any other person's computer, software, or data without the knowledge and consent of such person;
Any activity which threatens to disrupt the service offered by RSAWeb through denial of service attacks, flooding of a network, or overloading a service or any unauthorized probes ("scanning" or "nuking") of others' networks;
Any activity which in any way threatens the security of the network by knowingly posting, transmitting, linking to or otherwise distributing any information or software which contains a virus; Trojan horse; worm, lock, mail bomb, cancelbot or other harmful, destructive or disruptive component.
Any unauthorized monitoring of data or traffic on the network without RSAWEB's explicit, written consent.
Any unsolicited mass mailing activity including direct marketing; spam and chain letters for commercial or other purposes, without the consent of the recipients of those mails.
Public Space and Third Party Content and sites
In reading this AUP or in signing a service contract with RSAWeb, you acknowledge that RSAWeb has no power to control the content of the information passing over the Internet and its applications, including e-mail; chatrooms; news groups; or other similar fora, and that RSAWeb cannot be held responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any of the abovementioned content, in any way for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of, or in connection with your use of, or reliance on, any such content.
Our services also offer access to numerous third party webpages. You acknowledge that we exercise absolutely no control over such third party content, or sites and in such cases, our network is merely a conduit or means of access and transmission. This includes, but is not limited to, third party content contained on or accessible through the RSAWeb network websites and web pages or sites displayed as search results or contained within a directory of links on the RSAWeb network. It remains your responsibility to review and evaluate any such content, and that any and all risk associated with the use of, or reliance on, such content rests with you.
Access to public Internet spaces, such as bulletin boards, Usenet groups, chat rooms and moderated forums is entirely voluntary and at your own risk.
RSAWeb employees do not moderate any of these services, or your communications, transmissions or use of these services. We do not undertake any responsibility for any content contained therein, or for any breaches of your right to privacy that you may experience as a result of accessing such spaces.
Usenet Newsgroups
The customer is responsible for determining and familiarizing himself or herself with the written policies of a given newsgroup before posting to it.
The customer must comply with these guidelines at all times which can be obtained from other users of the newsgroup upon request, or from the group's administrators/moderators.
The following are prohibited practices with regard to Usenet newsgroups and RSAWeb reserves the right to delete and/or cancel posts which violate the following conditions:
1. Excessive cross-posting of the same article to multiple newsgroups.
2. Posting of irrelevant or off-topic material to newsgroups (also known as USENET spam).
3. Posting binaries to a non-binary newsgroup.
4. Posting adverts, solicitations, or any other commercial messages unless the guidelines of the newsgroup in question explicitly permit them.
Unsolicited, Spam and Junk mail
Spam and unsolicited bulk mail are highly problematic practices. They affect the use and enjoyment of services by others and often compromise network security. RSAWeb will take swift and firm action against any user engaging in any of the following unacceptable practices:
1. Sending unsolicited bulk mail for marketing or any other purposes (political, religious or commercial) to people who have not consented to receiving such mail;
2. Operating or maintaining mailing lists without the express permission of all recipients listed;
3. Failing to promptly remove from lists invalid or undeliverable addresses or addresses of unwilling recipients;
4. Using RSAWEB's service to collect responses from unsolicited e-mail sent from accounts on other Internet hosts or e-mail services, that violate this AUP or the AUP of any other Internet service provider;
5. Including RSAWEB's name in the header or by listing an IP address that belongs to RSAWeb in any unsolicited email sent through RSAWEB's network or not;
6. Failure to secure a customer’s mail server against public relay as a protection to themselves and the broader Internet community. Public relay occurs when a mail server is accessed by a third party from another domain and utilized to deliver mails, without the authority or consent of the owner of the mail-server. Mail servers that are unsecured against public relay often become abused by unscrupulous operators for spam delivery and upon detection such delivery must be disallowed. RSAWeb reserves the right to examine users' mail servers to confirm that no mails are being sent from the mail server through public relay and the results of such checks can be made available to the user. RSAWeb also reserves the right to examine the mail servers of any users using RSAWEB's mail servers for "smarthosting" (when the user relays its mail off a RSAWeb mail server to a mail server of its own) or similar services at any time to ensure that the servers are properly secured against public relay. All relay checks will be done in strict accordance with RSAWEB's privacy policy.
