Why.Net Rules

Why Rules

The rules for Why.Net customers are pretty simple and can be summarized in a few points. A long lawyer-style version is also available, but that would just put you to sleep. If you don't plan on following these rules, please don't sign up for any Why.Net service.

Don't sell, promote, rent, or trade in anything that is illegal, infringes the works of others, or do anything that would make you nervous if you did it in front of a police station.

Don't use your hosting or other access to harass or to harm or threaten to harm any person or organization in any way.

Mass e-mailing/messaging is prohibited, except to those who have provided their own address to you or your organization via a verifiable opt-in process (such as the result of a purchase where they agreed to receive mail, or a query to your organization) that occurred in the past 18 months. Mass mailings/messaging to addresses that you obtained from a third party, or to addresses obtained from recipients more than 18 months ago (with no recent re-confirmation of recipient interest or address validity) are forbidden, regardless of any less-stringent local law or custom. Here, all spammers will be shot.

Web sites hosted here or DNS redirection to sites that we consider to have been established solely to benefit from a UCE/Spam attack are forbidden and associated DNS will be made as non-usable as possible. The offending URL and any associated URLs may be reported to the "Do They Spam?" web browser black-list at our discretion. Spam benefactors will also be shot.

Don't try to harm, break-into, port-scan or access any device on the Internet that you don't have prior permission to use. (Web sites and similar public access systems have implied permission to access their materials, but it doesn't give you the right to go into restricted areas or to try to tamper with the system security.) To go or try to go where you are not supposed to go can violate Texas Computer Crime law, and at the least you will lose your account and be charged a penalty (see below) if complaints are received or the abuse is detected. Doing the computer equivalent of turning doorknobs to see if they are unlocked is illegal under Texas law.

Don't use broadcast forums (such as USENET Newsgroups, IRC/Chat) for advertising goods or services, unless that group or channel expressly allows the message content that you want to send. Be advised that 99.9% of these news groups and channels prohibit all forms of advertising. In cases where such messages are allowed, any sent must comply with all group-specific rules, including frequency, topic, size and format.

Why.Net reserves the right to refuse service to anyone or any organization.

Providing false or incomplete customer information, or falsely stating the intent of use are all grounds for service termination.

We reserve the right to ammend the rules as people find new ways to get into trouble. Changes go into effect when posted.

When there is a Rule Violation or similar Abuse

Customers who violate the rules may be charged clean-up fees of no less than $500 US per abuse incident reported or detected, when that incident is determined by our staff to not be accidental in nature. We are reasonable about this, but repeated occurrences of the same problems may not be excused.

Service may be partly or completely suspended without advance notice when an abuse or rule violation is detected or reported. In accidential cases, service would be resumed as soon as the problem is addressed.

In cases of service termination, the account holder will be immediately charged for the remainder of duration of the service term. Our staff is the sole authority on what is and isn't abuse or a violation of our rules. Customers agree to this as well as the abuse penalties and consequences when they accept the Terms of Service.

Illegal activities that are reported to us or discovered may also be reported to law enforcement. (Like other U.S. Internet providers, we will respond to Digital Millennium Copyright Act - DMCA - notifications, and will suspend service as necessary until violating materials are removed or we receive a satisfactory explanation of their right to be presented and the purported copyright owner or their representative agrees.)

Payment

To avoid a service interruption, please make sure your account balance is received in full by the due date stated on your invoice. If you pay by credit card, let us know when your credit card expiration date changes as soon as you receive and activate the new credit card, or if you change any information associated with your credit card account.

A service charge of up to $50 US may be levied for bounced, disputed, or a repeatedly declined payment method, and service may be interrupted until a resolution occurs. If reasonable attempts fail to resolve a payment dispute, service may be canceled and the unpaid charges of the remainder of the contract period may be reported to collection and credit reporting agencies as bad debt.

If you wish to cancel, please e-mail us or call our billing department. For security reasons, you will need to include the account access code from one of the two most recent invoices (these change on each invoice). You must contact us to cancel prior to the start of the next billing period. Otherwise, you will likely be charged the full amount for that next period.

