LinkSky Value Host Inc. AUP (Acceptable Use Policy)
LinkSky Hosting's Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) is provided to give our customers and users a clear understanding of what LinkSky Value Host expects of them while using the service. All users of LinkSky Value Host's internet services, both those who access our Services but do not have accounts, as well as those who pay a fee to subscribe to the Services, must comply with this AUP and our TOS (Terms of Service).
Use of LinkSky Hosting Service constitutes acceptance and agreement to LinkSky Value Host's AUP as well as LinkSky Value Host's TOS (Terms of Service).
The following applies to LinkSky members who have purchased, registered for (e.g. a trail version), or participate in any level of service of any LinkSky hosting account including, but not limited to the following:
LinkSky Standard Feature
LinkSky Extended Feature
LinkSky ULTRA
LinkSky Visual
GeoSimply
LinkSky Value Host supports the uncensored flow of information and ideas over the Internet and does not actively monitor subscriber activity under normal circumstances. Similarly, we do not exercise editorial control over the content of any web site, e-mail transmission, blog posts, galleries, or other material created or accessible over or through LinkSky hosted services. However, we may remove any materials that, in our sole discretion, may be illegal, may subject us to liability, or which may violate this AUP. LinkSky Value Host may cooperate with legal authorities and/or third parties in the investigation of any suspected or alleged crime or civil wrongdoing. Your violation of this AUP may result in the immediate suspension or termination of your LinkSky hosting account.
This document is intended to provide a basic understanding of LinkSky Value Host's Acceptable Use Policy. Listed below are guidelines for the establishment and enforcement of LinkSky Value Host's AUP. It is our policy to:
• Ensure reliable service to our customers
• Ensure security and privacy of our systems and network, as well as the networks and systems of others
• Comply with existing laws
• Maintain our reputation as a responsible service provider
• Encourage responsible use of the Internet and discourage activities which reduce the usability and value of Internet services
• Preserve the value of Internet resources as a conduit for free expression and exchange of information
• Preserve the privacy and security of individual users
While the LinkSky Value Host is firmly committed to the principles of free speech, certain activities that may be damaging to the resources of both LinkSky Value Host and the Internet and cannot be permitted under the guise of free speech. The resources of the LinkSky Value Host and the Internet are limited, and abuse of these resources by one user has a negative impact on the entire community.
We do not routinely monitor the activity of accounts except for measurements of system utilization and for the preparation of billing records. However, in our efforts to promote good citizenship within the Internet community, we will respond appropriately if we become aware of inappropriate use of our service.
In summary, LinkSky Value Host does not allow:
1) Sites that are in the business of distributing large amounts of data for download. Examples are as follows: warez, spamware, shareware, freeware, repositories of stock photography, large amounts of music and video files, etc. Our servers are NOT to be used for the mass distribution of software.
2) Sites involved with unsolicited mailings of any kind (a.k.a. spam). This refers to hosting accounts that are used to send spam, and/or accounts that support sites advertised via unsolicited email from other servers, a.k.a. "spamvertised sites."
3) Sites and LinkSky hosted domains that are connected in any way with mass advertisement distribution sent via email. Note: Use of of so called "Safe-Lists", "Opt-in", "Double Opt-in", etc. fall within this category. (Unless the email address owner opts in at YOUR site for information about the specific products or services promoted there, then use of such addresses constitutes UCE or spam.)
4) LinkSky account owners, their web pages or outside organizations that endeavor to resell or give away any of LinkSky services or resources outside of the LinkSky hosting account reseller program. Note: Individual LinkSky hosted accounts are designed to be single-user accounts. If you wish to give away or resell services, please join the LinkSky hosting account reseller system described here and open accounts as resold using this system.
5) Hosting accounts that are used for data storage, e.g. for remote backup of PCs or office systems. All files that are stored within any LinkSky account must be linked to the hosted web site or database, or must otherwise serve some purpose that relates to the LinkSky hosted web site for that specific account.
6) Sites with installed software or web scripts that take up an extreme amount of server resources.
