HostTDS Web Services
Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy
Last Modified: December 12, 2007

Important Note: *All payments for domain names to HostTDS are non-refundable.*

Important Note: *All payments for web hosting and game servers to HostTDS are offer a 14 day money back guarantee with restrictions listed below in section(s) 19-x*

Important Note: *All payments for dedicated servers are non-refundable*

HostTDS (the "Company" or "we") agrees to furnish web hosting services to the Customer (the "Customer" or "you") subject to the following Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy (collectively the "TOS" or "AUP"). Use of HostTDS's services constitutes your acceptance and agreement to our TOS. All provisions of this contract are subject to this Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy. We reserve the right to change or modify this TOS, in whole or in part, without any prior notice to you. It will be the responsibility of the Customer to obtain the latest available version of the Terms of Service from our website. The Customer understands that modification to this TOS shall not be grounds for early contract termination or non-payment. As applicable, singular refers to plural, and masculine refers to feminine, and vice-versa in all parts of this TOS.

1. Definition of Terms. All hosting services provided by the Company are to be considered as shared hosting services. All Customers, both shared or reseller, are subject to the same TOS and all clauses within that TOS, unless explicitly exlcuded.

2. Disclosure to Law Enforcement. This TOS specifically prohibits the use of our service for illegal activity. Therefore, the Customer agrees that the Company may release any and all account information including, but not limited to, IP address usage, account history, account use, etc. to any law enforcement agency making written request for any said information. The Customer further acknowledges that the Company is under no obligation to obtain permission from nor notify the Customer regarding any such disclosure. In addition, HostTDS reserves the right to terminate all service set forth in this agreement.

3. Refunds and Disputes. All payments to HostTDS are non-refundable. This includes the one-time setup charge (if applicable) and subsequent charges or fees regardless of usage. All overcharges or billing disputes must be handled directly via the HostTDS Billing Team within 10 days of the overcharge or dispute. Initiation of a formal complaint or chargeback for services from HostTDS is a strict violation of this TOS. A "formal complaint" or "chargeback" shall be defined as initiation of any complaint, dispute, or chargeback with PayPal, 2CheckOut, and/or your credit card issuer. Upon receipt of a formal complaint or chargeback, HostTDS will take immediate action against the offending account including suspension or termination at our sole discretion. Further, such a complaint or chargeback will result in deactivation of all services on your account whether you disputed one or all of the services on your account. Chargebacks will also result in being reported to debt collection authorities. You will be responsible for all debt collection fees as well as all owed fees to HostTDS Internet Services.

4. Failure to Pay. In order to best manage billing, the Company does permit our customers to make payments to us via automated recurring subscriptions. If subscriptions are not chosen as payment choice, we will generate an invoice on your account approximately fifteen (15) days prior to the actual due date of your service. Within those fifteen (15) days, you must login to our Members Center at https://www.hosttds.com/members and pay the invoice manually. Failure to make payment on any invoice by the due date specified will result in suspension of service on the account in which is past due. Accounts suspended for non-payment are subject to a ten dollar ($10.00 USD) re-activation fee, in addition to any subsequently incurred charges or fees. Past due accounts will be kept online, in suspended status, for upto ten (10) days following an account becoming past due pending full payment of the full service amount plus any re-activation fees. If, after the ten (10) day period has expired, the account in past due status will be permanently removed from our servers, including deletion of all files, database, and any other information stored on the account. The Company reserves the right to perform said termination or removal prior to the expiration of the ten (10) day suspension period. The Company assumes no liability for any data lost resulting from termination of an account for non-payment. In the case of a reseller account, suspension or termination will apply to all accounts under the reseller account, including the Customer's main account.

5. Account Cancellation. You may cancel your web hosting services with HostTDS at any time. Account cancellation requests must be submitted directly to our Billing Department via our online helpdesk located at http://www.hosttds.com/support. Cancellation requests submitted outside the helpdesk (including instant messenger, phone, e-mail, or live chat) will be considered informal and no official action will be taken to close the account. Unless specifically instructed otherwise, account cancellations take effect immediately upon request. Account cancellation is to be defined as removal of all data from the server and cancellation of the billing account in question.

