Acceptable Use Policy

ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY

Last updated: 14 March 2026

This Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”) describes activities and content that are not permitted on services provided by Sive Setfu ICT Solutions (Pty) Ltd, trading as Sive.Host (“Sive.Host”, “we”, “us”, “our”). This AUP forms part of our Terms of Service and Detailed Terms of Service.

All services provided by Sive.Host may be used for lawful purposes only. You may not use our services, network, systems, infrastructure, or resources for any activity that is unlawful, abusive, harmful, irresponsible, deceptive, insecure, or disruptive.

We reserve the right to investigate suspected violations of this AUP and to take any action we consider appropriate, including requiring changes, suspending access, restricting functionality, removing content, disabling services, refusing support related to the offending activity, or terminating services. Where appropriate, we may also notify relevant authorities, regulators, upstream providers, registrars, or affected third parties.

If you believe that any service hosted on or using our network violates this AUP, please report it to abuse@sive.host.

1. General Principles

1.1. You must use our services responsibly and in a manner that does not harm our infrastructure, our reputation, other customers, third parties, or the wider Internet.

1.2. You are responsible for all content, software, scripts, websites, databases, emails, credentials, and activity associated with your account or services, whether performed by you, your staff, your users, your customers, or anyone using your credentials or systems.

1.3. We may revise this AUP from time to time to reflect changes in law, technology, security risk, business operations, or the Internet environment.

2. Prohibited Content

You may not host, store, publish, transmit, distribute, link to, promote, or make available any content that:

• is unlawful under applicable law;
• infringes copyright, trademark, trade secret, privacy, publicity, or other rights of any person;
• is defamatory, fraudulent, misleading, deceptive, or intentionally false;
• contains or promotes malware, phishing, fraud, scams, or other criminal conduct;
• contains Harmful Code or facilitates unauthorised access, abuse, or compromise of systems or data;
• promotes or facilitates theft, money laundering, terrorism, trafficking, or other serious criminal conduct;
• contains pirated software, warez, illegal streaming material, or stolen digital goods;
• contains or promotes illegal gambling;
• violates a person’s privacy or unlawfully exposes personal information;
• contains hate speech or content that unlawfully promotes discrimination or violence;
• is pornographic, sexually explicit, or adult in nature.

For the avoidance of doubt, adult content, pornography, sexually explicit material, and hardcore adult advertising are not permitted on Sive.Host services.

3. Spam and Unsolicited Communications

3.1. Sive.Host has a zero-tolerance anti-spam policy. You may not send, facilitate, assist, originate, relay, or advertise unsolicited communications through or in connection with our services.

3.2. This prohibition applies to email, bulk messaging, mailing lists, newsletters, SMS, instant messaging, discussion boards, chat systems, contact forms, autoresponders, and similar communication channels.

3.3. A communication may be treated as unsolicited if:

• the recipient did not explicitly request or consent to receive it;
• the recipient would not reasonably expect to receive it from you;
• it is sent using purchased, scraped, harvested, or “safe list” contact data;
• it relies on opt-out only, where prior consent was not obtained;
• it is sent to recipients who already asked not to receive further communication;
• it appears misleading as to sender identity, source, or affiliation;
• it hides or falsifies origin details or routing information.

3.4. You must keep reliable records showing when, where, and how each recipient consented to receive communications from you. We may request such records when investigating a complaint.

3.5. Every lawful mailing list or newsletter must include a functional unsubscribe method.

3.6. If your website, mailbox, script, application, or account is compromised and used to send spam, we may be lenient for a first incident where you cooperate fully and remediate promptly. Repeat incidents, poor security, or failure to remediate may result in suspension or termination.

3.7. We reserve the right to charge clean-up fees, blacklist removal costs, investigation costs, or related remediation costs where spam or unsolicited messaging is traced to your service or account.

4. Internet Abuse and Illegal or Irresponsible Behaviour

You may not use our services or network to engage in illegal, abusive, harmful, deceptive, or irresponsible behaviour, including:

• unauthorised access to systems, services, data, or networks;
• attempting to probe, scan, test, or exploit vulnerabilities without authorisation;
• port scanning, password attacks, brute-force attacks, credential stuffing, or exploitation attempts;
• monitoring data or traffic without authorisation;
• phishing, scamming, spoofing, impersonation, or social engineering;
• mail bombing, flooding, deliberate overloading, broadcast attacks, or denial-of-service activity;
• forging or falsifying headers, routing information, or sender details;
• distributing malware, spyware, trojans, ransomware, or similar harmful tools;
• using our services to facilitate piracy or illegal distribution of content;
• using our services in a way likely to result in retaliation, blacklisting, legal complaint, or upstream sanctions against our network;
• using our services in a way that violates applicable laws, regulations, or codes of conduct.

5. Security Requirements

5.1. Customers must take reasonable security precautions to protect their websites, servers, scripts, mailboxes, databases, devices, and credentials.

5.2. You must keep installed software reasonably up to date and patched, including CMS software, plugins, themes, control panel extensions, libraries, and custom applications.

5.3. You are responsible for ensuring that scripts and applications installed under your account are secure and that permissions are set properly.

5.4. You must use strong passwords and protect them properly. Weak passwords, reused passwords, or negligent credential handling that contributes to compromise may result in suspension, forced password resets, or other security measures.

5.5. We may require you to fix vulnerabilities, remove insecure software, rotate credentials, or take other security steps within a deadline we consider reasonable.