7) Sites featuring explicit sexual content, hate-espousing material or sites that contain illegal content of any kind (e.g. copyright violations, warez or cracked software, hacker tools or instructions for system break-ins, etc.), OR sites that advertise with banners, links, sound files, etc. any of the foregoing. You may not use your hosting account or hosted site to publish material which LinkSky determines, at its sole discretion, to be unlawful, indecent or objectionable. For purposes of this policy, "material" refers to all forms of communications including narrative descriptions, graphics (including photographs, illustrations, images, drawings, logos), executable programs, video recordings, and audio recordings.
Our intent is to preserve services for sites that have a wide, general audience, and to keep our servers up and running smoothly far into the foreseeable future. In short, we refuse to have our servers monopolized by ANY special interest group.
We realize there are some gray areas in the items mentioned. If you are unsure about whether the content of your LinkSky hosted web site will be in violation of our AUP, it is best to ask us before signing up.
At all times, what constitutes a violation of our AUP is strictly up to the discretion of the fair and open-minded people of LinkSky management.
Non-liability:
Your application and use of the services of LinkSky Value Host Inc. constitutes an agreement that you will hold harmless LinkSky Value Host Inc. in every case for any damages caused by, but not exclusive of, web service outages (for any length of time), email service outages (for any length of time), and/or loss of data.
LinkSky management goes to extraordinary efforts to keep our server up-time among the very best in the industry; however, hosting and email services are based upon extremely complex file sharing systems and will always remain fallible no matter what precautions are taken. Furthermore, service interruptions can be caused by 3ed party, telcom-owned router outages, etc. such routers are distributed between the client computer system and the LinkSky servers over which LinkSky technical administration has absolutely no control.
Specifically: In no event shall LinkSky Value Host Inc. nor any owner, partner or employee of said hosting company be liable for any damages including, but not limited to, direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages or other losses, including data losses, arising out of the use of or inability to use any aspect of LinkSky Hosting services and/or information from us.
This also includes losses and/or damages incurred through email received, and/or data transmitted to any LinkSky hosted account (e.g. via a web hosted fill-out form) from local or remote sources. It is strongly recommended that the LinkSky customer learn to guard against "phishing," "pharming" lottery scams, auction scams, employment scams, domain re-registration scams, and other similar scams and frauds potentially leading to identity theft or worse. All LinkSky accounts come with anti-spam scoring and tagging that will help you spot such fraudulent email, but no such email filtering system is infallible. Simply stated, it is always up to the web hosting account owner and/or email account user to exercise their best judgement. We recommend that you do not respond to unexpected requests for password resets, especially from financial institutions (including PayPal), domain registration service, etc. When in doubt, contact your service provider directly or you are always welcome to forward such email (or messages received by any other means) to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for analysis. Also, STAY INFORMED by visiting such informational web sites as ScamDex.com You are also encouraged to sign up for a free SpamCop membership which will enable easy months of spam and fraud email reporting, see SpamCop.com
Full, server-wide backups are made of all customer accounts and other critical data at least twice per week (7x per week is the standard). This is not an archival backup system, but a rolling system which is kept in sync with current data. Every effort to validate the integrity of such backups is made, but again, such systems will always remain fallible no matter what precautions are taken. A backup utility is included with every LinkSky hosted account, which enables easy method of backing up various aspects of the LinkSky account, or the entire LinkSky account including all settings, email and web data. LinkSky membership is encouraged to use this system at least on a monthly basis, in order to develop a true archival system. NOTE: Once they have been taken, all backup archives should be downloaded then removed from the server.
The LinkSky customer is well-advised to regard their hosting account data as they would data residing on their own local computer systems, and perform regular backups of their web data. Backing up your data is the very best advice anyone can receive for ANY work involving critical computer data no matter where it resides. Easy methods are available for conducting such backups on an individual account-wide basis from the individual account LinkSky control panel (a.k.a. the LinkSky hosted cPanel). It is our recommendation that this system be utilized on a regular basis. If the LinkSky customer maintains MySQL databases, they are advised to regularly do a data "dump" (archive), of all their databases on a regular basis. This can be achieved via use of the MySQL administration software which is provided for every LinkSky MySQL database user.
