Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)

Crystal Webhosting — Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)

1. Agreement

• This Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) governs your use of services provided by Crystal Webhosting ("Services"). By using the Services, you signify your agreement to this AUP.
• Purpose & Goals: This policy is formulated to ensure the security, reliability, and privacy of Crystal Webhosting systems, protect our reputation, avoid civil liability, and encourage responsible use of network resources.
• Modifications: Crystal Webhosting reserves the right to modify this AUP at any time. Notice of changes will be provided via email or posted in your Client Area. Continued use or failure to provide written notice of termination within thirty (30) days constitutes acceptance of the revised AUP.
• Scope: This policy applies to all users of the Services, including account holders, clients, and End Users. Clients are strictly responsible for ensuring their End Users comply with this AUP.

2. Account Security, Billing & Responsibilities

• Account Holder Liability: You are fully responsible for all actions performed by your account, whether executed by you or third parties. This includes actions taken by authorized third parties (such as web developers, designers, employees, or contractors) and unauthorized third parties (such as hackers or malicious actors). Permitting third-party access to your account does not transfer your obligations under this AUP. Furthermore, you accept full financial and legal responsibility for any damages, resource overuse or remediation costs incurred by Crystal Webhosting due to activity originating from your account.
• Contractual Liability: Crystal Webhosting holds a direct legal relationship with the person or entity whose name is on the billing account (the developer/agency). If an End User (the developer's client) violates the AUP, distributes malware or hosts prohibited content, the account holder is fully liable for the breach.
• Best Practice for Developers: If you are a developer purchasing hosting on behalf of a client, it is strongly recommended to:
  • Have the client sign a distinct development/hosting agreement that mirrors these AUP restrictions.
  • Consider setting up a seperate Account or transferring the primary billing account directly into the client's name so they hold direct contractual liability for their own web assets.
• Credential Security, Authentication, & Mandatory Notification: You are solely responsible for maintaining the strict confidentiality and security of all usernames, passwords, API keys and security tokens associated with your account. You agree to utilize strong, unique credentials and where available, enable multi-factor authentication (MFA). Utilizing weak passwords, failing to secure access tokens or leaving default administrative credentials unchanged constitutes a failure of security. It is your absolute responsibility to notify Crystal Webhosting immediately in writing upon discovering any unauthorized access, security breach or suspected compromise of your account. Failure to promptly notify us upon discovering a compromise constitutes an independent violation of this AUP.
• Accurate Information: You are responsible for keeping your billing data and account details up-to-date and accurate. Furnishing false data on any contract or application or registering/using accounts and domain names in bad faith (including fraud) is grounds for immediate termination without a refund and may subject you to civil or criminal liability.
• Technical Proficiency & Scope of Support: Utilization of our Services requires a foundational understanding of internet protocols, web architecture, file management and software configuration. You agree that you possess the technical skills and knowledge necessary to manage, secure and operate your account. Crystal Webhosting provides the underlying hosting infrastructure only and is under no obligation to provide custom programming, website design, debugging services, or extensive technical training. Furthermore, you are solely responsible for the compatibility, security and maintenance of any third-party software, applications, themes or custom scripts you choose to install or run on our servers.

3. Prohibited Uses, Staff Protection & Content Standards

Crystal Webhosting servers must be used for lawful purposes ONLY. The following activities and content categories are strictly prohibited:

