Hipposerve® Acceptable Use Policy

This Acceptable Use Policy explains the rules that protect Hipposerve customers, users, staff, suppliers, networks and services from unlawful, harmful or abusive activity.

It applies whenever you access or use a Hipposerve website, account, network, platform, hosting service, server, domain, email service, API or other service.

1. Relationship with Other Terms

1.1 Part of Your Contract

This Acceptable Use Policy forms part of your Contract with Hipposerve Digital Services Ltd. Defined terms have the meanings given in the General Terms and Conditions.

If this policy conflicts with an Order or applicable Product Terms, the order of precedence in the General Terms and Conditions applies.

1.2 Other Relevant Policies

Resource allowances, shared-platform limits and excessive-use procedures are addressed in the Fair Use Policy and applicable Product Terms. Billing, suspension and termination are also subject to the General Terms and Conditions and the Billing and Charging Terms.

1.3 Mandatory Law

This policy does not remove any right or obligation which applicable law does not allow either party to exclude.

2. Who Must Comply

2.1 Customers and Authorised Users

You must comply with this policy and ensure that everyone using a Service through your Account also complies. This includes employees, contractors, developers, agents, clients and other authorised users.

2.2 Resellers and Downstream Customers

If you resell, sublicense or provide access to a Service, you must take reasonable steps to ensure that your customers and users comply with this policy. You remain responsible for activity carried out through your Account or allocated resources, subject to the General Terms and applicable law.

2.3 Compromised Services

A breach may arise from deliberate activity or because a website, application, device or Account has been compromised. You must take reasonable security precautions and cooperate promptly when we notify you of suspected compromise or abuse.

3. General Standard of Use

You must use the Services lawfully, responsibly and in a manner that does not:

• harm or create a material risk to another person;
• compromise the security, integrity, reputation or availability of a system, network or Service;
• interfere materially with another customer's use of a Service;
• mislead others about your identity, authority, affiliation or the origin of communications;
• infringe the rights of another person; or
• cause Hipposerve or its suppliers to breach a legal, regulatory or contractual obligation.

You must not attempt, encourage, assist or enable another person to carry out prohibited activity.

4. Unlawful and Harmful Content

4.1 Illegal Activity

You must not use a Service to create, host, store, publish, advertise, transmit, facilitate or promote Content or activity that is unlawful in an applicable jurisdiction.

4.2 Child Safety

You must not use a Service for child sexual abuse material, grooming, sexual exploitation, trafficking or any other activity that harms or attempts to harm a child. We may restrict access immediately, preserve relevant evidence and report suspected illegal material or activity to the appropriate authorities where required or permitted by law.

4.3 Threats, Violence and Exploitation

You must not use a Service to make a credible threat of violence, incite or facilitate unlawful violence, promote terrorism, facilitate human trafficking or exploitation, or provide instructions intended to enable serious criminal harm.

4.4 Fraud and Deception

You must not use a Service for fraud, attempted fraud, dishonest schemes, false investment or trading schemes, counterfeit goods, fraudulent chargebacks, identity theft, deceptive fundraising or other activity intended to obtain money, property, credentials or services dishonestly.

4.5 Impersonation and Manipulated Content

You must not impersonate another person or organisation, falsely claim authority or affiliation, or use materially deceptive content to facilitate fraud, harassment or other unlawful harm. This includes deceptive use of synthetic, altered or AI-generated content.

4.6 Harassment and Privacy

You must not use a Service for unlawful harassment, stalking, coercion, doxxing, non-consensual intimate imagery, unlawful surveillance, discriminatory abuse or the publication of personal information in breach of applicable law.

4.7 Intellectual Property

You must not knowingly use a Service to infringe copyright, trade marks, database rights or other intellectual property rights. This includes distributing pirated software, unauthorised media or other unlawfully copied works.

5. Malware and Security Abuse

5.1 Malicious Software

You must not create, host, distribute, operate or knowingly facilitate malware or malicious code, including ransomware, spyware, credential stealers, keyloggers, viruses, worms, trojans, rootkits or destructive code.

5.2 Phishing and Credential Theft

You must not operate or facilitate phishing, credential harvesting, deceptive login pages, payment-card theft, session-token theft or any other attempt to obtain authentication, financial or personal information without lawful authority.

5.3 Botnets and Command-and-Control Systems

You must not operate, control, host or support a botnet, malware command-and-control service, traffic distribution system for malicious activity or infrastructure intended to conceal or facilitate attacks.

5.4 Network Attacks

You must not launch, facilitate or knowingly support denial-of-service attacks, distributed denial-of-service attacks, packet flooding, amplification attacks, mail bombing, brute-force attacks or deliberate interference with a network, system or Service.

5.5 Unauthorised Access

You must not access or attempt to access an Account, device, system, data or network without proper authority. You must not bypass authentication, access controls, rate limits, usage controls or technical restrictions.

5.6 Security Testing

You must not scan, probe, test or attempt to exploit the security of Hipposerve systems or another person's systems without the system owner's express permission.

