Acceptable Use Policy

This policy protects customers, internet users and the services Tervani relies on. It sets the minimum standards that apply whenever a customer or an authorised user uses Tervani hosting, domain, email, control-panel or related digital services.

It supplements the Tervani terms and any service-specific schedule. Customers should read those documents together. Restrictions imposed by an upstream network or hosting supplier may also apply where they are necessary to provide the service.

2 Scope and acceptance

2.1 This Acceptable Use Policy applies to every service supplied by Tervani Limited that provides access to hosting infrastructure, storage, email, domains, DNS, a control panel, a network or related technical resources (the Services).

2.2 By ordering, accessing or using a Service, the customer agrees to comply with this policy. This policy forms part of the customer's agreement with Tervani and supplements the main terms and any service-specific schedule.

2.3 The customer is responsible for use of the Services by its staff, contractors, visitors, customers, end users and anyone else it permits or enables to use the Services. A breach by any such person is treated as a breach by the customer.

2.4 The customer must take reasonable steps to supervise authorised users, keep access credentials secure, prevent unauthorised access and ensure that hosted material and technical activity comply with this policy.

2.5 If another Tervani agreement expressly states which document takes priority, that provision applies. Otherwise, this policy controls questions of acceptable use and a service-specific schedule controls the commercial description and stated technical allowance for that Service.

3 General acceptable use standard

3.1 The Services may be used only for lawful purposes and in a way that does not harm, threaten, overload or unreasonably interfere with Tervani, an upstream supplier, another customer, another network or any person.

3.2 The customer must not use, attempt to use, or allow the Services to be used in a way that:

• breaks any applicable law, regulation, court order or legally binding requirement;
• is fraudulent, deceptive or intended to facilitate fraud, impersonation or unauthorised access;
• harms or attempts to harm children or any vulnerable person;
• infringes intellectual property, privacy, confidentiality or other rights;
• damages the reputation, security or operation of the Services or an upstream platform;
• causes avoidable disruption, excessive load or degradation for other users; or
• helps another person avoid a restriction in this policy.

3.3 The examples in this policy are not exhaustive. Conduct with a substantially similar purpose or effect is also prohibited.

4 Prohibited content

4.1 The customer must not upload, publish, transmit, store, distribute, link to or otherwise make available material that:

• is unlawful, fraudulent, defamatory or knowingly false in a way that causes harm;
• is pornographic, obscene, sexually exploitative or otherwise unlawful, including child sexual abuse material or content that sexualises children;
• promotes, instructs or assists violence, terrorism, unlawful weapons activity or another serious offence;
• promotes hatred or unlawful discrimination based on a protected characteristic;
• threatens, harasses, abuses, stalks or unlawfully invades another person's privacy;
• infringes copyright, trade mark, database rights or other intellectual property rights;
• breaches a duty of confidence, contractual obligation or other legal duty;
• impersonates a person or organisation, misrepresents an affiliation, or falsely appears to originate from Tervani or a supplier;
• contains malware or code intended to compromise, damage, monitor or interfere with systems without authority; or
• is designed to deceive people into disclosing credentials, payment details or other sensitive information.

4.2 Where material states facts, the customer must take reasonable care that those statements are accurate. Where it states opinions, those opinions must be genuinely held. All material must comply with the law applying where it is published and where the customer operates.

4.3 Interactive services must be managed responsibly. The customer must use proportionate moderation, complaint handling and access controls where the nature of the service makes them appropriate.

5 Security and network abuse

5.1 The customer must not use the Services to carry out, facilitate, test or conceal unauthorised access or interference. Prohibited activity includes:

• probing, scanning or testing a system or network without the owner's clear authorisation;
• bypassing authentication, access controls, usage limits or security measures;
• phishing, credential theft, account takeover or payment-card abuse;
• introducing or distributing viruses, ransomware, worms, Trojan horses, spyware, keyloggers, cryptominers, backdoors or other harmful code;
• launching or participating in denial-of-service attacks, botnets or traffic amplification;
• spoofing headers, source addresses, caller identity or routing information for a deceptive or harmful purpose;
• monitoring data, traffic or communications without authority; or
• using compromised devices, accounts or websites, even if the original compromise was not intentional, after the customer knows or should reasonably know of the problem.

5.2 The customer must keep software, themes, plugins, applications and credentials reasonably secure and up to date. The customer must act promptly on a security notice and cooperate with containment, investigation and recovery steps.

5.3 Security research is permitted only with the prior written authorisation of the owner of every affected system and within the agreed scope. Tervani does not grant permission to test its systems or supplier systems merely because they are reachable from the internet.

6 Email and messaging

6.1 Tervani applies a zero-tolerance approach to unsolicited bulk messaging and spam. The customer must not send, arrange, enable or assist unsolicited or unauthorised advertising, promotional messages or substantially similar solicitations through the Services.

6.2 This restriction applies regardless of whether messages are sent by email, contact forms, scripts, messaging services, newsgroups or another channel. A website promoted by spam must not be hosted on the Services, even if the messages were sent elsewhere.

6.3 The customer must:

• use accurate sender information and avoid deceptive subject lines or routing data;
• hold and retain suitable evidence of consent or another lawful basis where required;
• provide and honour a clear opt-out mechanism for marketing messages;
• protect forms and scripts against abuse; and
• stop sending promptly where activity causes complaints, unusual delivery failures or blocklisting risk.

6.4 Tervani may immediately restrict or suspend a mailbox, script, website or account that sends spam, creates a material blocklisting risk, or causes an address range used for the Services to be blocklisted.

6.5 Where permitted by the customer agreement, the customer may be responsible for reasonable costs directly incurred to investigate abuse, clean up a compromised service or obtain removal from a blocklist when those costs result from the customer's breach.

