Acceptable Use Policy

Imaginet aims to provide customers with quality service and in order to ensure the integrity of the network and provision fair and equal usage for everyone, we strive to manage our infrastructure in a manner that prevents excessive usage and abuse. This document explains Imaginet's policies about acceptable, and unacceptable, use of their networks, servers and services, or products. These policies apply to everyone who uses the infrastructure, whether they are Imaginet customers or not.

Reporting abuse

Imaginet hires staff to handle problems with unacceptable online behaviour. If you think that any user is breaking this Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), please sent a detailed explanation of the violation to abuse@imaginet.co.za. If you receive SPAM, please forward the entire contents of the e-mail (headers included) in a plain text file. If the complaint is about another form of attack (hacking, denial of service, etc.), please include all related log files and any other information that you can. Imaginet needs this information to look into the violation's validity, the people who are responsible and the action that should be taken, if any.

If the complaint is about networks or users outside of Imaginet's control, Imaginet can't do anything to resolve the situation.

Takedown Procedure

In terms of section 75 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, Imaginet has chosen the Internet Service Providers' Association to receive notifications of the infringements that are described in section 77 of the Act. For more information, please contact the Internet Service Providers' Association:

Postal Address: PO Box 518, Noordwyk, 1687
Tel: +27 10 500 1200

Take-down notice email: complaints@ispa.org.za

Take-down notice information and form: https://ispa.org.za/tdn/ 

Know the Imaginet AUP

The Imaginet Terms and Conditions that every customer needs to accept to use Imaginet's services requires that they abide by this AUP. The most recent AUP, which is available on asking, replaces any previous AUP documents. It is important that users know and understand this document because it is the user's responsibility to make sure that they understand Imaginet's policies.

Unlimited hosting bandwidth

Imaginet's unlimited bandwidth offering on shared web hosting is not to be abused by a single or a few subscribers at the expense of others.  Any activity which adversely affects another customer's hosting experience will therefore be halted. 

1. Customers using shared hosting will from time to time be asked to upgrade or correct errors if the issues will impact other clients.

2. Should a web hosting package cause degradation on the network, reasonable notice will be given to the offending client by electronic mail befre any change to the package is actioned.

3. The shared hosting platform is intended for websites with relevant content and for the personal, home, or small to medium business usage. This hosting should not be used for large business enterprises where use would be more suitable a for Dedicated or Virtual Server environment.

4. Imaginet might change, revise or amend shared hosting at their discretion with relation to price, features, traffic and disk size but undertakes to advise clients of any said changes or revisions within a reasonable period of notice.

Lawful Use of Resources

It is explained in the Terms and Conditions, and repeated here to make sure that it is understood, that people who use Imaginet's infrastructure agree not to use it in any way that goes against appropriate laws or regulations. If Imaginet is given a legally binding court order for a user, that user's personally-identifiable information will be given to law-enforcement agencies.

Simultaneous Logins

Imaginet's Dial-Up accounts are not transferable and should not be used by more than one machine. It is the client's responsibility to keep his/her username and password confidential. If the account is used by more than one machine at the same time, the account will automatically be disabled. If this issue continues, it may lead to the account being cancelled.

Sending Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE or 'SPAM')

Imaginet takes a strong stand against those who would use Imaginet's infrastructure to send any bulk e-mail or SPAM. Most people strongly object to getting such mail, and it is clearly an abuse of resources that the offender is not legally or ethically entitled to.

Users can only keep mailing lists with the acceptance and approval of the list's members and when it is their choice. If a mailing lists includes addresses that cannot be delivered to or belong to people who do not want to be a part of the list, those addresses should promptly be removed.

Imaginet clients should never to reply to SPAM, because this usually only confirms that your address is working and will lead to more SPAM being sent. We also strongly discourage users from buying lists of e-mail addresses for marketing or advertising because these lists are usually fraudulent and are made up of addresses that were gained by dishonest, untrustworthy or unethical means.

Imaginet clients must secure their mail servers against open SMTP relay – using a mail server to forward e-mails to other servers without their permission – to protect both themselves and other users. Unsecured mail servers can be abused by dishonest people to deliver SPAM. Imaginet can check clients' mail servers for open relay if they appear to be delivering SPAM. The results of a check will be given to the client, and they will have a reasonable period to fix the problem before their address will be cancelled. Imaginet can check any clients who use their mail servers as “smart hosts” or similar services for open relay at any time.

Denial of Service and Network Abuse

Imaginet will not allow anyone who uses its infrastructure to disturb the normal working of any part of the Internet, or to try and avoid any security measures. This includes all kinds of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, using another user's Internet account without that user's permission and any attempts at avoiding any network's security measures (e.g. “cracking” or “hacking”).

Other forbidden activities include, but are not limited to: unofficial searching (“scanning” or “nuking”) of networks; voluntary spreading of dangerous software (viruses, Trojans, worms, etc.) and “mail-bombing”. Any action that could be seen as harmful or aggressive is strictly forbidden.

Imaginet shall deem anything above 250MB of POP traffic per email address @imaginet.co.za to be abuse.

Unless it is discussed beforehand, if a user sends more than 50 e-mails within 5 minutes of receiving their Imaginet e-mail address, that address will be placed on suspension until the validity of the address can be confirmed.

Security

The subscriber agrees not to use the service for anything illegal; not to tamper with the services, servers or networks connected to the service; to meet all requirements, processes, policies and rules of the networks that are connected to the service; and to follow all laws relating to technical information from the country that the subscriber is connecting to, or hosting, the service in. The subscriber agrees not to use the server:

1. to send any unlawful, pressurising, reputation damaging, privacy invading, abusive, threatening, harmful, vulgar, obscene or otherwise offensive material
2. to send any material that could violate another person's rights, intellectual or other
3. to send any material that goes against local, regional, state, national or international laws or regulations
4. to try and gain access to other computer systems or networks connected to the services without permission

Possible Actions

Imaginet can decide to take action against all kinds of abuse including, but not limited to, the ones mentioned in this document. After receiving a complaint, or becoming aware of a problem, Imaginet can:

1. In the case of networks connected to Imaginet, to:
   • let the the network's administrator know about the problem
   • ask the network's administrator or network owner to deal with the problem in terms of this AUP
   • charge the offending parties for machine and human time lost because of the incident and costs for bandwidth and other resources that were affected
   • in severe cases, permanently suspend the entire network's access, or suspend it until abuse can be stopped by appropriate methods.

1. In the case of individual users, to:
• warn the user
• suspend the user's account
• withdraw the user's network access privileges completely
• charge the offending user for machine and human time lost due to the incident
• publish or share information about the incident with other Internet access providers.

In Conclusion

Imaginet firmly believes in the right to privacy, and it is not our policy to allow or stop communication because of content, except when we are forced to by law or where bound by the above policies. Users need to know and understand the above policies and follow them while connected to Imaginet. Clients should also research Internet culture, or “netiquette”, and follow it as much as they can.

If customers aren't sure if the actions that they have in mind could be going against the spirit of this document, they should contact us before they act. This AUP is meant to be used by Imaginet customers and anyone else who might use Imaginet's infrastructure, and the point of the document is to keep up a peaceful, non-confrontational and productive Internet environment.