Webmail
Webmail and other web based email services made available by RSAWeb are provided on an "as is" basis without representations, warranties or conditions of any kind, and the customer acknowledges and agrees that RSAWeb shall have no responsibility for, or liability in respect of, any aspect of the Webmail services, including without limitation for any lost or damaged data or any acts or omissions of RSAWeb. As webmail storage space is limited, some Webmail messages may not be processed due to space constraints or message limitations.
Webmail is provided to individuals and for personal use only. Any unauthorized commercial use of the Webmail service, or resale of the Webmail service is expressly prohibited.
Protection of Minors
RSAWeb prohibits customers from using RSAWEB's service to harm or attempt to harm a minor, including, but not limited to, by hosting, possessing, disseminating, distributing or transmitting material that is unlawful, including child pornography.
Privacy and Confidentiality
RSAWeb respects the privacy and confidentiality of our customers and users of our service. Please review our privacy policy which details how we collect and use personal information gathered in the course of operating this service.
User Responsibilities
Customers are responsible for any misuse of RSAWEB's services that occurs through the customer’s account. It is the customer’s responsibility to ensure that unauthorized persons do not gain access to or misuse RSAWEB's service.
RSAWeb urges customers not to reply to unsolicited mail or "spam", not to click on any suggested links provided in the unsolicited mail. Doing so remains the sole responsibility of the customer and RSAWeb cannot be held liable for the Customer being placed on any bulk mailing lists as a result.
Where the customer has authorized a minor to use any of the RSAWEB's services or access its websites, you accept that as the parent/legal guardian of that minor, you are fully responsible for: the online conduct of such minor; controlling the minor's access to and use of any services or websites; and the consequences of any misuse by the minor, including but not limited to transactions entered into by the minor using such access.
RSAWeb cannot be held liable for any business dealings you have with any third parties on the Internet, including any vendors, or advertisers found on, or through, the RSAWeb network. Further, RSAWeb assumes no responsibility whatsoever for any charges you or any user of your account incurs when making purchases or other transactions in this manner. Further, the responsibility for ensuring compliance with all applicable customs and exchange control laws in connection with any such transactions shall be the customer’s.
Notice and Take-down Procedures
RSAWeb confirms that it has a procedure in place for the notice and take-down of illegal material. In compliance with section 77 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 RSAWEB's designated agent for this process can be reached at (011) 318-1406 or at email address takedown@ispa.org.za and web site http://www.ispa.org.za/code.
Customers are also notified of the content and procedures of the ISPA Code of Conduct (http://www.ispa.org.za/code) which may be used against any Internet Service provider who fails to comply with the code of conduct. We urge you to familiarize yourselves with this code.
Complaints and procedures
It is the customer’s responsibility to familiarize himself or herself with the procedure set out below and report any cases of violation of this AUP to RSAWEB's designated complaints handling agent.
Please note that RSAWeb cannot handle complaints concerning networks or users that do not have service contracts with us or our affiliates, or are outside of our control.
In order for RSAWeb to thoroughly investigate the complaint and take appropriate action, all complaints must be in writing, via fax or e-mail and contain as much information as possible, including, but not limited to:
The origin of abuse or offence, including the website, full mail headers, relevant logfile extracts etc;
Any contact details for the source of the complaint;
A brief explanation why the incident is considered to be an offence.
RSAWeb discourages anonymous complaints being made via this service, and urge complainants to supply their name and contact details to us. Such information will not be released, except where required by law enforcement. Anonymous complaints will however be acted upon as long as sufficient detail as outlined above is supplied.
Action following breach of the AUP
Upon receipt of a complaint, or having become aware of an incident, RSAWeb may take any of the following steps:
In the case of a network, inform the user's network administrator of the incident and request the network administrator or network owner to deal address the incident in terms of this AUP and the ISPA Code of Conduct;
In severe cases suspend access of the user's entire network until abuse can be prevented by appropriate means;
In the case of individual users, warn the user; suspend the user's account and/or revoke or cancel the user's network access privileges completely;
In both cases, charge the offending parties for administrative costs as well as for machine and human time lost due to the incident;
Assist other networks or website administrators in investigating credible suspicions of any activity listed in this AUP;
Institute civil or legal proceedings;
Share information concerning the incident with other Internet access providers, or publish the information, and/or make available the users' details to law enforcement agencies.