Violations:
If a LinkSky Hosting account is determined to be in violation of our AUP or our TOS, we reserve the right to terminate service without notice. We prefer to advise customers of inappropriate behavior and any necessary corrective action; however, flagrant violations of the Acceptable Use Policy will result in immediate termination of service. Our failure to enforce this policy, for whatever reason, shall not be construed as a waiver of our right to do so at any time.
As a member of our network community, you must use your Internet access responsibly. If you have any questions regarding this policy, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
The following constitute violations of this AUP:
1. Illegal use: LinkSky Value Host's services may not be used for illegal purposes, or in support of illegal activities. LinkSky Value Host reserves the right to cooperate with legal authorities and/or injured third parties in the investigation of any suspected crime or civil wrongdoing.
2. Harm to minors: Use of the LinkSky Hosting service to harm, or attempt to harm, minors in any way, including, but not limited to child pornography.
3. Threats: Use of the LinkSky Value Host service to transmit any material (by e-mail, uploading, posting or otherwise) that threatens or encourages bodily harm or destruction of property.
4. Harassment: Use of the LinkSky Value Host service to transmit any material (by e-mail, uploading, posting or otherwise) that harasses another.
5. Fraudulent Activity: Use of LinkSky Hosting service to make fraudulent offers to sell or buy products, items or services, or to advance any type of financial scam such as "pyramid schemes," "ponzi schemes," and "chain letters."
6. Forgery or Impersonation: Adding, removing or modifying identifying network header information in an effort to deceive or mislead is prohibited. Attempting to impersonate any person by using forged headers or other identifying information is prohibited. The use of anonymous remailers or nicknames does not constitute impersonation.
7. Mass commercial e-mail distribution (via any LinkSky hosted account) and/or unsolicited bulk e-mail (SPAM): Use of the LinkSky Value Host service to transmit any unsolicited commercial or unsolicited bulk e-mail is expressly prohibited. The selling of any so-called opt-in lists or other email lists intended for mass email distribution is expressly prohibited. The selling of mass email software, a.k.a. spamware, sometimes described as stealth spamware, or software designed to "rake" addresses from web sites and search engines, or bulk email software of any kind that was designed for unsolicited commercial email (a.k.a. spam), or bulk email software that is commonly used by unsolicited email marketers (a.k.a. spammers), all are expressly prohibited. In addition, it is expressly prohibited to involve any LinkSky hosted web site in any unsolicited email campaign whether or not such a campaign used a LinkSky mail server in the transmission of the unsolicited email in question, a.k.a. "spamvertised web sites." Violations of this type will result in the immediate termination of the offending LinkSky Value Host account.
8. E-mail / News Bombing: Malicious intent to impede another person's use of electronic mail services or news will result in the immediate termination of the offending LinkSky Value Host account.
9. E-mail / Message Forging: Forging any message header, in part or whole, of any electronic transmission, originating or passing through the LinkSky Value Host service is in violation of this AUP.
10. Usenet/forum/blog post SPAMing: LinkSky Value Host has a zero tolerance policy for the use of its network for the posting of messages or commercial advertisements, which violate the rules, regulations, FAQ or charter of any newsgroups or mailing list. Commercial messages that are appropriate under the rules of a newsgroup or mailing list or that are solicited by the recipients are permitted.
11. Unauthorized access: Use of the LinkSky Value Host service to access, or to attempt to access the accounts of others, or to penetrate or attempt to penetrate security measures of LinkSky Value Host or another entity's computer software or hardware, electronic communications system, or telecommunications system, whether or not the intrusion results in the corruption or loss of data, is expressly prohibited and the offending LinkSky Value Host account is subject to immediate termination.
