SPAM and Unsolicited Email
CM Support Services has a zero tolerance SPAM policy.
Offensive Content
Certain content is not permitted on CM Support Services’s network.
Misuse of Account Features
Your account features are for use with your sites only.
Shared Systems and Resource Usage
Excessive resource usage will cause performance and stability problems.
Server Side Processes
Certain processes are not permitted on our shared systems.
Internet Abuse
Using our network to engage in illegal, abusive, or irresponsible behaviour is a violation.
Security
Negligence will put CM Support Services’s network at risk.
Disk Usage
Disk space usage is monitored with automated billing for over-usage.
(Last updated: May 2011)
(Previous version: 1 August 2007)
1.1 Sending of unsolicited email, bulk emailing and SPAM is forbidden. SPAM includes, but is not limited to, SPAM sent via email, instant messaging, SMS, chat rooms, discussion boards and news groups as well as the creation of false accounts for the purpose of sending SPAM. Sending unsolicited email via open, third party servers, sending emails to users who requested to be removed from the mailing list and selling or exchanging the email address of any person without that person’s consent is strictly forbidden.
1.2 CM Support Services reserves the right to suspend or terminate the account of any user who sends out SPAM with or without notice in accordance with its General Terms and Conditions. As a CM Support Services customer, should you infringe this policy, you will be held liable for any costs incurred by CM Support Services, both monetary and in reputation. CM Support Services reserves the right to charge the customer of the account used to send any unsolicited email a clean-up fee or any charges incurred for blacklist removal. This cost of the clean-up fee is entirely at the discretion of CM Support Services.
1.3 The use of any other service for the purposes of sending SPAM with any reference to CM Support Services services (including but not limited to mailboxes, autoresponders, and Web pages), will also be grounds for account termination as described above.
(Last updated: May 2011)
(Previous version: 1August 2007)
2.1 CM Support Services does not allow any of the following content or links to such content, to be published on its Hosting Systems:
2.1.1 Content of a pornographic, sexually explicit or violent nature.
2.1.2 “Hate” sites or content that could be reasonably considered as discriminatory in any way including by way of sex, race or age discrimination.
2.1.3 Content of an illegal nature (including stolen copyrighted material).
2.1.4 Content that is defamatory or violates a person’s privacy.
2.1.5 Content that involves theft, fraud, drug-trafficking, money laundering or terrorism.
2.1.6 Pirated software sites.
2.1.7 Illegal gambling sites.
2.2 If CM Support Services in its sole discretion determines that any customer content violates any law, including the Film and Publications Act, 65 of 1966 or this policy, it may:
2.2.1 Request the customer to immediately remove such content; and/or
2.2.2 Require the customer to modify such content; and/or
2.2.3 Without notice, suspend or terminate access to any services; and/or
2.2.4 Without notice, delete the offending content; and/or
2.2.5 Notify the relevant authorities of the existence of such content (if required by law or otherwise), make any backup, archive or other copies of such material as may be required by such authorities, disclose such elements of the customer’s data as may be requested by the authorities and take such further steps as may be required by such authorities.
(Last updated: May 2011)
(Previous version: 1 August 2007)
3.1 Operating any service which makes an account feature available to third parties for any use other than normal access to that account's Web site is forbidden. Operating any service which enables or assists anonymous or abusive behaviour by third parties is forbidden. Operating any service which affects the stability or reliability of any CM Support Services server or network component, impacts other users or the company negatively, or degrades quality of service is forbidden. All account features are to be used solely in order to develop and implement the Web site(s) associated with that account.
4. Shared Systems and Resource Usage
(Last updated: May 2011)
(Previous version: 1 August 2007)
Customers hosting on our shared environment may not use any shared system provided by CM Support Services in a way that interferes with the normal operation of the shared system, or that consumes a disproportionate share of the system’s resources. For example, excessive server hits, excessive bandwidth usage, excessive disk usage, inefficient scripts or database queries may compromise other users of the shared hosting environment. CM Support Services is authorised to suspend a user’s account should it be found that excessive resource usage is negatively impacting on other customers of our shared hosting environment. In most cases, the examples below do not apply to CM Support Services Dedicated servers.