Reservation and Non Waiver of Rights
RSAWeb reserves the right to amend or alter this policy at any time, and without notice to you.
RSAWeb reserves the right to take action against any individuals, companies or organizations that violate any of the prohibited activities set out herein, or engage in any illegal or unlawful activity while accessing our services, to the fullest extent of the law.
RSAWeb reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to act against other types of abuse not listed in this document and to investigate or prevent illegal activities being committed over our network.
RSAWeb reserves the right to monitor user and network traffic for site security purposes and prevent any unauthorized attempts to tamper with our site or cause damage to our property.
RSAWeb reserves the right to suspend, revoke or cancel RSAWEB's services to the customer/user if the safety and integrity of RSAWEB's resources are placed at risk in continuing to provide service to the subscriber/user.
RSAWeb reserves the right to remove any information or materials in whole or in part, that, in RSAWEB's sole discretion, deems to be offensive, indecent, or otherwise objectionable.
RSAWeb does not undertake to guarantee the security of any data passing through its networks. Although RSAWeb will provide a "best effort" service, including regular updates on computer viruses and other threats to security of data, it is the responsibility of the communicating parties to safeguard their data, and RSAWeb cannot be held liable for any loss or damage arising as result of the failure to do so.
RSAWeb does not waive its right to enforcement of this AUP at any time, or prejudice its right to take subsequent action, should RSAWeb fail, neglect or elect not to enforce a breach of the AUP at any time.
Domain Registrations
With regard to the “hosting” or “parking” of domain names several points of policy apply:
1. For all domains, the nameservers must be selected and approved by RSAWeb Internet Services, including all secondary nameservers. Secondary nameservice will not be shared with a third party except by special pre-arrangement.
2. RSAWeb Internet Services reserves the right to refuse to host, register, or support domain names that it finds offensive or libelous. Judgement of what constitutes "offensive" or "libelous" shall be at the sole discretion of RSAWeb Internet Services.
3. RSAWeb Internet Services makes no attempt to exercise control over its customers' domains, and will not make modifications to administrative, billing, organization, or other associated records, without prior permission, except in cases of emergency or violation of this policy.
4. Registering any domain to our nameservers without the intent of paying our fees or the authoritative NIC's fees is expressly prohibited. Registering multiple domains with no intent of using those domains for service is forbidden. Anyone found to be "warehousing" domain names for resale or not in "good faith" will have their services terminated at our discretion, and we may contact the appropriate NIC and advise them of the situation.
5. The use of any domain name that is considered offensive, defamatory, libelous or volatile of any local, state, federal or international law including any violation of intellectual property, copyright, trademark, trade secret, misappropriation and anti-dilution laws is strictly prohibited. It is the sole responsibility of the domain name owner to take all steps necessary to ensure that the domain name selected is not in violation of any law or any other party's rights.
6. You agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless RSAWeb Internet Services from any and all liability, penalties, losses, damages, costs, expenses, attorneys' fees, causes of action or claims caused by or resulting from your registration, acquisition or use of a domain name which damages either you, RSAWeb Internet Services or any other party or parties, without limitation or exception.
7. Domain names that have been registered with RSAWeb Internet Services as the Billing Contact and that have not been paid for within the period specified on the RSAWeb Internet Services invoice will be deleted or reregistered into RSAWeb Internet Services's ownership.
Webhosting
Server Side Processes
The installation or operation of any stand-alone, unattended server-side process (daemons) on RSAWeb Internet Services servers is forbidden, except by special arrangement. This specifically includes IRC bots or clients as well as any redirector programs. Use of such a process to accept network connections, for any purpose whatsoever, is expressly forbidden. Violation of this policy will result in immediate account termination without warning.
Resource Usage by Traffic
The following items are excluded from the "unlimited traffic consumption" available with our hosting accounts:
Graphic files (.jpg, .gif, .bmp, .png, .xmb, .swf etc.) exceeding 100 KB in size.