Service Availability

All Internet access, visibility and function is provided on an "AS IS" basis, without any warranty. Because dozens or even hundreds of entities may be involved in getting Internet data between our systems and some other place, we can only be responsible for outages and malfunctions that occur on our equipment. In the event of multiple systems or services failing at the same time, services are returned to operation in the order that we see as benefiting the most customers, and as equipment can be repaired or replaced and data recovered.

When service outages are required that will last for more than a few minutes, they will be announced as early as practical in the News section of the company web site. In most cases, you will not receive individual advance notice by e-mail, unless the outage is specific to your service or a small number of clients including you. An example of this might be if your web site needs to be relocated and we need you to re-publish its contents to the new server or modify your domain name records to point to the new system.

In general, such managed outages are performed during the traditional low-activity periods for a given type of service, but since the Internet is a world-wide thing, your busy time could be everybody else's quiet time.

Customer Privacy

Our goal is to not disclose any information about any customer to any third party, including government entities, unless a court order or other lawful demands are made, or you have committed a violation of the rules and have harmed that third party. For rule-abiding customers, we will not sell, trade, barter or otherwise exchange customer information with other businesses or organizations for any purpose. (Exception: For customers who pay by credit card, we will convey information to the payment service provider that is sufficient to complete the transaction, which typically includes the name that appears on the credit card, the card number, the card expiration data, any card security code, and possibly some or all of your street address.)

Customer data that is stored electronically is encrypted and divided so that multiple systems would have to be stolen or compromised in order for the original data to be usable. Backup data is similarly divided so no one tape or disc is useful. Obsolete data is destroyed.

While state, local and federal local judges can order us to supply account information, per the Electronic Communication Privacy Act, e-mailbox content can only be obtained via a federal court order.

However, it should be stated that the current executive administration of the U.S. Government feels that any Internet subscriber may have their account information disclosed, stored data copied (including e-mailbox content) and subsequent Internet activity monitored and copies retained by federal employees for an unlimited period of time, without even being the specific target of an investigation, and that all of this can be done without any type of court order and without any disclosure to the customer that such activity occurred, even well after monitoring has been discontinued. As the Internet provider, we are usually prohibited from telling anyone about such monitoring events, who was targeted and what periods of time were monitored. Rarely do they tell us why they are spying on you.

Considering this interpretation of U. S. law that is currently being exploited by select agencies of the federal government, there is a limit to what privacy we or any other Internet provider can honestly deliver.

We therefore advise users of the Internet to not keep e-mail on any Internet mail servers operated by anybody for any period longer than necessary, so that past e-mail is not available to such snooping activity, and that customers consider using extremely strong encryption for even casual communications. We also strongly advise that you avoid "keep forever" free e-mail services that keep copies of your messages even if you delete them. Do you really want your e-mail messages from years ago to be available for government inspection whenever they want at some future date, and without your permission or knowledge?

Regrettably, you must always assume that no message or conversation sent via the Internet is completely private, and that the secret contents of even an encrypted message may eventually become known. Ready to fire everybody in Washington? We are.

Backups are YOUR responsibility

Despite steps we take to protect hosted data, the customer must not treat hosted data as being invulnerable. It is the sole responsibility of the customer to maintain complete and current copies of all of their own web sites' content, as well as the software used to administer and upload the web site content. (This is particularly important for web sites controlled by FrontPage or similar web site administration software.) Why.Net takes absolutely no responsibility for the loss of web site content by any means, or in the loss/obsolescence of the upload or maintenance tools that the customer used to place content on the web site. Customer assumes responsibility for all direct and indirect consequences and damages resulting from not maintaining backups of their own web site content and of not having it readily available if it is needed.

In the event of hardware or software failure on the e-mail equipment, e-mail left on the servers may also be lost. It is the customers responsibility to remove of their e-mail from the servers at regular intervals or to make copies of that data if it is going to be left on the Why.Net servers. Once messages are placed into a customers e-mailbox, the safety of that e-mail is entirely the responsibility of the customer. For a number of good reasons, we do not make or keep copies of mailbox contents, except as part of certain infrequent maintenance tasks, after which any copies are destroyed.