6. Uptime Guarantee. The Customer acknowledges that our service is of such a nature that interruption of service can occur for a variety of unexpected reasons. HostTDS guarantees ninety-nine per cent (99%) network uptime for any given calendar month. In the unlikely event we fail to meet our ninety-nine per cent (99%) network uptime guarantee, a one (1) day credit will be applied to the customer's next invoice for each per cent of downtime beyond the amount allowed by our guarantee, upto a maximum of five (5) days credit in any given month. It is the responsibility of the Customer to request the credit within twenty-four (24) hours of an invoice being generated on his account to receive the credit. The Customer must be active on our server during the following month to receive the credit. In no event shall the company be liable for any damages resulting from downtime or service outages beyond the scope of this guarantee.

7. Support Boundaries. HostTDS provides 24x7 technical support to our Customers (except for a few holidays and brief company meetings when we close our centers). We limit our support to our area of expertise. HostTDS provides technical support directly related to the physical functioning of your account. We do not provide support for third-party scripts or programs, and, as such, you should refer the program's help documentation for assistance. HostTDS provides support only to our direct Customers and therefore resellers will be responsible for providing support to their own customers. Technical support is provided via our online helpdesk, e-mail, and live chat support, in that order of preference. Instant messenger support is not an acceptable form of support, and customers requesting support over an instant messenger client are subject to warning or suspension at our sole discretion. Live chat support should not be used for any account-specific issues, including account suspension issues, billing questions (upgrades, downgrades, cancellations), or any issues requiring in-depth investigation. In the event a live help representative asks you to submit a ticket regarding an issue brought to them via live help, you are to do so unquestioningly.

8. Support Abuse. Abuse towards our staff will not be tolerated. If you use foul language, threaten us, or anything else we may find offensive, we reserve the right to suspend or terminate your account at our sole discretion. Per this TOS, we offer no refunds in the event a termination results from your abuse of our staff. When submitting a ticket via our online helpdesk, you are to specify an appropriate status for your request. Urgent status tickets are only to be used when an urgent matter is at hand, which usually includes only a service outage. Customers who submit non-urgent tickets with an urgent status are subject to having their ticket closed without reply, their account suspended, and/or upto a twenty-five dollar ($25 USD) administrative fee to cover the costs incurred by our technicians receiving pager alerts if the support desk is abused consistently. We strongly advise only submitting tickets with a maximum of high priority to avoid any problems with violating this clause.

9. Network Performance. Our services are operated on shared resources. Excessive use or abuse of these resources by one customers can have an adverse and negative effect on other customers. Misuse of resources in a manner which impairs network performance is prohibited by this policy and may result in suspension or termination of your account. You are strictly prohibited from excessive consumption of resources including CPU time, memory, disk space, and session time. You may not use resource-intensive programs which have a negative impact on other customers or the performance of our systems or networks. We reserve the right to terminate or limit such activities. We further reserve the right to suspend or terminate any account in violation of this policy.

10. SPAM and Unsolicited Commercial Email.HostTDS takes a zero-tolerance approach to the sending of Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) or SPAM over our network. This simply means that HostTDS's Customers may not engage in or allow for others to transact UCE. Customers may not host, or permit to be hosted, websites or information that is advertised using UCE on other networks. Violations of this policy carry severe penalties, including termination of service. In order to prevent unnecessary blacklisting due to spam, we reserve the right to sample bulk email being sent from our servers. Upon receipt of an alleged violation of our SPAM or UCE policy, HostTDS will initiate an immediate investigation into the matter. We reserve the right to suspend the account in questions during such investigation to prevent further violations of this TOS. Violations of this policy will result in immediate termination of service without refund. If the violation is believed to be a criminal offense, we reserve the right to notify the proper law enforcement agencies as outlined in this TOS. As our Customers are ultimately responsible for their client's actions on our servers, we recommend developing a similar or stricter policy for your clients.

11. Bandwidth and Disk Usage. The Customer agrees that bandwidth and disk usage shall not exceed the maximum amount of megabytes allowed in your purchased hosting package. HostTDS will monitor Customer's disk space and bandwidth usage. In the event that you exceed your maximum allowed bandwidth allotment, your account will be automatically suspended by the system pending your upgrade to a better plan, or the start of a new calendar month when bandwidth is reset. When a disk space overage occurs, we will notify you via e-mail of the overage and provide you twenty-four (24) hours in which to either upgrade your plan to the a better package or cut back on the space you consume. Failure to respond to our inquiries within the time period specified will result in suspension of your account.