7 Shared hosting and resource use

7.1 Shared hosting is intended for normal website and application use. Resources described as unlimited are not intended for file distribution, offsite backup, bulk storage or activity that unreasonably affects the shared platform.

7.2 On an applicable shared hosting Service, the customer must not:

• use more than 10% of the shared platform's processing capacity;
• run stand-alone unattended server processes or daemons;
• run an internet relay chat service or software that interfaces with an IRC network;
• run a general-purpose web spider, crawler or indexer;
• run a BitTorrent application, tracker or client, or take part in peer-to-peer file sharing;
• run a gaming server;
• run scheduled tasks except through the facilities provided in the control panel;
• operate a public proxy, anonymisation or traffic-relay service;
• act as a remote file host for other websites;
• operate a self-hosted file-sync or general cloud-storage service;
• use the Service as an offsite backup facility; or
• give away hosting space or free websites unless Tervani has expressly authorised this in writing.

7.3 Files stored on shared hosting must be website content or reasonably necessary to operate the hosted website or application. Tervani or its supplier may remove files or directories that are unrelated to the hosted service, create risk, or breach this policy, subject to the customer agreement and applicable law.

7.4 Where video, audio or other files are made available for download from an applicable shared hosting Service, a supplier bandwidth threshold of 250 GB per calendar month may apply. Tervani may require the customer to reduce usage, use a more suitable delivery service or move to another product.

7.5 Where the underlying shared platform applies a per-database threshold, a MySQL database must not exceed 1,024 MB unless Tervani confirms a different limit for the Service. Tervani may notify the customer, restrict further growth or require a move to a suitable service when the threshold is reached.

7.6 VPS, cloud server and other dedicated-resource products may support activities that are not suitable for shared hosting, but all lawful-use, content, security, spam and network-protection requirements in this policy continue to apply. The relevant service schedule may impose additional controls.

7.7 Search-engine optimisation must use legitimate techniques and comply with the published guidance of major search engines. The Services must not be used for automated scraping, deceptive redirects, malware distribution or other abusive optimisation practices.

8 Domains and DNS

8.1 The customer must not use a domain, subdomain or DNS service for phishing, malware, botnet control, spam, impersonation, unlawful content, deceptive redirection or another prohibited purpose.

8.2 Registration and contact information supplied for a domain must be accurate and kept up to date where required by the relevant registry or registrar. The customer must respond promptly to verification, abuse and ownership enquiries.

8.3 Tervani may suspend DNS, place a domain on hold, restrict management access or take another proportionate step where required by a registry, registrar, court, regulator, law-enforcement authority or upstream supplier, or where reasonably necessary to address an urgent abuse or security risk.

9 Third party access and onward supply

9.1 A customer must not sell, sublicense or give away hosting capacity, or use a Service to provide hosting accounts or control-panel access to third parties.

9.2 The customer must not access, interfere with, damage or disrupt any part of the Services, any equipment or network used to provide them, any associated software, or any third-party system without authority.

10 Reporting and cooperation

10.1 Suspected abuse should be reported using the contact details published on tervani.uk. Customers may also submit a support ticket through portal.tervani.net. A report should identify the affected domain, account, IP address or message and include relevant dates, times, headers, URLs or other evidence where available.

10.2 The customer must cooperate with a reasonable investigation, preserve relevant information, stop continuing harm and complete any proportionate corrective action requested by Tervani within the stated time.

10.3 Tervani may share relevant information with an upstream supplier, registry, registrar, competent authority, law-enforcement body or affected service provider where reasonably necessary, legally permitted and handled in accordance with applicable data-protection obligations.

10.4 Tervani may use automated and manual measures to protect the Services, investigate credible reports, identify unusual use and enforce this policy. These measures do not create a general obligation to monitor all customer content.

11 Enforcement

11.1 Tervani will consider the nature, seriousness, urgency, history and likely impact of a suspected breach. Where appropriate, Tervani may give the customer a reasonable opportunity to correct the problem. Immediate action may be necessary where there is illegality, active harm, a security incident, spam, platform risk, supplier direction or a threat to other users.

11.2 Depending on the circumstances and the customer agreement, Tervani may take one or more of the following actions:

• issue guidance, a warning or a corrective-action deadline;
• block traffic, disable a feature, quarantine content or restrict access;
• remove or require removal of material that breaches this policy;
• temporarily suspend a mailbox, website, domain function, account or Service;
• permanently withdraw or terminate the affected Service or customer agreement;
• recover reasonable costs where the customer agreement permits;
• preserve evidence or disclose information where legally permitted or required; or
• refer the matter to an upstream supplier, registry, registrar, regulator or law-enforcement authority.

11.3 Tervani may act on a direction from an upstream supplier where compliance is necessary to continue providing the Services. Tervani will communicate with the customer where reasonably possible, but urgent protective action may occur before notice.

11.4 Suspension or removal does not transfer responsibility for the customer's content, security or backups to Tervani. Data availability and deletion after suspension or termination are governed by the customer agreement and service schedule, subject to any urgent supplier action or legal requirement.

12 Changes to this policy

12.1 Tervani may revise this policy to reflect changes in law, security risk, technology, the Services or requirements imposed by an upstream supplier, registry or registrar.

12.2 The current version will be published through Tervani's website or customer portal and will state when it takes effect. Tervani will give reasonable notice of a material change where practicable or legally required. A supplier restriction needed to address urgent harm or keep a Service available may take effect immediately; Tervani will notify affected customers as soon as reasonably practicable.

12.3 Customers should review the current policy periodically and when Tervani notifies them of an update.