A. General Prohibitions, Illegal Activities & Conduct

• Staff Harassment: Threatening, abusing, harassing or acting in an uncalled-for manner toward any member of the Crystal Webhosting team is strictly prohibited and grounds for immediate termination.
• Protection of Minors: Hosting, storing, distributing or transmitting any content that exploits, harms or attempts to exploit or harm minors in any way is strictly prohibited. This includes any form of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), child sexual exploitation, grooming behaviors or exposing minors to unlawful or age-inappropriate material.
• Cryptocurrency Mining & Distributed Computing: The hosting, deployment or execution of cryptocurrency mining software, cryptojacking scripts, node-validation daemons, unverified blockchain infrastructure or unauthorized distributed computing clusters (such as grid-computing, unauthorized AI model training or BOINC/SETI-style tasks) across any hosting tier is strictly prohibited and grounds for immediate service termination without a refund.
• Illegal Activities & Cybercrime: Committing, housing, facilitating or promoting any form of illegal activity is strictly prohibited. This includes but is not limited to:
  • Email Spoofing & Impersonation: Forging email headers, sending fraudulent or deceptive emails designed to misrepresent identity, engaging in email spoofing or operating unauthorized brand-impersonation infrastructure.
  • Phishing & Credential Harvesting: Hosting or distributing phishing pages, fake login portals or deceptive data-collection scripts aimed at stealing user credentials or sensitive personal information.
  • Malicious Activity & Cyberthreats: Distributing malware, ransomware, trojans, viruses or logic bombs; operating Command and Control (C2) botnet infrastructure; executing brute-force attacks, vulnerability scanning or penetration testing against external networks; and maintaining open mail relays, open proxies or unauthorized packet sniffers.
  • Network & Header Manipulation: Forging TCP/IP packet headers, email headers, or newsgroup postings to conceal message origins; running unauthorized background daemons, IRC servers, IRC bots or shells; and operating unauthorized tunneling protocols, VPN nodes or proxy scripts that manipulate network routing.
  • Commercial Abuses & High-Risk Schemes: Operating online pharmacies, High Yield Investment Programs (HYIPs), Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, unauthorized multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes, auto-surf programs, ad-servers or unauthorized gambling operations.
  • Impersonation & Brand Deception: Impersonating Crystal Webhosting, its employees or any other individual, entity or recognized organization. Creating deceptive landing pages, websites or communications designed to mimic trusted institutions, banks or government bodies for the purpose of fraud or brand deception.
  • Trafficking & Counterfeiting: Trafficking in illegal goods, unauthorized regulated substances, counterfeit items or stolen property.
  • Copyright Infringement: Hosting or distributing copyright-infringing materials, pirated software ("warez"), unlicensed media streams or violating intellectual property rights.
  • Harmful Conduct: Promoting or facilitating terrorism, human exploitation, hate crimes or severe violence.
  • Jurisdiction: You are solely responsible for determining and complying with all local, national and international laws applicable to your use of the Services.

B. Strict Content Standards & Prohibited Media

• Zero Pornography Policy: Crystal Webhosting enforces a strict ban on all pornography, nudity and sexually explicit material of any kind. This includes, but is not limited to, adult pornography, anime/drawn pornography, erotica, fetish content, and any written or visual material of a sexual nature.
• Hate Speech & Discriminatory Content: Content that promotes discrimination, hatred, harassment or violence against individuals or groups based on race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, disability, gender, age or sexual orientation is strictly prohibited.
• Violence, Self-Harm & Dangerous Content: You may not host content that depicts, encourages, promotes or provides instructions on how to commit self-harm, suicide or acts of extreme physical violence against people or animals.
• Objectionable, Defamatory & Inflammatory Material: Content must not be defamatory, obscene, indecent, abusive, offensive, harassing, or maliciously inflammatory. Uploading defamatory or legally actionable material is done entirely at your own risk.
• Deceptive Synthetic Media & Deepfakes: Hosting, generating or distributing maliciously manipulated synthetic media, non-consensual intimate imagery or deepfakes designed to deceive, harass or defame individuals is strictly forbidden.
• Intellectual Property & Proprietary Rights: Infringing upon any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights of third parties (including trafficking in pirated software, media or unlicensed digital goods) is strictly prohibited.

4. Domain Name Dispute Policy, Cybersquatting & Registrant Obligations

• Trademark Clearances & Independent Verification: Crystal Webhosting does not vet, review or evaluate whether a selected domain name infringes upon the intellectual property, trademarks or legal rights of third parties. Clients bear sole responsibility for investigating trademark availability and legal standing prior to domain registration.
• Bad Faith Registrations & Cybersquatting: Registering domain names in bad faith, for the primary purpose of disrupting competitor business, extorting trademark owners ("cybersquatting"), or deceiving consumers is strictly prohibited and constitutes a violation of this AUP.
• UDRP Incorporation & Mandatory Cooperation: You agree to be bound by the current Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) maintained by ICANN along with any applicable country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) dispute policies. In the event of a third-party domain dispute, administrative proceeding or court order, you agree to cooperate fully and promptly.
• Provider Neutrality & Indemnification: Crystal Webhosting reserves the right to freeze, lock, transfer or modify domain settings in compliance with valid registrar instructions, legal subpoenas or binding UDRP panel decisions. You agree to indemnify, defend and hold Crystal Webhosting harmless from any claims, legal actions or court-ordered modifications, cancellations or transfers arising from your domain registrations.

