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messing-about.com Hosting Service "Terms of Service"

You must accept these terms of service in order to use our service. These terms of service may be updated as needed at any time without notice. The main purpose of this agreement is to protect all users on our servers. Read these terms of service carefully and return here frequently. Updates are cataloged at the bottom of this page.

• 1.) Suspension
  Violation of these terms of service could result in suspension or removal of your account depending upon the circumstances. Suspension means that your account is put into a limbo state and is unreachable through any means. During suspension no files are lost or altered. Accounts found to be running a script which is causing a very high cpu load or mail script being used to send spam will almost always be suspended without notice to prevent further damage. Poorly written scripts must be removed in order for us to restore your service. Reports of spam are taken very seriously usually resulting in immediate account suspension and investigation without notice. We reserve the right to suspend any or all accounts held by you without notice if we deem it necessary to do so.
• 2.) Scope of Service
  Our servers and pricing has been designed to be low cost and therefore, in that spirit we are simply providing basic http, mail & ftp level hosting services. This also means that applications or scripts set up by users to run on the server which cause high cpu load may be asked to move to a dedicated server. High CPU load is defined as using an average of more than 2% of the server processor in a 24 hour period beginning and ending at midnight, as determined by our server. *For reference the average medium traffic website uses about .5% of system resources. Script support or other "how-to" services are not provided. It is the responsibility of the user to become learned in setting up and administering their account including script installs, file permissions, uploading procedures, etc. All script engines are checked many times per day to be sure that they work server wide. Support will be strictly limited to making sure that running scripts is possible by running our test script. messing-about.com Hosting Services staff or other members may however be able to answer script or how-to related questions posted to our forum for the benefit of all users.
• 3.) Limitation of Liability
  You expressly understand and agree that messing-about.com Hosting Services shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or exemplary damages, including but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, goodwill, use, data or other intangible losses (even if messing-about.com Hosting Services has been advised of the possibility of such damages), resulting from:
  • (i) the use or the inability to use the service;
  • (ii) the cost of procurement of substitute goods and services resulting from any goods, data, information or services purchased or obtained or messages received or transactions entered into through or from the service;
  • (iii) unauthorized access to or alteration of your transmissions or data; (iv) statements or conduct of any third party on the service; or (v) any other matter relating to the service.
• 4.) Content
  All services provided by messing-about.com Hosting Services may be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage, or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any United States Federal, State or City law is prohibited. this includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, material we judge to be threatening or obscene, or material protected by trade secrete and other statue. The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold harmless messing-about.com Hosting Services from any claims resulting from the use of the service which damages the subscriber or any other party.
  • 4.1) Pornography and sex-related merchandising are prohibited on any messing-about.com Hosting Services server. This includes sites that may infer sexual content, or link to adult content elsewhere. This is also true for sites that promote any illegal activity or content that may be damaging to messing-about.com Hosting Services servers or any other server on the internet. Links to such materials are also prohibited. This policy is in effect because of the excessive load this material puts on our servers and bandwidth, and the legal ramifications of such sites.
  • 4.2) You agree to not use the Service to:
    a. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.
• 5.) Examples of non-acceptable content or links:
  • Pirated software
  • Hackers programs or archives
  • Warez Sites
  • Adult Sites
  • Illegal MP3s
  messing-about.com Hosting Services will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision. Any websites found in violation of this policy will be cancelled and any resulting monetary damages to us will multiplied by a factor of two (2) and charged to the account holder.
• 6.) Chat Rooms
  We do not allow clients to install their own CGI chat rooms. These tend to be large system hogs and we cannot allow it as a account option. We do provide a choice of JAVA chat rooms free of charge that more than fill your needs and run without hindering the performance of the machine for others.
• 7.) Background running programs
  We may allow programs to run continually in the background, these are considered on a one to one basis and an extra charge will be incurred based on system resources used and operational maintenance needed.
• 8.) IRC
  We currently do not allow IRC or IRC bots to be operated on our servers. Examples include but are not limited to:
  • Any IRC Bouncers such as, but not limited to, psyBNC.
  • IRC Eggdrops.
  • Proxy Servers
  Any account found to be running IRC or IRC bots or proxy servers will be suspended forever.
• 9.) SSH (secure shell)
  Secure shell access is not available.
• 10.) Discussion Forum Scripts
  We have recently had issues with popular websites and their associated discussion scripts. To protect all users please use the following guidelines. You are encouraged to use PHP MySQL based discussion scripts whenever possible. Flat file discussion scripts such as Ultimate Bulletin Board (UBB) are not allowed. Scripts which are found to be using excess system resources will be asked to move to a dedicated server or be disabled. This is to protect all users on our servers.
• 11.) BANNED SCRIPTS
  The following are scripts which either cause a great load on our servers or pose a serious security risk, therefore can not be run on our servers.
  • Any gaming server software
  • UltimateBBS (all versions)
  • Ikonboard (all versions)
  • IRC Egg Drops
  • Proxy Servers
  • nph-proxy
  • The Anonymizer
  • any soap mailers
  These scripts are on the banned list because they have at one time been installed by customers and have had a serious impact on the rest of our user accounts.
• 12.) Commercial Advertising - Email or Usenet
  Spamming, or the sending of unsolicited email, from a messing-about.com Hosting Services server or using an email address that is maintained on a messing-about.com Hosting Services machine is STRICTLY prohibited. Equally, any email or usenet spam which points to any domain hosted on a messing-about.com Web Server will result in immediate suspension of that domain name account and a full investigation. Any form mail script running on your account is done at your own risk. Ignorance of the risks of such scripts is no defense. messing-about.com Hosting Services will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.
  
