This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") governs use of services provided by Natural Selection ("Natural Selection," "we," "us," or "our"). It is designed to protect our network, our customers, and the stability, security, and reputation of our services. By using our services, you agree to comply with this AUP.

We reserve the right to investigate suspected violations of this policy and to suspend, restrict, or terminate services at our sole discretion where necessary to protect our network, customers, reputation, or operations.

Contents

• Illegal Activity
• Hacking, Exploitation, and Security Abuse
• Service Interruptions and Resource Abuse
• Personal Information Harvesting
• Spam and Email Abuse
• Blacklisting and Reputation Damage
• Fraud, Spoofing, and Impersonation
• SEO and Search Engine Abuse
• Backups and Storage Abuse
• Adult Content
• Abusive Scripts and Processes
• IRC Bots, Bouncers, and Chat Relays
• BitTorrent, P2P, and File Distribution
• Anonymous Proxies, VPN Exit Nodes, and Relay Services
• Network Daemons and Listening Services
• Enforcement

Illegal Activity

Our services may only be used for lawful purposes. Customers may not use our network, servers, or related services to store, publish, transmit, distribute, or facilitate any material or activity that violates local, state, federal, or international law.

Prohibited activity includes, but is not limited to, fraud, theft, phishing, scams, trafficking in unlawful goods or services, copyright infringement, trademark infringement, defamation, threats, harassment, or the distribution of malicious software.

Hacking, Exploitation, and Security Abuse

Customers may not use our services to engage in, promote, assist, or distribute content related to unauthorized access, exploitation, or interference with any system, network, application, or account.

This includes malware, ransomware, phishing kits, exploit kits, credential theft, brute force attacks, port scanning, vulnerability exploitation without authorization, denial of service attacks, botnet activity, and hosting content primarily intended to facilitate these activities.

Service Interruptions and Resource Abuse

Any activity that disrupts or interferes with our network, servers, or the services of other customers is prohibited. Customers may not use our services in a way that causes excessive or avoidable strain on shared infrastructure.

This includes abusive CPU, memory, disk, database, inode, or bandwidth usage; runaway scripts; poorly optimized applications; mass cron activity; and any use that negatively affects server stability, performance, or availability for others.

Personal Information Harvesting

Collecting, harvesting, scraping, purchasing, selling, or distributing personal information without proper authorization is prohibited. This includes email addresses, phone numbers, usernames, screen names, and other personally identifiable information.

Customers may not use our services for bulk harvesting, automated scraping of protected data, or compiling contact lists for spam, harassment, or deceptive marketing.

Spam and Email Abuse

Our services may not be used to send unsolicited bulk email, unsolicited commercial email, or any other form of abusive messaging. Customers must comply with all applicable anti-spam laws and accepted sending practices.

Subscriptions and Consent

Mailing list subscribers must knowingly and explicitly opt in. Purchased, scraped, borrowed, rented, or third-party lists are not permitted. Customers must be able to demonstrate how and when consent was obtained.

Mailing Practices

Email must accurately identify the sender and may not contain forged, deceptive, or misleading headers, routing information, or subject lines. Customers must honor unsubscribe requests promptly and maintain a clear opt-out method in bulk email communications.

Spamware and Abusive Tools

The use of spamware, bulk-mailing tools intended for unsolicited email, email address harvesters, list scrapers, open relays, snowshoe tactics, or similar abusive tools is strictly prohibited.

Outbound Limits and Monitoring

We reserve the right to impose sending limits, queue restrictions, filtering, or other controls to protect server reputation and service stability. Email activity may be reviewed where reasonably necessary to investigate abuse, spam complaints, or delivery issues.

Blacklisting and Reputation Damage

Customers may not use our services in any way that causes or is likely to cause our IP addresses, domains, or mail servers to be blacklisted or otherwise suffer reputation damage. Activities that trigger blocklists, spam databases, or abuse reports may result in immediate suspension of the related service.

Fraud, Spoofing, and Impersonation

Customers may not impersonate any person, business, organization, or government entity, nor may they misrepresent their identity, affiliation, or authority. This includes fraudulent websites, spoofed communications, deceptive landing pages, fake support pages, and phishing attempts.

SEO and Search Engine Abuse

Customers may not engage in deceptive or abusive search engine practices, including spamdexing, cloaking, hidden text, doorway pages, link schemes, auto-generated spam pages, misleading redirects, or other practices intended primarily to manipulate search rankings in violation of search engine guidelines.

Backups and Storage Abuse

Hosting accounts are intended for website and related service use, not as a general-purpose file storage or personal backup platform. Customers may not use shared hosting space primarily for archiving files, storing media unrelated to the hosted website, or maintaining large backup repositories.

We strongly recommend that customers maintain their own current backups. While we may provide backup services or courtesy backups, customers remain responsible for preserving their own data.

Adult Content

Adult content, sexually explicit content, or services primarily associated with pornography are not permitted unless we have specifically approved such use in writing in advance. We also prohibit content involving exploitation, abuse, non-consensual material, or any unlawful sexual content under any circumstances.

Abusive Scripts and Processes

Customers may not run scripts, software, or background processes that are insecure, unstable, excessively resource-intensive, or harmful to server operations. This includes scripts with known vulnerabilities, unattended long-running processes not suited to the hosting environment, cryptocurrency mining, and applications that generate repeated errors, queue floods, or excessive database load.

IRC Bots, Bouncers, and Chat Relays

IRC bots, IRC bouncers, and similar persistent chat relay services are not permitted unless explicitly approved by us in writing. These services are commonly abused and may create stability, security, or reputation issues.

BitTorrent, P2P, and File Distribution

BitTorrent trackers, torrent seedboxes, peer-to-peer file sharing software, and similar distribution systems are not permitted on shared hosting or any service unless expressly authorized in writing. This applies regardless of the legality of the files being shared, due to the security, abuse, and resource issues commonly associated with these services.

Anonymous Proxies, VPN Exit Nodes, and Relay Services

Anonymous proxies, open proxies, public VPN exit nodes, TOR exit nodes, and similar anonymizing or relay services are not permitted unless specifically approved in writing. These services are frequently abused and may create reputation, abuse, and blacklisting issues.

Network Daemons and Listening Services

Customers may not run processes that listen on network ports or provide publicly accessible network services unless such use is part of the service plan and has been expressly approved by us. This includes custom daemons, socket listeners, game servers, relay services, and similar always-on network applications not intended for the hosting environment.

Enforcement

We reserve the right to investigate any suspected violation of this AUP. Where we determine, in our sole judgment, that a violation has occurred or is likely to occur, we may take any action we consider appropriate, including content removal, service suspension, account restriction, disabling of scripts or email, or account termination, with or without notice.

In urgent cases involving abuse, security threats, spam, blacklisting, or service stability, we may act immediately.

Customers must substantially respond to abuse, spam, security, or policy-related inquiries within 24 hours. Failure to respond in a timely manner may result in suspension or termination of services without refund.

Nothing in this policy limits our right to protect our network, services, reputation, staff, vendors, or customers.