12. Notification of Violation. HostTDS is under no duty to monitor our Customer's activities to determine if a violation of the TOS has occured, nor do we assume the responsibility to police Internet-related activities. In the event a user is found in violation of the TOS, we reserve the right to temporarily suspend the account in question pending a user's confirmation, in writing, to refrain from further offenses. While we make every possible attempt to contact our customers before suspending their accounts, some situations do not permit us to contact you prior to a suspension. We are under no duty to notify you of a violation of the TOS or that your account has been suspended, it is a simple courtesy to you.

13. Supension or Termination of Service. HostTDS reserves the right to suspend any account suspected to be in violation of the TOS. If inappropriate activity is detected, all accounts of the Customer in question will be deactivated pending an investigation into the alleged violation. Prior notification of the Customer is not assured. In extreme cases, law enforcement officials may be contacted. Customer's will receive no credit for the time their accounts were suspended due to violations of the TOS. HostTDS further reserves the right to terminate all service set forth in this agreement in the event of a serious or repeated violation of this TOS. Per this TOS, we offer no refunds in the case of termination.

14. Contact Information. You must provide us with, and keep current, valid contact and client profile information including full name, mailing address, city, state, zipcode, country, telephone number, and e-mail address. In addition, a valid and working contact e-mail must be set in your cPanel account. Failure to acknowledge this important policy will result in suspension of your account.

15. Content Restrictions. In order to maintain quality and reliable service, HostTDS is forced to restrict certain content from being hosted on our servers. We take this provision very seriously and Customers found in violation are subject to suspension or termination of service and/or administrative fees at our sole discretion.

a. Under no circumstances shall a Customer host, or allow to be hosted, MP3 files, without proper licensing. MP3 files on the server that do not have proper licensing will be subject to 24 hours notice of removal to allow backups to be made. If not removed, your account may be suspended, the MP3 files deleted, or your account may be terminated if the offense is repeated.

b. Pornographic or adult content is not allowed on our servers without previous notification to our webmaster. All parties that do so without notification will be fined a nominal fee of $75.00. All acounts that host pornograpic material MUST purchase allocated IP addresses for their acount on our server. This policy is strictly enforced and any users found in violation may be immediately terminated without warning. No refunds will be issued for any acount termination/suspension periods.

c. At no time shall any Customer upload or host any proxy script or program on our servers. These programs are resource intensive and can cause the server to crash. Any account found hosting a proxy script or program will be suspended without notice pending removal of the offending script. Repeat offenders may be terminated.

d. All PHPBB and PHP Nuke installations must be kept up-to-date and upgraded to the latest versions. Users found running vulnerable versions of PHPBB or PHP Nuke are subject to suspension of their account to avoid any possible attack on the server. We strictly enforce this policy, so keep your PHPBB up to date. We recommend installing using Fantastico so that you may update your installations as updates are released.

e. You, as HostTDS's customer, are solely responsible for the content hosted on your account. Because resellers are also responsible for the content hosted on their customer's accounts, it is strongly advised that you develop a TOS similar or stricter than that of HostTDS.

f. If our support team contacts you and requests that you remove any specific script, program, or material content, you are to do so immediately and unquestioningly. We will always provide a reason why you need to remove it, so there should be no questions asked and the offending content removed.

g. No hosting of Webhosting websites is permitted on our servers unless you have purchased a resellers webhosting package from HostTDS Internet Servies. Any violation of this term will result in the immidiate termination of your acount and no refunds will be issued.

17. Limitation of Liability. HostTDS is not responsible for any damages your business may suffer. HostTDS does not make implied or written warranties for any of our services. HostTDS denies any warranty or merchantability for a specific purpose. This includes loss of data resulting from delays, non-deliveries, wrong delivery, and any and all service interruptions caused by HostTDS. In no event shall HostTDS be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages, or damages for loss of profits, revenue, data or use, incurred by you or any third party, whether in action in contract or tort, arising from your access to, or use of, your account. HostTDS wishes to emphasize that in agreeing to the HostTDS TOS, the Customer indemnifies HostTDS for any violation of the TOS that results in loss to HostTDS or the bringing of any claim against HostTDS by any third-party. This means that if HostTDS is sued because of a customer's or a customer of a customer's activity, the customer will pay any damages awared against HostTDS, plus all costs and attorney's fees.

