This Acceptable Use Policy applies to all individual users (Users) within a AOD-Cloud client organisation, as well as the organisation itself (You) employing AOD-Cloud’s services.

Violations of this Policy and the Acceptable Use Policies of other providers can severely affect the provision of various services. For example, spamming by Users can lead to Denial of Service attacks that disrupt not only the Services to You but also the use by others of services on the Internet. Compliance is therefore particularly important.

Breach of this Policy by a User that utilises any of the Services, via You, is considered to be a breach by You, as well as by the User, whether or not You had knowledge or gave consent. It is important that You ensure compliance with this Policy.

Indirect or attempted violations of the Policy by Users are considered to be violations of this Policy by You.

The Policy supplements, but does not supersede, any AOD-Cloud Agreement for the Services. The requirements in this Policy are guidelines. They are not intended to be exhaustive.

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While we do not monitor or control communications, if we become aware of a violation of this Policy, we may take such action as we consider appropriate including, in respect of You or a User, termination, suspension, blocking or filtering of sites and co operating with and notifying relevant authorities and parties including enforcement agencies and other Internet Service Providers and carriers (we may, for this purpose, need to communicate personal information to others).

We will inform your System Administrator and affected Users when we are investigating any problem or complaint. If we are legally required to disclose any of Your personal information, we will notify You of this requirement as far ahead of disclosure as is reasonably possible in the circumstances and will (at Your direction and expense) use our best endeavours to oppose the disclosure.

Users must inform us of all breaches by any person of which they are aware. They should do so by contacting AOD-Cloud through support or account management channels.

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Fair Use

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For certain services AOD-Cloud has chosen not to impose fixed limits to the amount of storage, network traffic (volume or bandwidth), or processor load on Your system, because usage requirements will vary from business to business. We have instead adopted a customer friendly “Fair Use” approach for these applicable services. To date there have been no disagreements on what constitutes “unfair use”. This has allowed all customers to continue to use AOD-Cloud's SaaS services with predictable and known monthly charges.

 

However, the AOD-Cloud Infrastructure is a shared service and We cannot allow the actions of a few users to negatively influence the costs for the majority. Some types of activities are prohibited and We retain the right to shut down and disable access for customers who use Our infrastructure for prohibited uses. Other activities have the potential to cause capacity or performance issues and these activities are difficult to summarize in a policy, as they can be caused by a combination of items. When such an activity occurs, We retain the right to intervene in order to uphold the overall quality and performance of AOD-Cloud services.

If You have an abnormally high use of applicable AOD-Cloud services, We reserve the right to charge a reasonable amount for this excessive usage. Naturally We wish to keep Our customers satisfied, even those who are in violation of the Fair Use policy, because it might not be intentional. If We need to invoke the Fair Use policy We will always get in touch with You or Your agent to find a mutually agreeable solution.

Changing the Acceptable Use Policy

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We may change this Policy at any time by changing or removing existing requirements or adding new ones. Changes may take the form of a completely new Policy. We will tell You about any changes in advance of the changes taking effect and once adopted will by (a) posting an updated version of the Acceptable Use Policy at aod-cloud.com/acceptable-use-policy/ and (b) emailing to Your primary contact details of the changes. The current applicable Policy can be viewed at aod-cloud.com/acceptable-use-policy/.

By continuing to accept the provision of the Services by us after we have notified You of such changes, You are deemed to have accepted and agreed to comply with the terms of this Acceptable Use Policy as amended.

Prohibited Uses

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Illegal Uses

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Users must not use Services in ways that constitute criminal or civil breaches of any statute, regulations, government requirements or any other law (including general or common law) of any country. Those breaches include, without limitation, breach of intellectual property rights (such as copyright, trade marks, patents, trade secrets and confidential information); defamation; breach of obscenity laws and laws as to objectionable publications, such as pornography and hateful materials; fraud; theft; misappropriation of money, credit card details or personal information; breaches of privacy obligations; and trade practices legislation, examples of which are the Fair Trading and Consumer Guarantees Acts (New Zealand) and the Trade Practices Act (Australia).

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Security and Protection of the Network

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Users must not use Services to breach, surveil, or attempt to breach, the security and operation of any network, equipment or any other system. This includes: hacking, cracking into, monitoring, or using systems without authority; scanning ports (including scanning for open relays); improper configuration of mail servers and FTP servers enabling distribution of spam and unlicensed material by others; interference of service to any User or network (or activities that might encourage such interference by others) including mail-bombing, flooding, deliberate attempts to overload a system and broadcast attacks; denial of service attacks or activities which might encourage denial of service attacks by others; unnecessarily excessive traffic (including excessive pings); distributing viruses, or other harmful material or software; any communications across the Services which do not accurately identify (or disclose in a manner that is misleading) addresses, headers, names and other relevant details; and using our network in any way as a staging ground for any of those breaches or to disable or “crack" other systems.

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Industry Codes

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Users must not use Services in a way that breaches any material standard, code and content requirements produced by any relevant authority or industry body.

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Threats

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Users may not use Services to transmit content of a threatening nature including threats of death, physical harm and defamation.

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Spam

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Spam is not permitted. Spam includes, but is not limited to, sending:

• unsolicited emails without identifying an easy way for the recipient to stop receiving more emails from the originator of those emails.

• unsolicited bulk email (ie: sending a single message to more than twenty (20) destinations (whether newsgroups, email addresses or Websites) where there is no pre-existing business or personal relationship with the recipients).

• messages or emails that could be expected to provoke complaints.

• chain letters, pyramid schemes or hoaxes.

• emails and messages that do not accurately identify the sender’s return address, header or domain name.

• sending unsolicited emails and bulk mail from another provider, advertising or impacting upon the use of any of the Services.

Other Providers’ Policies

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Users must not breach the Acceptable Use Policies (or similar guidelines and rules) of other Internet providers including ISPs and telecommunication carriers involved in providing services to us or You in relation to the Services.

Responsible Use

Users must use Services in a responsible manner taking into account:

• the effect that use may have on networks, equipment and other parties.

• compliance with “netiquette“, newsgroup and Internet conventions (as well as restrictions in rules, charters, FAQs and similar Newsgroup, Website and email mailing list material).

• such use must not interfere with the availability of any of the Services to others (or any other services including services offered by us and other Internet providers and carriers to others).

• Users must take reasonable steps to prevent activities that enable denial of service attacks and other adverse interference with networks.