5. Email Policy, Unsolicited Communications (SPAM) & Mail Infrastructure

• Zero Tolerance for Unsolicited Bulk Email (Spam): Sending unsolicited bulk email (UBE), junk mail, chain letters, harvested list mailings or unauthorized commercial promotions is strictly prohibited. Crystal Webhosting maintains a zero-tolerance policy for spam generation of any kind.
• Strict Opt-In & Compliance Standards: All permitted mailing lists must utilize confirmed opt-in ("closed-loop") methods with verifiable records kept on file. Every commercial or promotional email must strictly comply with the CAN-SPAM Act and international standards (including GDPR where applicable), featuring truthful headers, accurate non-deceptive subject lines, a valid physical postal address and a clear, functional, one-click unsubscribe mechanism. Purchased, rented or scraped third-party email lists are strictly prohibited.
• Domain Authentication & Spoofing Responsibility: Clients are solely responsible for securing their domain names and preventing unauthorized email transmissions. You are required to implement and maintain proper email authentication protocols (such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) for your domains. Crystal Webhosting disclaims all liability for reputational damage, fraud or legal fallout arising from external or internal email spoofing of your domain.
• Mail Script Security & Infrastructure Abuse: You are strictly prohibited from operating open mail relays, unauthenticated mailing scripts or vulnerable contact forms susceptible to automated abuse. If unauthorized email spoofing, high-volume spam or excessive complaint rates (exceeding industry thresholds such as 0.3%) originate from your account due to a security breach, misconfiguration or negligence, Crystal Webhosting reserves the right to immediately throttle, suspend, or terminate the affected account without notice to protect network integrity.

6. Network Misuse, DDoS Protection, Blacklist, Backup Liability Policy

Network Integrity & Amplification Attacks: Any interference with public or private network resources is strictly prohibited. You may not engage in activities that draw denial of service (DoS/DDoS) attacks, participate in volumetric traffic floods, execute SYN floods or utilize network reflection/amplification vectors.

Port Scanning & Probing: Conducting unauthorized port scans, vulnerability testing, packet sniffing or network probing against external networks, upstream providers or other customer accounts on our infrastructure is strictly prohibited.

IP Address Allocation: All IP addresses assigned by Crystal Webhosting remain the sole property of the Data Center or upstream network providers and are recycled upon service termination in accordance with regional registry guidelines.

Blacklisting & Remediation Fees: If your use of the network—including spam generation, misconfigured scripts or compromised applications—causes Crystal Webhosting or assigned IP addresses to be placed on major email or security blacklists (such as Spamhaus, Barracuda, or PBL), Crystal Webhosting reserves the right to immediately suspend or terminate services if it happens repetitively. Furthermore, you may be held financially liable for administrative remediation costs, IP reputation recovery fees and server clean-up hours required to restore normal network operations.

Backup Liability & Client Data Redundancy Disclaimer: While Crystal Webhosting may implement automated routine backups for internal system disaster recovery purposes, we accept no responsibility or liability for data loss, corruption, failure of backups or unrecoverable files. You bear sole and absolute responsibility for maintaining independent, verified, off-site backups of all website files, databases and digital assets you store on our servers. Crystal Webhosting explicitly disclaims all liability for any loss of business, revenue or data arising from service interruptions or data destruction.

Website Security & System Compliance: All clients must adhere to strict operational security guidelines regarding automated scanning, software patching, and server firewall compliance. For detailed protocols regarding software maintenance, automated security scans and emergency isolation procedures, please review our companion Website Security & Protection Policy.

