Hurricane Electric Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)

All Hurricane Electric (Hurricane) colocation, dedicated server, or direct internet connection customers are bound by the following Acceptable Use Policy. This document may be updated from time to time. Please consult this site periodically for the most recent revision of this document.

No Hurricane customer shall:

  1. Do anything illegal or anything that adversely affects Hurricane's legal interests. The following list is non-exclusive, and should not be considered license to commit other illegal activities not specified below. All illegal activity is prohibited, and Hurricane will cooperate fully with any law enforcement officials and/or agencies investigating and/or prosecuting such activities.
    1. Cracking/Hacking - attempts to access accounts or systems other than the user’s own accounts or systems or an account or system that the user has been explicitly authorized to access is illegal under federal and state law.
    2. Child pornography - as defined by U.S. law. This is strictly prohibited and dealt with quickly and harshly.
    3. Interstate gambling - because Internet traffic generally ignores state and country boundaries, any Internet based gambling site is restricted by Federal Inter-state gambling regulations.
    4. Pyramid schemes or fraud - are illegal under a number of Federal, State and Local laws.
    5. Theft of services - attempts to utilize services that are not contracted for is considered theft and will be dealt with as such.
    6. Harassment - use of Hurricane's network to harass or threaten (in the legal sense of those terms) any other person is prohibited.
    7. Advocacy of violence against a specific person or class of people is prohibited.

    Please consult an attorney if you are unsure of the legal status of your activities.

  2. Do anything that threatens the integrity of Hurricane's network or the utilization thereof by other persons.
    1. Denial of Service (DOS) attacks - no customer will commit a DOS attack against any Hurricane customer’s host, or any other host on the Internet. Similarly, no Hurricane customer will willfully or negligently allow incitement of others to attack any host on Hurricane's network, or any other host on the Internet.
    2. Blacklists - No customer shall do anything that could get any portion of Hurricane's IP space (or address space announced by Hurricane on behalf of Customer) put on blacklists such the SBL (Spamhaus Block List) as maintained by Spamhaus (http://www.spamhaus.org/) or other similar organizations, or perform activities that would cause portions of the Internet to block mail or refuse to route traffic to any portion of Hurricane's IP space (or address space announced by Hurricane on behalf of Customer).
    3. Perform actions that cause unusual load on Hurricane servers (for example, mail servers, web servers, usenet servers, name servers, etc.), that cause slowness or denial of service to other Hurricane customers.

  3. Do anything that threatens the Internet or any other network.
    1. No customer shall take actions that cause any portion of the Internet, or the Internet as a whole, to become unusable to any other portion of the Internet, or the Internet as a whole.
    2. No customer shall take actions that degrade the usefulness of the Internet, or any portion of the Internet, either through network degradation, flooding of usenet or email or so on.

  4. Spam - No customer shall send unsolicited commercial email, unsolicited mass mailings, spam or flood usenet newsgroups, or anything of that sort. If you have questions about what is allowed and what is not, please refer to https://www.abuse.net/users.phtml, and/or email abuse@he.net for clarification.
    1. Mail abuse (including, but not limited to, mass mailing unsolicited email and email forgery) and usenet news abuse (including, but not limited to, mass crossposting articles and posting unrelated to group topics), whether direct or indirect, whether used externally to promote a site in Hurricane Electric IP space or sent across the Hurricane Electric network, is prohibited.
    2. No spam may originate from Hurricane IP space.
    3. No spam may advertise sites or services located on Hurricane IP space (even if the spam originates elsewhere).
    4. No Hurricane customer shall use third party mail servers to relay spam. This is considered a DOS attack on the third party and will be treated as such.
    5. No customer shall participate in pyramid schemes or email chain letters.
    6. Use of Hurricane Electric's facilities to provide software or lists for mass mailing unsolicited email is prohibited.
Furthermore, all Hurricane customers must:
  1. Maintain the following email addresses and respond promptly to all email sent to these addresses:
    1. abuse@yourdomain.com
    2. postmaster@yourdomain.com

  2. Maintain and enforce on their clients an AUP similar in scope and intent to this document.
  3. Maintain a policy requiring proper "From" and/or "Reply-To" headers for email and usenet postings.
  4. Maintain proper security on their mail server, to prevent the mail server from being used as a "spam amplifier" by third parties. Servers must restrict "email relaying." (Not applicable to customers who do not maintain a mail server.)

Hurricane reserves the right to terminate or interrupt any account in part or in full without refund for violation of these Acceptable Use Policy. In all but the most extreme or serious cases, good faith attempts will be made to resolve an issue without interruption of service. In cases where service has been terminated or interrupted, resolution will be handled on an individual case basis, at Hurricane'’s sole discretion.

For further explanation of any portion this document, and the terms set herein, or to determine whether your intended activities are permissible under the terms of this document, contact us at abuse@he.net or via phone at +1 510-580-4100.