ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY

 

1. GENERAL NOTICE

1.1     Thank you for reading our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).

1.2     By accessing this website, or by contracting with us for service, you agree to be bound by this policy and the terms and conditions it contains.

 

2. PURPOSE

The purposes of this AUP are:

2.1     to comply with the relevant laws of South Africa;

2.2     to specify to customers and users of our service and website what activities and online behaviour are considered an unacceptable use of the service and website;

2.3     to protect the integrity of our network; and

2.4     to specify the consequences that may flow from prohibited activities.

This document contains a number of legal obligations which you are presumed to be familiar with. As such, we encourage you to read this document thoroughly and direct any queries to our customer services and legal department at +27 36 940 0000.

 

3. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

We respect your rights to freedom of speech and expression; access to information; privacy; human dignity; religion, belief and opinion in accordance with our constitution. We undertake not to interfere with any of those rights unless required to do so by law; unless those rights are exercised for unlawful purposes; or unless the exercise of those rights threatens to cause harm to another person or affect the integrity of our network.

 

4. ISPA MEMBERSHIP AND CODE OF CONDUCT

We confirm that in compliance with section 72 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002, we are a member of the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) and have adopted and implemented the association’s official Code of Conduct, which can be viewed at http://www.ispa.org.za/code.

 

5. UNLAWFUL USE

Our services/website may only be used for lawful purposes and activities. We prohibit any use of our website/network including the transmission, storage and distribution of any material or content using our network that violates any law or regulation of South Africa. This includes:

• Any violation of local and international laws prohibiting child pornography; obscenity; discrimination (including racial, gender or religious slurs) and hate speech; or speech designed to incite violence or hatred, or threats to cause bodily harm.
• Any activity designed to defame, abuse, stalk, harass or physically threaten any individual in the Republic or beyond its borders; including any attempt to link to, post, transmit or otherwise distribute any inappropriate or defamatory material.
• Any violation of Intellectual Property laws including materials protected by local and international copyright, trademarks and trade secrets. Moreover we cannot be held liable if you make any unlawful use of any multimedia content accessed through the search facility provided by our network, or otherwise available through access to our network, whether for commercial or non-commercial purposes.
• Any violation of the individual’s right to privacy, including any effort to collect personal data of third parties without their consent.
• Any fraudulent activity whatsoever, including dubious financial practices, such as pyramid schemes; the impersonation of another subscriber without their consent; or any attempt to enter into a transaction with us on behalf of another subscriber without their consent.
• Any violation of the exchange control laws of South Africa.
• Any activity that results in the sale, transmission or distribution of pirated or illegal software.
• Failing to respond to a request by a recipient of unsolicited mail to be removed from any mailing or direct marketing list and continuing to send unsolicited mail following such a request for removal.
• Where any user resides outside of the Republic, permanently or temporarily, such user will be subject to the laws of the country in which s/he is currently resident and which apply. On presentation of a legal order to do so, or under obligation through an order for mutual foreign legal assistance, we will assist foreign law enforcement agencies (LEA) in the investigation and prosecution of a crime committed using our resources, including the provisioning of all personal identifiable data.

 

6. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES

The following sections outline activities that are considered an unacceptable use of our services/network/website and also detail the guidelines for acceptable use of certain facilities/services, as the case may be.

6.1    Threats to Network Security

Any activity which threatens the functioning, security and/or integrity of our network is unacceptable. This includes:

• Any efforts to attempt to gain unlawful and unauthorised access to the network or circumvent any of the security measures established by us for this goal;
• Any effort to use our equipment to circumvent the user authentication or security of any host, network or account (“cracking” or “hacking”);
• Forging of any TCP-IP packet header (spoofing) or any part of the header information in an email or a newsgroup posting;
• Any effort to breach or attempt to breach the security of another user or attempt to gain access to any other person’s computer, software, or data without the knowledge and consent of such person;
• Any activity which threatens to disrupt the service offered by us through “denial of service attacks”; flooding of a network, or overloading a service or any unauthorised probes (“scanning” or “nuking”) of others’ networks;
• Any activity which in any way threatens the security of the network by knowingly posting, transmitting, linking to or otherwise distributing any information or software which contains a virus; Trojan horse; worm, lock, mail bomb, cancelbot or other harmful, destructive or disruptive component.
• Any unauthorised monitoring of data or traffic on the network without our explicit, written consent.
• Any unsolicited mass mailing activity including direct marketing; spam and chain letters for commercial or other purposes, without the consent of the recipients of those mails.

6.2    Protection of Minors

We prohibit customers from using our service to harm or attempt to harm a minor, including, but not limited to, by hosting, possessing, disseminating, distributing or transmitting material that is unlawful, including child pornography.