6. Misuse of Account Features

6.1. Account features may only be used for the legitimate operation of the websites, applications, or services associated with that account.

6.2. You may not use account features to provide anonymous proxying, abusive relays, disguised third-party access, or any service that enables abusive, anonymous, misleading, or harmful conduct.

6.3. You may not use our Website & Email Hosting packages to resell or distribute services in a manner not permitted by the applicable product.

6.4. Where a product permits multiple domains, those domains must be used in accordance with the product scope and not as an unauthorised mass-reseller platform unless expressly allowed by the product or a separate reseller arrangement.

7. Shared Systems and Resource Usage

7.1. Customers using shared environments, including Website & Email Hosting, may not use shared resources in a way that interferes with normal service operation or consumes a disproportionate share of CPU, memory, disk I/O, mail capacity, database resources, or network resources.

7.2. Examples of prohibited or restricted behaviour on shared environments include:

• excessive server hits, traffic, or background activity;
• inefficient scripts or database queries that impact other users;
• bulk mail activity beyond permitted limits;
• runaway scripts or resource-hungry automation;
• chat systems or similar interactive applications not suited to shared hosting;
• database usage patterns that degrade shared database server performance.

7.3. We may suspend, throttle, restrict, or require changes to any account or service where excessive resource usage negatively affects other customers or platform stability.

8. Server-Side Processes

8.1. On shared hosting environments, the installation or operation of stand-alone unattended server-side processes, daemons, or continuously running background services is not allowed unless expressly permitted by the product.

8.2. Cron jobs may be permitted on qualifying packages, subject to reasonable limits, including execution frequency and resource consumption.

8.3. This restriction exists to protect security, service stability, CPU capacity, memory availability, and overall service quality for all users of shared infrastructure.

9. Email, Mailbox, and Sending Limits

9.1. You may not use shared hosting mail services for bulk messaging, mass mailing, or mail bursts that exceed the limits of the shared platform.

9.2. Unless we state otherwise for a specific product, we may restrict or suspend accounts that send excessive email volumes, trigger abuse complaints, or create risk to our mail reputation or deliverability.

9.3. Excessive outbound mail, even if not classified as spam, may still violate this AUP if it is unsuitable for the service type.

10. Disk Usage and File Storage

10.1. You may not use our services primarily as a personal file storage, backup archive, or document dumping facility unless the service is expressly intended for that purpose.

10.2. Content stored on hosting services must be directly related to the website, email, application, or service for which the hosting product was designed.

10.3. Accounts with excessive inode counts, excessive numbers of files, oversized mailboxes, or storage behaviour that negatively affects platform performance may be excluded from backups, flagged for review, required to reduce usage, upgraded, or suspended.

10.4. We may set or revise inode limits, file count limits, mailbox limits, or storage rules from time to time for operational or technical reasons.

10.5. Large unattended catch-all mailboxes, bounce mailboxes, or long-retained oversized email archives may be treated as AUP violations where they create performance, storage, or abuse problems.

11. Traffic Usage and Reasonable Use

11.1. Where a hosting product is marketed with generous or unmetered traffic, that does not allow use that is abusive, disproportionate, unsuitable for the service type, or harmful to platform stability.

11.2. Website & Email Hosting products are not intended for workloads such as:

• large-scale file distribution or download mirrors;
• mass media streaming;
• high-volume CDN-like use;
• caching proxy services;
• large-scale SaaS infrastructure better suited to VPS, Bare Metal Servers, or custom infrastructure.

11.3. We may require you to upgrade, redesign, migrate, or reduce usage if your traffic pattern is unsuitable for the product you are using.

12. Databases

12.1. Databases provided with hosting packages must be used in connection with the hosted service and not as a way to circumvent storage or service limits.

12.2. Databases may not be used primarily for storing binary files such as images, archives, media files, or application packages where this is not the intended use.

12.3. We reserve the right to require changes to inefficient queries, excessive connection use, oversized databases, or harmful usage patterns, and may move, restrict, or disable affected databases where necessary.

13. Bare Metal Servers, VPS, and Managed Infrastructure

13.1. Customers using VPS, cloud infrastructure, or Bare Metal Servers have greater flexibility, but remain subject to this AUP and may not use such services for unlawful, abusive, harmful, or irresponsible conduct.

13.2. Activities that create material security, abuse, routing, reputation, or operational risk to our network may still result in suspension, null-routing, filtering, restriction, or termination even on dedicated products.

13.3. Bare Metal Servers, VPS, and similar products may not be used to aggregate or combine resources in a way that materially changes the intended service profile without our approval where such use creates abnormal operational or commercial impact.

14. Enforcement

14.1. We may investigate any suspected breach of this AUP.

14.2. We may take action with or without prior notice where we reasonably believe immediate action is necessary to protect our infrastructure, other customers, third parties, or our legal and reputational interests.

14.3. Enforcement action may include:

• warning you or requiring remediation;
• requiring content or configuration changes;
• password resets or security measures;
• temporary suspension;
• throttling, filtering, null-routing, or service restrictions;
• deletion or disabling of offending material or processes;
• termination of one or more services or accounts;
• charging clean-up, recovery, investigation, blacklist removal, or administrative fees where appropriate;
• reporting the matter to law enforcement, regulators, upstream providers, registrars, or affected parties.

14.4. Accounts suspended or terminated due to AUP violations are not entitled to refunds, except where we expressly agree otherwise in writing.

15. Reporting Abuse

If you believe you have found a violation of this Acceptable Use Policy, please report it to abuse@sive.host.