Prohibited Activities

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

Threats to Network Security

Any activity which threatens the functioning, security and/or integrity of Rapid Networks’s 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 Rapid Networks for this goal;
• Any effort to use Rapid Networks’s 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 Rapid Networks 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 Rapid Networks’s 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.

Public Space and Third Party Content and sites

In reading this AUP or in signing a service contract with Rapid Networks, you acknowledge that Rapid Networks has no power to control the content of the information passing over the Internet and its applications, including e-mail; chat rooms; news groups; or other similar fora, and that Rapid Networks cannot be held responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any of the abovementioned content, in any way for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of, or in connection with your use of, or reliance on, any such content.

Our services also offer access to numerous third party webpages. You acknowledge that we exercise absolutely no control over such third party content, or sites and in such cases, our network is merely a conduit or means of access and transmission. This includes, but is not limited to, third party content contained on or accessible through the Rapid Networks network websites and web pages or sites displayed as search results or contained within a directory of links on the Rapid Networks network. It remains your responsibility to review and evaluate any such content, and that any and all risk associated with the use of, or reliance on, such content rests with you.

Access to public Internet spaces, such as bulletin boards, Usenet groups, chat rooms and moderated forums is entirely voluntary and at your own risk.

Rapid Networks employees do not moderate any of these services, or your communications, transmissions or use of these services. We do not undertake any responsibility for any content contained therein, or for any breaches of your right to privacy that you may experience as a result of accessing such spaces.

Usenet Newsgroups

The customer is responsible for determining and familiarizing himself or herself with the written policies of a given newsgroup before posting to it.

The customer must comply with these guidelines at all times which can be obtained from other users of the newsgroup upon request, or from the group’s administrators/moderators.

The following are prohibited practices with regard to Usenet newsgroups and Rapid Networks reserves the right to delete and/or cancel posts which violate the following conditions:

1. Excessive cross-posting of the same article to multiple newsgroups.
2. Posting of irrelevant or off-topic material to newsgroups (also known as USENET spam).
3. Posting binaries to a non-binary newsgroup.
4. Posting adverts, solicitations, or any other commercial messages unless the guidelines of the newsgroup in question explicitly permit them.

Unsolicited, Spam and Junk mail

Spam and unsolicited bulk mail are highly problematic practices. They affect the use and enjoyment of services by others and often compromise network security. Rapid Networks will take swift and firm action against any user engaging in any of the following unacceptable practices:

• Sending unsolicited bulk mail for marketing or any other purposes (political, religious or commercial) to people who have not consented to receiving such mail;
• Operating or maintaining mailing lists without the express permission of all recipients listed;
• Failing to promptly remove from lists invalid or undeliverable addresses or addresses of unwilling recipients or a recipient who has indicated s/he wishes to be removed from such list;
• Using Rapid Networks’s service to collect responses from unsolicited e-mail sent from accounts on other Internet hosts or e-mail services, that violate this AUP or the AUP of any other Internet service provider;
• Including Rapid Networks’s name in the header or by listing an IP address that belongs to Rapid Networks in any unsolicited email whether sent through Rapid Networks’s network or not;
• Failure to secure a customer’s mail server against public relay as a protection to themselves and the broader Internet community. Public relay occurs when a mail server is accessed by a third party from another domain and utilised to deliver mails, without the authority or consent of the owner of the mail-server. Mail servers that are unsecured against public relay often become abused by unscrupulous operators for spam delivery and upon detection such delivery must be disallowed. Rapid Networks reserves the right to examine users’ mail servers to confirm that no mails are being sent from the mail server through public relay and the results of such checks can be made available to the user. Rapid Networks also reserves the right to examine the mail servers of any users using Rapid Networks’s mail servers for “smarthosting” (when the user relays its mail via a Rapid Networks mail server to a mail server of its own or vica-versa) or similar services at any time to ensure that the servers are properly secured against public relay. All relay checks will be done in strict accordance with Rapid Networks’s privacy policy.