4.1 Users may not, through a cron job, CGI script, interactive command, or any other means, initiate the following on CM Support Services’s shared servers:
4.1.1 Run any process that requires more than 50MB of memory space.
4.1.2 Run any program that requires more than 30 CPU seconds.
4.1.3 Run more than 10 simultaneous processes.
4.1.4 Send out mail to more than 500 recipients (email addresses) within one hour. 500 recipients represent one of the following: 500 recipients for one email, 500 individual emails or a combination of the two.
4.1.5 Send or receive, through mail, any file larger than 20MB.
4.1.6 Accumulate more than 2000 mail messages in a single pop mailbox. If the message count is exceeded, new messages will bounce to the original sender.
4.2 Should we discover that a customer is performing bulk mail runs on our shared systems that exceeds the limit communicated in 4.1.4 above, regardless of whether it constitutes SPAM or not, CM Support Services will deactivate the user’s account.
4.3 Custom server-side CGI scripts are to be run only by users with the appropriate package types (in CM Support Services’s case the Web Hosting Basic package or higher). No user may run CGI scripts for the benefit of external sites or services. The use of system resource limits is intended to prevent runaway CGI scripts on an unattended server. Also, processes with large memory footprints or hungry CPU requirements will incur swapping and other slowdowns that cause problems for every site on the server.
4.4 Interactive Web applications, commonly known as "chat", are not allowed on CM Support Services’s shared systems. These applications are better placed on dedicated servers.
4.5 MySQL databases are provided to users of the Web Hosting Basic package and higher:
4.5.1 Each qualifying individual package is limited to the allocated quota as published in the product matrix.
4.5.2 Each individual database is allotted a maximum of 500 MB disk space.
4.5.3 Databases may not be used for circumventing package disk allowances by storing web sites within the database.
4.5.4 Databases may only be used in conjunction with CM Support Services hosted packages. Access to databases from outside our local network is provided strictly for site and database development.
4.5.5 Only 10 concurrent MySQL connections per database user are allowed.
4.5.6 Databases may not be used to store binary files (including but not limited to image and application files). The database needs to reference the image on the user’s site rather than actually storing the image i.e. these files should be stored within the user account and referred to in the database by using a link.
4.5.7 CM Support Services reserves the right to require changes to databases and database usage should they have an adverse impact on a database server and/or other user databases on that server. CM Support Services may move the database to a new server, or in extreme cases, CM Support Services reserves the right to disable any database determined to be harming performance of a database server.
4.6 The use of "cron jobs" (processes that are run automatically at certain times, in accordance with a "crontab" file set up by each user), are allowed on CM Support Services servers, subject to the following conditions and restrictions:
4.6.1 To be used only by customers of the Web Hosting Basic package and higher.
4.6.2 The job must not execute more often than every two hours.
4.6.3 If a cron job is likely to consume excessive CPU usage, it should be given a lower CPU priority.
4.7 Resource limits are enforced by automatic monitoring systems. This is not applicable to Fully Managed Dedicated servers, providing that it does not interfere with CM Support Services’s ability to manage the server on the customer’s behalf.
(Last updated: May 2011)
(Previous version: 1 August 2007)
5.1 The installation or operation of any stand-alone, unattended server-side process (daemons) on CM Support Services servers, with the exception of cron jobs as per point 4 above, is not possible. Violation of this policy will result in immediate account termination without warning. This is not applicable to CM Support Services’s Dedicated servers, providing that it does not interfere with CM Support Services’s ability to manage the server on the customer’s behalf.
5.2 This policy exists for several reasons:
52.1 To protect the CPU and memory resources available on each server.
5.2.2 To protect and enhance system security by not allowing unapproved third-party programs to accept connections from the outside world.