18. Transfer of Rights. Under no circumstances shall the Customer transfer their rights under this TOS to any other individual or company without the direct written consent of the company. This means that you may not sell, give away, or other transfer your rights under this TOS to any other person without our permission.

19. Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). We support the uncensored flow of information and ideas over the Internet and do 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, newsgroups, or other material created or accessible over or through the services, except for certain proprietary Web sites. However, in accordance with our TOS (Terms of Service), we may remove any materials that, in our sole discretion, may be illegal, may subject us to liability, or which may violate this TOS. This constitutes a violation of this AUP and TOS:

a. Illegal use: HostTDS's services may not be used for illegal purposes, or in support of illegal activities. HostTDS reserves the right to cooperate with legal authorities and/or injured third parties in the investigation of any suspected crime or civil wrongdoing.

b. Harm to minors: Use of the HostTDS's service to harm, or attempt to harm, minors in any way, including, but not limited to child pornography.

c. Threats: Use of the HostTDS service to transmit any material (by e-mail, uploading, posting or otherwise) that threatens or encourages bodily harm or destruction of property.

d. Harassment: Use of the HostTDS service to transmit any material (by e-mail, uploading, posting or otherwise) that harasses another.

e. Fraudulent activity: Use of HostTDS's 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."

f. 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.

g. Unsolicited commercial e-mail / Unsolicited bulk e-mail: (SPAM) Use of the HostTDS service to transmit any unsolicited commercial or unsolicited bulk e-mail is expressly prohibited. Violations of this type will result in the immediate termination of the offending HostTDS account.

h. 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 HostTDS account.

i. E-mail / Message Forging: Forging any message header, in part or whole, of any electronic transmission, originating or passing through the HostTDS service is in violation of this AUP.

j. Usenet SPAMing: HostTDS 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.

k. Unauthorized access: Use of the HostTDS service to access, or to attempt to access, the accounts of others, or to penetrate, or attempt to penetrate, security measures of HostTDS's 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 HostTDS account is subject to immediate termination.

l. Copyright or trademark infringement: Use of the HostTDS service to transmit any material (by e-mail, uploading, posting, hot linking, directly linking 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.

m. Collection of personal data: Use of the HostTDS service to collect, or attempt to collect, personal information about third parties without their knowledge or consent.

n. Network disruptions and unfriendly activity: Use of the HostTDS service for any activity which affects the ability of other people or systems to use HostTDS 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 Customer may not, through action or inaction, allow others to use their network for illegal or inappropriate actions. A Customer 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. HostTDS 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.

o. Net Send Spam: The use of the net send utility to send unsolicited bulk communication is prohibited. This technique may result in account suspension or termination. Violations of this policy carry severe penalties, including termination of service.

p. Fraud: Involves a knowing misrepresentation or misleading statement, writing or activity made with the intent that the person receiving it will act upon it.

q. Infringement of Copyright, Patent, Trademark, Trade Secret, or Intellectual Property Right: Distribution and/or posting of copyrighted or the aforementioned infringements will not be tolerated.

r. 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.

s. Third Party Accountability: HostTDS 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.

t. Violation Of Virtual Accounts: It is absolutely forbidden to host pornographic content or IRC servers on Virtual Server Accounts. Virtual Server Accounts found hosting this material will be subject to immediate cancellation without refund.

u. IRC networks: It is absolutely forbidden to host an IRC server that is part of or connected to another IRC network or server. Servers found to be connecting to or part of these networks will be immediately removed from our network without notice. The account will not be reconnected to the network until such time that you agree to completely remove any and all traces of the IRC server, and agree to let us have access to your server to confirm that the content has been completely removed. Any account guilty of a second violation will result in immediate account termination.

v. Domains Chargeback Resolution: If the charge for a domain or set of domains is charged back, HostTDS has the right to take control of the domain or set of domains that was paid for by the disputed charge. HostTDS will change the domain account information as needed to take control of the domain or set of domains. The user is not guaranteed to be contacted in the event that a chargeback is received.

w. Peer to Peer Software (File Sharing): The use of Peer to Peer or file sharing software to permit the sharing, copying or distribution of unauthorized copyrighted material on the HostTDS service is prohibited. Use of such software could result in suspension of service.

20. Modifications To This TOS: We reserve the right to modify or change this TOS, in whole or in part, without any prior notice to the client/customer. It is the responsibility of the customer to view the latest available version from our website at http://www.hosttds.com/tos.php.