Authorised security testing must remain within the agreed scope and must not materially affect other customers, shared infrastructure or service availability. Testing of Hipposerve infrastructure requires our prior written approval.

5.7 Vulnerability Disclosure

If you discover a suspected vulnerability affecting Hipposerve, please report it privately through our support system. Do not exploit the vulnerability, access data unnecessarily, disrupt services or publish technical details before we have had a reasonable opportunity to investigate and address the issue.

6. Email, Messaging and Spam

6.1 Unsolicited Messages

You must not send, assist or procure unsolicited bulk email, messages or marketing communications in breach of applicable law or accepted industry requirements. You must be able to demonstrate an appropriate lawful basis or permission for marketing communications where required.

6.2 Sender Identity

You must not forge or materially misrepresent message headers, sender identities, reply addresses, domain information or routing information. Messages must not be designed to conceal the true sender or mislead recipients about their origin.

6.3 Mailing Practices

You must maintain appropriate list hygiene, honour valid opt-out requests promptly, use functioning unsubscribe mechanisms where required and take reasonable steps to protect mailing systems and forms against unauthorised use.

6.4 Purchased and Harvested Lists

You must not use harvested addresses, unlawfully obtained contact data or purchased lists where you cannot demonstrate that recipients validly agreed to receive the relevant communications.

6.5 Shared Hosting

Shared hosting and standard mailbox Services must not be used as bulk-mailing platforms unless the applicable Product Terms expressly permit it. You must use a suitable specialist service for legitimate high-volume sending.

6.6 Reputation and Remediation

If your activity causes or is reasonably likely to cause blocklisting, widespread complaints, mail-queue disruption or harm to shared sender reputation, we may temporarily restrict sending while the cause is investigated and corrected.

7. Domains, DNS and Online Identity

You must not register, configure or use a domain, subdomain, DNS record, redirect or forwarding service for:

• phishing, malware delivery or credential theft;
• fraudulent impersonation, typosquatting or passing off;
• command-and-control systems or deliberate network abuse;
• unlawful spam or deceptive traffic redirection; or
• any other material breach of this policy.

Domain services are also subject to the applicable registry rules and the Domain Name Terms.

8. Proxies, Relays and Anonymising Services

8.1 Legitimate Privacy Tools

This policy does not prohibit ordinary lawful use of a reputable VPN, corporate network, privacy relay or similar technology to access your Account. We may require additional identity or security verification where an access method creates a reasonable fraud or security concern.

8.2 Public or Abusive Services

You must not operate an open proxy, open relay, public anonymising gateway or similar service through Hipposerve where it is prohibited by the applicable Product Terms, creates a material security or abuse risk, prevents reasonable investigation of complaints, or is used to facilitate unlawful or prohibited activity.

9. Storage, File Distribution and Streaming

9.1 Intended Purpose

You must use each Service for its intended purpose as described in the Order and Product Terms. A website-hosting Service must not be used primarily as an unrelated file dump, public download mirror or general backup repository.

9.2 File Upload and Distribution Services

You must not operate anonymous public-upload, file-sharing, image-hosting or download services on a plan that does not expressly support that use. A legitimate website may allow customer uploads where they are integral to its operation and are appropriately authenticated, moderated, secured and resourced.

9.3 Backups

You may store backups that are reasonably connected with the website or application hosted through the Service, subject to the applicable Product Terms and Fair Use Policy. You must not use ordinary web-hosting storage principally to back up unrelated computers, accounts, websites or external systems.

9.4 Streaming and High-Bandwidth Services

Streaming, media distribution and other sustained high-bandwidth activity are permitted only where the selected Service is technically suitable and the Order or Product Terms allow that use. Resource limits and overage arrangements are governed by the applicable Product Terms and Fair Use Policy.

10. Resource and Infrastructure Abuse

10.1 Harmful Resource Use

You must not use processing power, memory, storage, bandwidth, databases, processes, mail queues or other resources in a way that deliberately or materially degrades shared infrastructure, affects other customers or threatens the stability or security of a Service.

10.2 Circumvention

You must not evade or attempt to evade resource limits, rate limits, metering, licensing, account restrictions or enforcement measures, including by distributing activity across multiple Accounts or Services.

10.3 Resource-Intensive Activity

Cryptocurrency mining, continuous computational workloads, automated scraping, crawling, indexing, game servers, proxy services and other resource-intensive activities may be used only on a Service whose Product Terms expressly support the activity.

10.4 Fair Use

Specific allowances, inode limits, database limits, bandwidth limits, shared-resource controls, upgrades and overage charges are governed by the Fair Use Policy, Order and applicable Product Terms rather than this policy.

11. Licence and Supplier Restrictions

You must comply with licence conditions and lawful usage restrictions applying to third-party software or services supplied through Hipposerve. You must not defeat licence controls, use unauthorised licence keys, resell licences without permission or use a product outside its permitted technical or geographical scope.