6.3    Privacy and Confidentiality

We respect the privacy and confidentiality of our customers and users of our service. Please review our privacy policy which details how we collect and use personal information gathered in the course of operating this service.

6.4   User Responsibilities

6.4.1  You are responsible for any misuse of our services that occurs through your account. It is your responsibility to ensure that unauthorised persons do not gain access to or misuse our services.

6.4.2  We urge you not to reply to unsolicited mail or “spam”, not to click on any suggested links provided in the unsolicited mail. Doing so remains your sole responsibility and we cannot be held liable for your being placed on any bulk mailing lists as a result.

6.4.3  Where you have authorised a minor to use any of the our services or access our website, you accept that as the parent/legal guardian of that minor, you are fully responsible for: the online conduct of such minor; controlling the minor’s access to and use of any services or websites; and the consequences of any misuse by the minor, including but not limited to transactions entered into by the minor using such access.

6.4.4  We cannot be held liable for any business dealings you have with any third parties on the Internet, including any vendors, or advertisers found on, or through, our network. Further, we assume no responsibility whatsoever for any charges you or any user of your account incurs when making purchases or other transactions in this manner. Further, the responsibility for ensuring compliance with all applicable customs and exchange control laws in connection with any such transactions shall be yours.

 

7. NOTICE AND TAKE-DOWN PROCEDURES

We confirm that we have a procedure in place for the notice and take-down of illegal material. In compliance with section 77 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (No. 25 of 2002) our designated agent for this process is the Internet Service Providers’ Association. ISPA can be reached at 010 500 1200 or [email protected]. The notice and take-down procedure can be viewed at http://www.ispa.org.za/code.

You are also notified of the content and procedures of the ISPA Code of Conduct which may be used against any internet service provider who fails to comply with the code of conduct. We urge you to familiarise yourself with this code.

 

8. COMPLAINTS AND PROCEDURES

8.1     It is your responsibility to familiarise yourself with the procedure set out in our complaints procedure that is available on our website.

8.2     Please note that we cannot handle complaints concerning networks or users that do not have service contracts with us or our affiliates, or are outside of our control.

8.3     In order for us to thoroughly investigate the complaint and take appropriate action, all complaints must be in writing, via fax or e-mail and contain as much information as possible.

8.4     We discourage anonymous complaints being made, and urge you to supply your name and contact details to us. Such information will not be released, except where required by law enforcement. Anonymous complaints will however be acted upon as long as sufficient detail as outlined above is supplied.

 

9. ACTION FOLLOWING BREACH OF THE AUP

Upon receipt of a complaint, or having become aware of an incident, we may take any of the following steps:

• In the case of a network, inform your network administrator of the incident and request the network administrator or network owner to address the incident in terms of this AUP and the ISPA Code of Conduct;
• In severe cases suspend access of your entire network until abuse can be prevented by appropriate means;
• In the case of individual users, warn you; suspend your account and/or revoke or cancel your network access privileges completely;
• In all cases, charge the offending parties for administrative costs as well as for machine and human time lost due to the incident;
• Assist other networks or website administrators in investigating credible suspicions of any activity listed in this AUP;
• Institute civil or criminal proceedings;
• Share information concerning the incident with other internet access providers, or publish the information, and/or make available your details to law enforcement agencies.

 

10. RESERVATION AND NON WAIVER OF RIGHTS

10.1   We reserve the right to amend or alter this policy at any time, and without notice to you.

10.2   We reserve the right to take action against any individuals, companies or organizations that violate any of the prohibited activities set out herein, or engage in any illegal or unlawful activity while accessing our services, to the fullest extent of the law.

10.3   We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to act against other types of abuse not listed in this document and to investigate or prevent illegal activities being committed over our network.

10.4   We reserve the right to monitor user and network traffic for site security purposes and prevent any unauthorised attempts to tamper with our site or cause damage to our property.

10.5   We reserve the right to suspend, revoke or cancel our services to you if the safety and integrity of our resources are placed at risk in continuing to provide service to you.

10.6   We reserve the right to remove any information or materials in whole or in part, that, in our sole discretion, is deemed to be offensive, indecent, or otherwise objectionable.

10.7   We do not undertake to guarantee the security of any data passing through our networks. Although we will provide a “best effort” service, including regular updates on computer viruses and other threats to security of data, it is your responsibility to safeguard your data, and we cannot be held liable for any loss or damage arising as result of the failure to do so.

10.8   We do not waive our right to enforcement of this AUP at any time, or prejudice our right to take subsequent action, should we fail, neglect or elect not to enforce a breach of the AUP at any time.

[Revision history:  This AUP was last revised on 22 May 2016]