As a high-quality web hosting provider to thousands of customers, AmeriHosting, Inc. values its good reputation. Accordingly, it is important to us that our customers use our services and the Internet in general, responsibly and courteously. Most of our customers do so and seldom need to refer to these AUPs. Nonetheless, the following constitute examples of unacceptable uses of AmeriHosting’s services, which will result in suspension, or termination of the customer’s account.

Affronts to Etiquette. Unacceptable activities include spamming (sending unsolicited advertising to those with which the customer has no existing business relationship, posting off-topic advertising in newsgroups); spoofing (using a return email address which is not the valid reply address of the sender or sending an email message which does not contain enough information to enable the recipient to identify the party who is really sending the message; passive spamming (promoting a web site hosted by AmeriHosting by spamming from some other source), trolling (posting controversial messages in newsgroups to generate responses), mailbombing (inundating a user with email without any serious intent to correspond), generating a higher volume of outgoing mail than a normal user (over 10% of available system resources), and subscribing someone else to an electronic mailing list without that person's permission. A message is considered unsolicited if it is posted in violation of a newsgroup charter or sent to a recipient who has not requested the message. Making an email address available to the public does not constitute a request to receive messages. Distribution of mass emailing programs is also prohibited. All recipients on a mailing list must have personally subscribed. Mailing lists may not be used to distributed unsolicited email. Any customer repeatedly "mailbombed" or that attracts such behavior will be asked to leave. If you are not sure if your actions will be in violation, please ask first.

Age. The client must be 18 years of age to obtain service.

Abuse of the legal rights of others. Examples of unacceptable activities in this regard include posting private information about a person without their consent, infringing intellectual property rights, defaming a person or business, and knowingly making available code which will have a deleterious effect on third party computers. AmeriHosting supports free speech on the Internet, and will not suspend or cancel a customer’s account simply because it disagrees with the views expressed by the customer. Where there are allegations that a customer’s on-line activity has violated the legal rights of a third party, AmeriHosting will not substitute itself for a court of law in deciding tort claims raised by the third party.

Abuse of the law. AmeriHosting’s services may be used for lawful purposes only. Illegality includes but is not limited to: drug dealing; attempting without authorization to access a computer system; pirating (distributing copyrighted material in violation of copyright law, specifically MP3s, MPEG's, ROMs, and ROM emulators); gambling; schemes to defraud; trafficking in obscene material; sending a message or having content that is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another person; threatening bodily harm or damage to individuals or groups; violating U.S. export restrictions; stalking; or violating other state or federal law such as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or the Economic Espionage Act. Linking to illegal material is also prohibited. AmeriHosting reserves the right to check system files, email, and other data on our servers for illegal content and materials, or for any other reasons deemed necessary.

Proxies and Torrents. Proxy and Torrent sites are not an acceptable use of AmeriHosting’s servers.

Abuse of AmeriHosting’s Server Resources. Running programs in the background on a AmeriHosting’s server without AmeriHosting’s prior written authorization, or running chat rooms, Internet Relay Chat, IRC bots, and the like are not acceptable uses of AmeriHosting’s servers.

Hacking/Cracking. AmeriHosting reserves the right to report illegal activities to any and all regulatory, administrative, and/or governmental authorities for prosecution.

The following examples of unacceptable behavior are non-exclusive, and are provided for guidance purposes. If you are unsure if your actions will be a violation of our policies please ask us.

Server broadcast messages or any message sent on an intrusive basis to any directly or indirectly attached network Attempt to circumvent any user authentication or security of host, network, or account. Accessing data not intended for user. Probing the security of any network. Spawning dozens of processes. Port scans, ping floods, packet spoofing, forging router information, Denial of Service attacks, sniffers, flooding, spoofing, ping bombing, smurfs, winnuke, land, teardrop. Promulgation of viruses. IRC bots such as eggdrop or BitchX. Any activity, whether or not the intrusion results in the corruption or loss of data, will be investigated and proper action taken. The presence of any of these programs, whether or not run, will result in action against the user including suspension or termination.

Client Responsibility. The client is responsible for all activity originating from the account unless proven to be a victim of outside hacking or address forgery. The client is responsible for securing their username/password. Use of AmeriHosting's 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 web space by the client. The following examples are offered: Web Publishing: requires knowledge of HTML, properly locating and linking documents, FTPing Web contents, Graphics, text, sound, image mapping, etc. FrontPage web publishing: knowledge of the FrontPage tools as well as Telnet and FTP understanding and capability. CGI-Scripts: requires a knowledge of the UNIX environment, TAR & GUNZIP commands, Perl, CShell scripts, permissions, etc. Mail: a use of mail clients to receive and send mail, etc. The client agrees that he or she has the necessary knowledge to create and maintain their web space. Client agrees that it is not the responsibility of AmeriHosting to provide this knowledge or support outside matter specific to AmeriHosting's servers.

Setup Fees. Setup fees include domain registration/domain transfers and account setup. Setup fees and domain registration fees are not refundable.

Account Renewals/Cancellations. Accounts are auto-renewed unless they are canceled. Clients must officially cancel their account if they wish to discontinue Hosting services from AmeriHosting, Inc. Simply moving your DNS to another Hosting Service does not constitute account cancellation. The authorized account holder thru AmeriHosting, Inc must cancel the account from our website located at: www.AmeriHosting.com

Backups. Full backups are made weekly, and backups of new/changed data made nightly. No guarantees are made of any kind, either expressed or implies, as to the integrity of these backups. Backups are made for server restoration purposes only. It is the clients’ responsibility to maintain local copies of their web content any information. If loss of data occurs due to an error of AmeriHosting, AmeriHosting will attempt to recover the date for no charge to the client. If data loss occurs due to negligence of client in securing their account or by an action of the client, AmeriHosting will attempt to recover the data from the most recent archive for a $50.00 fee.

IP Addresses/Numbers. AmeriHosting maintains control and any ownership of any and all IP numbers and addresses that may be assigned to the client and reserves in its sole discretion the right to change or remove any and all IP numbers and addresses.

Limitation of Liability. AmeriHosting shall not be responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental and consequential damages, which may arise from AmeriHosting’s servers going off-line or being unavailable for any reason whatsoever. Further, AmeriHosting shall not be responsible for any claimed damages, including incidental or consequential damages, resulting from the corruption or deletion of any web site from one of AmeriHosting’s servers. All damages shall be limited to the immediate termination of service.

AmeriHosting shall be the sole arbiter of what is and is not a violation of these acceptable use policies. AmeriHosting reserves the right to terminate an account at any time and for any reason that causes harm to any AmeriHosting customer's web sites. AmeriHosting reserves the right to delete all content and files upon termination. AmeriHosting reserves the right to withhold any pre-paid funds for any site removed for violations of these policies. AmeriHosting reserves the right to refuse, cancel, or suspend service at our sole discretion.

AmeriHosting reserves the right to change the Acceptable Use Policy without prior notice or warning. Non-enforcement of any part of the Acceptable Use Policy does not constitute consent.

Violations of these Acceptable Uses Policies should be referred to our abuse department.