12. Copyright or trademark infringement: Use of the LinkSky Value Host service to transmit any material (by e-mail, uploading, posting or otherwise) that infringes any copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret or other proprietary rights of any third party, including, but not limited to, the unauthorized copying of copyrighted material, the digitization and distribution of photographs from magazines, books, or other copyrighted sources, and the unauthorized transmittal of copyrighted software. Distribution and/or posting of copyrighted or the aforementioned infringements will not be tolerated.
13. Collection of personal data: Use of the LinkSky Value Host service to collect, or attempt to collect, personal information about third parties without their knowledge or consent is prohibited.
14. Network disruptions and unfriendly activity: Use of the LinkSky Value Host service for any activity which affects the ability of other people or systems to use LinkSky Value Host services or the Internet. This includes "denial of service" (DOS) attacks against another network host or individual user. Interference with or disruption of other network users, services or equipment is prohibited. It is the Member's responsibility to ensure that their network is configured in a secure manner. A Subscriber may not, through action or inaction, allow others to use their network for illegal or inappropriate actions. A Subscriber may not permit their network, through action or inaction, to be configured in such a way that gives a third party the capability to use their network in an illegal or inappropriate manner. Unauthorized entry and/or use of another company and/or individual's computer system will result in immediate account termination. LinkSky Value Host will not tolerate any subscriber attempting to access the accounts of others, or penetrate security measures of other systems, whether or not the intrusion results in corruption or loss of data.
15. Fraud: Making a misrepresentation or misleading statement, writing or activity with the intent that the person receiving it will act upon it.
16. Distribution of Viruses: Intentional distributions of software that attempts to and/or causes damage, harassment, or annoyance to persons, data, and/or computer systems are prohibited. Such an offense will result in the immediate termination of the offending account.
17. Inappropriate Use of Software: Use of software or any device that would facilitate a continued connection (e.g. pinging, installing/running daemon processes, etc.) within a LinkSky hosted account, or connected to any LinkSky Value Host services could result in suspension service.
18. Third Party Accountability: LinkSky Hosting subscribers will be held responsible and accountable for any activity by third parties using their account that violates guidelines created within the Acceptable Use Policy.
19. Temporary Address: All members are given a temporary web address to view their web site. This address is to be used for testing purposes only for the brief period before your domain name points to the LinkSky server
Security:
You, as account owner, are responsible for any misuse of your account, even if the inappropriate activity was committed by a friend, family member, guest or employee, due to a hacked PC, etc. Therefore, you must take steps to ensure that others do not gain unauthorized access to your account. In addition, you may not use your account to breach security of another account or attempt to gain unauthorized access to another network or server.
1) Your password provides access to your account. It is your responsibility to keep your password secure. We recommend that you change your account password(s) at least once per month.
2) Sharing your password and account access with unauthorized users is prohibited. You should take care to prevent others from using your account since you will be held responsible for such use.
3) Attempting to obtain another user's account password is strictly prohibited, and may result in termination of service.
4) You must adopt adequate security measures to prevent or minimize unauthorized use of your account.
5) You may not attempt to circumvent user authentication or security of any host, network or account. This includes, but is not limited to, accessing data not intended for you, logging into or making use of a server or account you are not expressly authorized to access, or probing the security of other networks. Use or distribution of tools designed for compromising security is prohibited. Examples of these tools include, but are not limited to, password guessing programs, cracking tools or network probing tools.
6) You may not attempt to interfere with service to any user, host or network ("denial of service attacks"). This includes, but is not limited to, "flooding" of networks, deliberate attempts to overload a service, and attempts to "crash" a host.
7) Users who violate systems or network security may incur criminal or civil liability. LinkSky Hosting will cooperate fully with investigations of violations of systems or network security at other sites, including cooperating with law enforcement authorities in the investigation of suspected criminal violations.
8) Script installations with security flaws which could compromise your account and the LinkSky server on which your account resides are prohibited and may be removed if there are signs of a compromise. This includes security vulnerable packages such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. which are severely out-of-date, i.e. not up to the latest versions. It is important to always keep such packages up to date. This also applies to plugins, extensions, modules, and other addons for such packages. It is also important to remove old/unused (e.g. test) script installations as they will become security vulnerable over time.