7. Monitoring, Investigation, Enforcement & Termination

• Monitoring & Inspection Policy: Crystal Webhosting does not actively monitor private client files or content as a routine practice. However, we reserve the right, but not the obligation to review, audit, inspect or remove any content or server logs upon receiving complaints, detecting security anomalies or investigating potential AUP violations.
• Immediate Action & Suspension Without Notice: Crystal Webhosting reserves the right to suspend, throttle or terminate any account or service immediately, with or without prior notice, upon discovering a suspected or confirmed violation of this AUP. Severity-based actions (such as immediate disconnection for malware, phishing, botnets, or CSAM) are executed at our sole discretion to protect network security.
• Remedial Actions & Zero Refunds: Violations of this AUP will result in immediate account suspension or permanent termination without a refund and forfeiture of all prepaid fees. Crystal Webhosting serves as the sole arbiter of what constitutes a violation of this policy.
• Data Deletion Post-Termination: Upon permanent termination of an account for AUP violations, Crystal Webhosting reserves the right to immediately purge, delete, or destroy all data, files, databases and backups associated with the account, with no obligation to provide copies or export access.
• Investigation & Law Enforcement Cooperation: Crystal Webhosting will fully cooperate with law enforcement agencies, cybercrime units, regulatory authorities and will comply with valid subpoenas, search warrants or court orders.
• We may disclose client information and logs as required by law without prior notice to the client.
• No Waiver: Failure or delay by Crystal Webhosting to enforce any provision of this AUP in any specific instance shall not operate as a waiver of our right to enforce that provision or any other provision in the future.

8. Additional Provisions for Shared Hosting

• Resource Limits, CPU & Core Dumping: Shared hosting accounts exceeding acceptable performance thresholds for CPU, memory, concurrent database connections or network input/output—or accounts engaging in "core dumping"—must immediately optimize their code or upgrade to a dedicated or VPS solution.
• Inode & File Count Limitations: To maintain filesystem stability, shared hosting accounts are subject to an inode (file and directory count) limit as specified in your plan details. Accounts storing excessive numbers of small files (such as heavy caching directories or unoptimized media libraries) that degrade server performance may be required to clean up files or upgrade their tier.
• Database Performance & Storage Caps: Databases hosted on shared servers must not exceed standard size limits or utilize excessive query resources. Unoptimized queries that slow down or lock shared database engines are strictly prohibited.
• Strict MP3, Video & Backup Storage Restrictions: To prevent severe server and bandwidth abuse, uploading, streaming or storing raw MP3 audio files, video files or external backup archives (such as full server tarballs or zip backups of off-site data) on standard shared hosting servers is strictly prohibited.
• Prohibited Scripts & Software: Chat rooms, web-based proxy servers/scripts, torrent trackers, torrent clients, IRC bots, shell scripts and the installation of unauthorized third-party DLLs or executables are strictly prohibited on shared hosting environments.
• Multimedia Limitations: Shared web hosting accounts may not use more than seventy percent (70%) of their allocated disk space for static multimedia file storage.
• Reselling Prohibition: Shared accounts cannot be leased, resold, sub-hosted or assigned to third parties without an authorized reseller agreement, though standard End User website hosting and direct FTP access are permitted.

9. Additional Provisions for Dedicated and VPS Customers

• Server Security & Unmanaged Scope: Dedicated and Virtual Private Server (VPS) clients maintain sole and absolute responsibility for the security, administration, firewall configuration, OS patching and software updates of their servers. Unless a specific managed-services agreement is executed in writing, all dedicated and VPS environments are provided "unmanaged."
• Compromised Servers & Remediation Billing: Compromised servers or servers actively participating in external attacks, malware distribution or network scanning, will be isolated or shut down immediately without prior notice. Clients will be billed directly for administrative remediation hours, forensic investigation and IP reputation cleanup costs.
• Traffic Monitoring & Packet Inspection: Clients are strictly prohibited from engaging in packet sniffing, traffic monitoring or data collection targeting internet traffic or network segments belonging to other entities or neighboring host nodes.
• IP Routing, BGP & Network Announcements: Dedicated and VPS clients are strictly prohibited from performing unauthorized BGP announcements, IP hijacking, MAC spoofing or altering upstream routing tables without explicit written authorization from Crystal Webhosting network operations.

To report suspected abuse, security compromises, domain disputes, or violations of this policy, please contact us via abuse@crystalwebhosting.com.