  Reports of spam are given top priority if you have arrived at this page in the course of a spam investigation and wish to report abuse send all details and headers to Frank Hagan as soon as possible.
  • 12.1) Bulk Email Schemes
    Safelists (safe lists) or mutually accepted email schemes or the voluntary acceptance of bulk email put an extremely high load on our servers. Using our servers to accept spam type or junk email in mass quantities for pay (or free) is expressly forbidden.
  • 12.2) Other Mail
    Outgoing mail from our servers is pre-set with a hard limit of 1000 per hour, this includes all outgoing SMTP and Mailing Lists. Maximum POP3 mailbox checking is limited to once each 30 seconds per email account.
• 13.) Server abuse
  Any attempts to undermine or cause harm to a messing-about.com Hosting Services server or customers of messing-about.com Hosting Services is strictly prohibited. No user is allowed to use more than 2% of the server's resources. In the event there is a problem the account holder will be notified. If the user continues to use more than 2% of the server's resources the account will be suspended. *For reference that average medium traffic site uses about .5%.
• 14.) Damages
  If you violate these terms of service and it results in damage to our servers or causes messing-about.com Hosting Services any additional expense or legal fees you agree to compensate us in full for the amount of monetary damages multiplied by a factor of two (2) as determined by us.
• 15.) Liability
  messing-about.com Hosting Services is in no way responsible for down time either resulting from a users actions, or natural fluctuations in internet consistency. messing-about.com Hosting Services will however, do everything within it's power to assure that each and every client site is up as consistently as possible.
• 16.) Indemnity
  You agree to indemnify and hold messing-about.com Hosting Services, and Frank Hagan, its agents or other partners, and employees, harmless from any claim or demand, including reasonable attorneys' fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of your Content, your use of the Service, your connection to the Service, your violation of the TOS, or your violation of any rights of another.
• 17.) Billing
  messing-about.com's billing period is typically every 30 days to 360 days depending on the term you have chosen. Each account may be automatically debited each month for the total amount due, until email notice of cancellation is received and confirmed. If the credit card on file is declined for any reason, the customer will receive notification via email. Response to this email is required within 24 hours. In the event there is no response from the account holder the account will be suspended until payment is received. After the account has been suspended for 30 days it will be deleted. You agree that any chargeback action through your credit card company on your part will not release you of your debt. Any and all chargebacks will impose additional fees of $100.00 per chargeback plus collection, filing and legal costs.
• 18.) Refunds (30 day guarantee):
  We hope that you are fully satisfied with your hosting from us, but in the event you are not, we offer a 30 day money back guarantee. Setup fees (if any) and bandwidth usage less than 1gb are refundable within 30 days of ordering your account. Refunds are not made on accounts canceled due to violation of our terms of service.
• 19.) Refunds (past first 30 days):
  While we will do everything in our power to make your hosting experience with us as satisfactory as possible, we can in no way please everyone all the time. Refunds past 30 days are subject to review and partial months can not be refunded. We must reserve the right to use our business discretion in refunds past 30 days.
• 20.) Canceling Service
  To cancel service submit an email to Frank Hagan indicating that you wish to cancel service. Please supply your account username and password for verification purposes. You can also simply stop recurring billing on your account at PayPal and we will delete your Hosting Services account for the domain name or domain names affected. If you need time to move files, etc., please email us prior to cancelling.
  Once canceled you should receive confirmation from us and your billing service (PayPal).
• 21.) Reseller Hosting
  You cannot re-sell our hosting services to any third party.

Violation of any of these terms may cause immediate suspension of the account. messing-about.com Hosting Services reserves the right to suspend or cancel any account, at any time, for any reason.

Last Update: April 29, 2003

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