Audio files (.mp3, .wav, .ra, ..au, etc.)
Video files (.avi, .ram, .mpg, .mov, .qt, etc.)
Compressed files (.zip, .tar, .sit, .exe, .bin, .gz/gzip, etc.) for download exceeding 100KB in size.
Formatted documents (.doc, .pdf, .ps, etc.) for download exceeding 100 KB in size.
Any file exceeding 250KB
RSAWeb Internet Services reserves the right to charge for excessive traffic and / or suggest suitable alternatives to the client as it deems necessary at it's sole discretion
Resource Usage
Users may not, through a cron job, CGI script, interactive commands, or any other means, initiate the following on our servers:
Run any process that requires more than 8Mb of memory space.
Run any program that requires more than 30 CPU seconds. Use find anywhere except in their own directories.
Send out mail to more than 20 addresses in one batch, whether sequentially or in parallel, not exceeding 100 recipients. Such batches must "sleep" for at least three seconds between each delivery attempt.
Send or receive, through mail, any file larger than 1MB. This limit, or a similar limit, may be enforced in our software.
Run their own mailing list software.
Run an interactive chat application.
Run a banner exchange, remotely accessible web counter, or any other services that perform CGI processes for sites outside our network.
Database Resource Usage
MySQL databases are provided, subject to the conditions and restrictions below:
Each qualifying individual account is limited to the allocated quota as published in the price matrix.
No database may be used to act as a "hit counter," or for logging of information distributed nightly in the raw web logs (including but not limited to browser and page referrer information).
Each individual database is allotted up to 20 MB (megabytes) of disk space. Extra disk usage within reason is allowed, and may be charged for at our normal disk overusage rate in the near future.
Databases may not be used for circumventing account disk allowances by storing web sites within the database.
Databases may only be used in conjuction with RSAWeb Internet Services hosted accounts. Access to databases from outside our local network is provided strictly for site and database development.
Databases may not be used to store binary files (including but not limited to image and application files). These files should be stored within the user account and referred to in the database by a "pointer," if needed.
RSAWeb Internet Services reserves the right to require changes to databases and database usage that has an adverse impact on a database server and/or other user databases on that server. In extreme cases, RSAWeb Internet Services reserves the right to disable any database determined to be unacceptably harming performance of a database server.
RSAWeb Internet Services reserves the right to implement further allowances for database usage in the future, as new tools for determining a database's server impact are developed.
Resource Usage by CGI Scripts
CGI scripts and programs are subject to resource limitations as set forth by this policy. These limits may be enforced by the system. The present limits are:
Size of Core Files - 0 Mb
CPU Time Used - 30 seconds
Data Size - 3 Mb
File Size Created - 1 Mb
Memory Locked - 1 Mb
Number of Open Files - 32
Number of Simultaneous Processes - 8
Details of what these limits mean are available in the setrlimit documentation.
CGI scripts are to be run only by users with the appropriate account types - Advanced or higher account levels for custom CGI scripting. No user may run CGI scripts for the benefit of external sites or services. This includes in particular all variations of "free Web counter" services.
These limits are subject to change and variation as necessary, at the sole discretion of RSAWeb Internet Services.
Policies - Misuse of Account Feature
Operating any service which makes an account feature available to third parties for any use other than normal access to that account's Web site is forbidden. Operating any service which enables or assists anonymous or abusive behavior by third parties is forbidden. Operating any service which affects the stability or reliability of any RSAWeb Internet Services server or network component, impacts other users or the company negatively, or degrades quality of service is forbidden.
This includes but is not limited to third party access to CGI services, database hosting, counters, banner exchanges, autoresponders, mailboxes, mail forwarding, mail filtering, and content publishing systems. All account features are to be used solely in order to develop and implement the Web site(s) associated with that account. Resellers may make reasonable use of account features shared between multiple accounts they are being billed for.
Certain usages are acceptable on our dedicated server options. Those exceptions will be made on a case-by-case basis only, and RSAWeb Internet Services reserves the right to discontinue service for any system whose maintainer is unable or unwilling to control abuse or related problems.