Network Performance:
LinkSky Value Host accounts operate on shared resources. Excessive use or abuse of these shared network resources by any single account may have a negative impact on all other customers/accounts sharing the same server. Misuse of network resources in a manner which impairs network performance is prohibited by this policy and may result in suspension or termination of your account.
Regarding Email sending and receiving including use of E-lists: LinkSky maintains some of the most generous email transmission limits in the commercial web host industry. However, any email services run from within a shared web host server must have hourly caps so that other services such as MySQL access, FTP access, web page draw speeds, etc. are not negatively impacted. These caps are often improved (set higher) over time. Please consult LinkSky support staff for the current hourly cap on the server where your account is hosted.
Overall, you are prohibited from excessive consumption of resources, including CPU time, memory, disk space and session time. You may not use resource-intensive programs which negatively impact other customers or the performances of LinkSky Hosting systems or networks. LinkSky Hosting reserves the right to terminate or limit such activities. In this regard the following software/scripting and program types are disallowed:
1) Free For All (FFA) links or bookmark pages.
2) Free For All classified ad pages.
3) IRC programs or using your account for any IRC/BBN purposes. This includes any kind of locally installed chat software. However, you can establish a chat site at any number of free chat servers which you can find here. Then, link to your chat page from your LinkSky web site.
4) Webcams. (Please consider using webcam services then displaying the results in your LinkSky hosted site via iFrame, this is the common method for this, and free webcam services are becoming common, e.g. here.
5) Mailing center scripts, i.e. any scripts or programming which can be used to freely distribute email sent by registered or unregistered 3rd party members.
6) Third-party installed versions of FormMail.pl, FormMail.cgi, BNBMail, MailForm, MAIL.CGI, and similar software. (A secure version of FormMail is available, globally, for all accounts on our network.)
7) Script installations and software programs based on or that utilize the following are NOT ALLOWED due to the extreme amount of server resources they require, and/or security flaws which could compromise your account and the LinkSky server on which your account resides. This includes proxy scripts, IP scanners, and security vulnerable packages such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. It is important to always keep such packages up to date. This also applies to plugins, extensions, modules, and other addons for such packages. It is also important to remove old/unused (e.g. test) script installations as they will become security vulnerable over time.
8) We ask our hosted customers to take a common sense approach when it comes to installation of 3rd party packages, and to keep good pace with security patches and updates as they are released by the script package publishers. If you are wondering about the security and stability of any particular package that may be under consideration for your LinkSky hosted site, please submit a SUPPORT TICKET and we will be happy to do any necessary pre-installation research for you.
Please note - LinkSky Value Host Inc. reserves the right to place caps or limiters on a resource or upon any given group of resources at any time, and/or to remove or disable customer installed scripts. LinkSky Value Host Inc. management may take such action in order to prevent detrimental impact and/or security breaches that may effect other accounts sharing the same server.
Reporting Violations of LinkSky Hosting AUP:
LinkSky Value Host requests that anyone who believes that there is a violation of this AUP direct the information to the Abuse Department at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
If available, please provide the following information:
The web domain address used to commit the alleged violation.
The date and time of the alleged violation, including the time zone or offset from GMT.
Evidence of the alleged violation. E-mail with full header information provides all of the above, as do system log files. Other situations will require different methods of providing the above information.
Possible Actions Taken in Response to Violations:
LinkSky Hosting may take any one or more of the following actions in response to complaints:
• Issue written or verbal warnings
• Suspend the Member's forum and/or newsgroup posting privileges
• Suspend the Member's account
• Terminate the Member's account
• Bill the Member for administrative costs and/or reactivation charges
• Bring legal action to enjoin violations and/or to collect damages, if any, cause by violations
Revisions To This AUP
LinkSky Value Host reserves the right to revise, amend, or modify this AUP, our TOS (Terms of Service) and our other policies and agreements at any time and in any manner. Notice of any revision, amendment, or modification will be posted in accordance with our TOS (Terms of Service).