12. Staff Safety and Communications

12.1 Legitimate Complaints and Criticism

You are entitled to complain, disagree with us, leave an honest review and express legitimate criticism. Hipposerve will not treat a complaint or criticism as a breach merely because it is negative, strongly expressed or inconvenient.

12.2 Prohibited Conduct

You must not make credible threats, unlawfully harass or stalk our staff, publish their private personal information, use discriminatory abuse directed at them or repeatedly contact an individual after being given a reasonable alternative channel for the matter.

12.3 Managing Communications

Where necessary to protect staff or manage persistent abusive conduct, we may end a call, require communication through a designated channel or representative, or restrict direct contact with particular personnel. We will seek to preserve a reasonable method for legitimate account, billing and service communications unless doing so would create a safety or legal risk.

13. Reporting Abuse

13.1 How to Report

Suspected abuse involving a Hipposerve Service should be reported using the abuse or support contact published on our website. Reports should include the affected domain, IP address, URL or Account where known, the nature of the concern, relevant dates and times, and supporting evidence.

13.2 Good-Faith Reports

Please submit reports honestly and do not knowingly provide false, misleading or unlawfully obtained information. Submitting a report does not guarantee a particular outcome, and privacy or legal obligations may prevent us from disclosing details of an investigation.

13.3 Intellectual Property Complaints

An intellectual-property complaint should identify the protected work or right, the allegedly infringing material, its location, the complainant's authority and sufficient contact information. We may request additional evidence before acting.

14. Investigation and Cooperation

14.1 Review of Reports

We may investigate credible reports, automated security alerts, supplier notices, court orders and other evidence of potential abuse. We are not obliged to monitor all Content proactively or determine complex private disputes between third parties.

14.2 Customer Cooperation

You must respond within a reasonable period to a legitimate abuse or security notice and take appropriate corrective action. The period allowed will depend on the seriousness and urgency of the issue.

14.3 Information and Evidence

We may request information reasonably necessary to investigate an issue, verify authority, identify a compromised resource or confirm remediation. We may preserve relevant records and disclose information where required or permitted by law and in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

14.4 No Routine Application Management

Investigating abuse or taking protective action does not make Hipposerve responsible for inspecting, managing, securing, repairing or monitoring your Content, website or application. Those responsibilities remain as stated in the General Terms and applicable Product Terms.

15. Enforcement

15.1 Proportionate Response

We will act proportionately, taking account of the seriousness, urgency, evidence, recurrence and impact of the suspected breach. Depending on the circumstances, we may:

• request information or corrective action;
• issue a warning or set a reasonable remediation deadline;
• restrict particular traffic, ports, messages, files, processes or access;
• quarantine malicious or compromised material;
• rate-limit, throttle or temporarily suspend an affected Service;
• require an upgrade or migration to a suitable Service;
• decline to renew or terminate an affected Service in accordance with the General Terms;
• preserve evidence or notify a supplier, registry, competent authority or law-enforcement body where legally appropriate; or
• take other reasonable and lawful protective action.

15.2 Notice and Remedy

Where reasonably possible, we will notify you of the issue and give you an opportunity to remedy it. We may act without advance notice where delay could cause harm, compromise security, breach the law, destroy evidence or materially affect other customers, suppliers or systems.

15.3 Limiting the Impact

Where reasonably practicable, we will limit action to the affected Account, Service, resource or Content. We will restore a restricted Service within a reasonable time after the issue has been satisfactorily resolved, subject to the Contract.

15.4 Content Removal

We may disable access to, quarantine or remove specific Content where reasonably necessary to address illegal material, malicious code, a serious security threat, a valid legal requirement or a material breach that the Customer has failed to remedy. We will not remove Content arbitrarily.

15.5 Suspension and Termination

Suspension and termination are governed by clauses 21 and 22 of the General Terms and any applicable Product Terms. A minor or remediable breach will not ordinarily justify permanent termination without an opportunity to correct it.

16. Costs Caused by Abuse

We may charge a Business Customer for reasonable, evidenced and proportionate costs directly caused by its material breach of this policy, such as specialist remediation or blocklist removal, where permitted by the Contract and applicable law.

Any standard administration or restoration charge must be identified in the Order, Product Terms or published Billing and Charging Terms. We will not impose an arbitrary fine or recover the same loss twice.

This clause does not apply to the extent the cost was caused by Hipposerve's breach, negligence or failure to take reasonable mitigating steps.

17. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy for the reasons and using the procedure stated in clause 28 of the General Terms and Conditions. Material changes will not become binding merely because they are published without notice.

For a change that materially disadvantages you during a committed term, we will provide the notice and cancellation rights described in the General Terms. Urgent changes required by law or to address a serious security risk may take effect sooner, but we will notify you as soon as reasonably practicable.

18. Contact

If you are unsure whether proposed activity is permitted, please contact Hipposerve before using the Service for that activity. Approval is valid only if given in writing by an authorised Hipposerve representative and may be subject to reasonable technical or security conditions.