(Last updated: May 2011)
(Previous version: 1August 2007)
You may not use our network to engage in illegal, abusive, or irresponsible behaviour, including:
6.1 Unauthorised access to or use of data, services, systems or networks, including any attempt to probe, scan or test the vulnerability of a system or network or to break security or authentication measures without express authorisation of the owner of the system or network;
6.2 Monitoring data or traffic on any network or system without the authorisation of the owner of the system or network;
6.3 Interference with service to any user, host or network including, without limitation, mail bombing, flooding, deliberate attempts to overload a system and broadcast attacks;
6.4 Use of an Internet account or computer without the owner’s authorisation;
6.5 Collecting information by deceit, including, but not limited to Internet scamming (tricking other people into releasing their passwords), password robbery, phishing, security hole scanning, and port scanning;
6.6 Use of CM Support Services’s service to distribute software that covertly gathers information about a user or covertly transmits information about the user;
6.7 Any activity or conduct that is likely to result in retaliation against our network;
6.8 Any activity or conduct that is likely to be in breach of any applicable laws, codes or regulations including the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 (see ECT Act) which renders you liable to a fine or imprisonment;
6.9 Introducing intentionally or knowingly into CM Support Services’s service any virus or other contaminating program or fail to use an up to date virus-scanning program on all material downloaded from the Web;
6.10 Forging email or other messages is forbidden. Trafficking in pirated software is forbidden. Port scanning or the use of similar tools is forbidden.
6.11 Use of CM Support Services services to publish or otherwise disseminate information about the availability of pirated software or other material that is being made available illegally, including the publication of a list of links to such material, regardless of disclaimers, is specifically forbidden. We do not condone any illegal material or behaviour.
Compliance with the acceptable use policies of any network or system with which you connect through our service is required. If inappropriate activity is detected, all accounts of the user in question will be deactivated until the investigation is complete. Prior notification to the user is not assured. In extreme cases, law enforcement will be contacted regarding the activity.
(Last updated: May 2011)
CM Support Services customers must take reasonable security precautions. Negligence could result in the hacking of websites as well as compromised mailboxes due to vulnerable PCs, website software or the use of weak passwords, which could affect other CM Support Services customers through blacklisting, phishing or spamming.
7.1 It is the customer’s responsibility to ensure that scripts/programs installed under their account are secure (using the latest version) and permissions of directories are set properly, regardless of installation method. Users are ultimately responsible for all actions taken under their account. This includes the compromise of credentials such as user name and password. It is required that customers use a secure password. If a password is found to be weak, CM Support Services will notify the user and allow time for the user to change/update the password. Failure to make a password change that inadvertently leads to the website being compromised could result in the user’s account being suspended / terminated.
7.2 Passwords should consist of at least 8 mixed alpha and numeric characters with case variations. Customers should not use a common word as a password and should change their passwords regularly. In the event of abuse CM Support Services reserves the right to reset a password.
(Last updated: May 2011)
(Previous version: 1 August 2007)
8.1 Every CM Support Services Web Hosting package has an allocated disk space usage quota. Where applicable, customers are sent monthly emails from CM Support Services notifying them of any domains that have exceeded the allocated disk space quota, providing an opportunity to reduce disk space or upgrade to a higher package in order to avoid unnecessary charges for over-usage.
8.2 An important note is that CM Support Services will round off over-usage to the nearest 10MB. For example, a Micro Pro package with a quota of 50MB is currently using 58MB of disk space, which is 8MB of over-usage. CM Support Services will not charge for this additional usage. However, should the customer increase usage to 61MB, CM Support Services will round down over-usage and charge R5 for the extra 10MB block up to 60MB.
8.3 In order for CM Support Services to operate with greater efficiencies and for our customers to have the flexibility and control of actively managing their disk space, an automated system tracks, notifies and charges for over-usage.
