Acceptable Use Policy
The rules about how our service can be used in a lawful, safe and appropriate way.
So that our services are used in a lawful, safe and appropriate way, we have to set out some rules about how they can be used. This acceptable use policy sets out these rules.
Our acceptable use policy
1.1. As a Plusnet customer you will have signed up to receive one or more of our products. These products are collectively referred to as our 'Services'. Any interaction with Plusnet or use of our Services will be subject to this policy.
1.2. This policy applies to both Plusnet residential and business services, and also to Plusnet affiliate brands.
1.3. If you allow other individuals to use our Services, you will be responsible for any breach of this policy or our terms and conditions committed by those individuals. If you allow individuals under the age of 18 to use our Services, we recommend that you take the reasonable precautions to ensure that they use the Services appropriately.
2.1. While using any of our Services you must comply with all relevant and applicable laws.
2.2. You must not use any part of our Services to:
2.2.1. download, possess or transmit in any way, illegal material (for example indecent images of children);
2.2.2. send, publish, distribute, circulate or otherwise propagate any material that is threatening, invasive of privacy, discriminatory, defamatory, racist, obscene, indecent, offensive, abusive, harmful or malicious;
2.2.3. gain or attempt to gain unauthorised access to any computer systems for any unauthorised or prohibited purpose;
2.2.4. prevent other users of our Service from accessing the Service;
2.2.5. cause critical disruption to our Services (for example using the Services to launch or receive a deliberate denial of service (DDOS) attack);
2.2.6. execute, for malicious purposes, any form of network monitoring or data interception that may affect third parties;
2.2.7. intentionally impair or attempt to impair the operation of any computer, prevent or hinder access to any program or data held in any computer or to impair the operation of any such program or the reliability of any such data (for example deleting files or changing the desktop settings);
2.2.8. knowingly transmit any data, send or upload any material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time-bombs, keystroke loggers, spyware, adware or any other harmful programs or similar computer code designed to adversely affect the operation of any computer software or hardware;
2.2.9. infringe the legal rights of others, including, but not limited to, privacy rights and intellectual property rights; or to commit fraud, or for any other unlawful or fraudulent purpose or effect.
2.3. Any use of any part of our Services as described in paragraph 2.2 will be seen as a breach of this policy and we may take any of the actions as set out in paragraph 4.
2.4. You must only use safe and appropriate equipment or software when using our Service and if we discover, or are informed, that any equipment or software which you use to access to our Services has been compromised and is likely to cause harm or damage to our services, network or other customers, we reserve the right to request that you cease use of such equipment or software immediately.
3.1. We understand that people can become annoyed or frustrated when they feel strongly about matters that are not being dealt with as they wish. If this escalates into behaviour towards our staff via phone, letter, online chat or otherwise that may cause them to feel afraid, threatened or abused, or the making of vexatious complaints or unreasonable demands are made of our staff, we reserve the right to terminate a call or an online chat. Repeated behaviour of this type will be seen as a breach of this policy and we may take any of the actions set out in paragraph 4.
4.1. If we reasonably believe you, or an individual who you have knowingly or unknowingly allowed to access our Services, breaches or intends to breach this policy, we may at our discretion:
4.1.1. temporarily suspend your access to any of our Services;
4.1.2. terminate your account or our agreement to provide our Service;
4.1.3. commence legal proceedings against you;
4.1.4. disclose such information to law enforcement authorities as we reasonably feel is necessary; and /or
4.1.5. take any other reasonable action.
4.2. We'll normally warn you that you're in breach of this policy and request you comply with its terms before taking any action under section 4.1. However, we may not do this if there is a real risk of loss or harm to us, our staff, our network or our other customers.
4.3. Reports of breaches of this policy can be sent to abuse@plus.net.
4.4. We reserve the right to investigate any suspected violation(s) of our policy.
4.5. We are not responsible for any consequences of your failure to employ appropriate security measures to prevent unauthorised access by any third party to the Services.
5.1. We are obliged, under the certain applicable laws, to disclose certain information to law enforcement and other public authorities. Similarly, we must comply with court orders to disclose information.
5.2. We are not responsible for the content of any of our customers' webspace's or chat rooms, instant messages, emails, newsgroups, community posts or any other communications sent or communicated via our Services. We cannot and do not guarantee that all of these are free of illegal material or other content that may be considered as unacceptable by others.
6.1. We regularly send out notifications by email and/or post. You are expected and required to review all these messages. This will enable us to advise you of any significant issues that may affect your use of the Services.
7.1. This section 7 of this policy will apply if you take one of our broadband products.
7.2. You are responsible for ensuring that your broadband connection is secure.
7.3. If you subscribe to a broadband product that has a data usage cap, you are responsible for monitoring the usage of your product and liable for any usage costs that are incurred should you exceed your usage cap (see our Price guide for usage charges).
7.4. You will be solely responsible for your use of the Internet and any web pages that you host through your broadband service (see section 10 below for more information on hosting).
7.5. We recommend you use and continue to update anti-virus and malware scanners to ensure that your computer is kept secure.
8.1. This section 8 will apply if you take one of our phone products (which includes line rental, call plans and call features).
8.2. You are expected to use the phone line we provide for personal use only (but limited use for home working is acceptable), and you should not use the phone line for business purposes unless you have subscribed to a Plusnet Business product.
8.3. You shall not use our phone products to engage in any of the following actions:
8.3.1. use of your phone line to run call diallers;
8.3.2. use of your phone line to engage in call forwarding to premium and business rate numbers;
8.3.3. impacting other customers by keeping their line engaged, forwarding their phone number;
8.3.4. fax bombing; or malicious calls, criminal acts, or harassment.
8.4. You are responsible for all call charges incurred (see our Price guide for details on call plans and call charges). The following calls are not included in any of our call plans (and will be chargeable):
8.4.1. calls to indirect access numbers, which includes calling cards;
8.4.2. calls to obtain dial-up Internet access;
8.4.3. calls to mobiles (unless you have added mobile minutes to your call plan or these are expressly included in a business call plan);
8.4.4. any calls lasting longer than 60 minutes (only excess minutes will be chargeable); and
8.4.5. any international calls lasting longer than 60 minutes on a call plan (only excess minutes will be chargeable).
8.5 For any call plan that includes a fair usage limit, if you exceed this limit, we have the right to charge you for any further calls made, as well as take any further action under this Acceptable Use Policy for breach of this section 8.5.
9.1. This section 9 will apply if you take one of our email products (paid or unpaid).
9.2. If you exceed a total of 1GB (Gigabytes) of stored email on our servers for more than a 30 day period, the excess data may be removed without notice to you.
9.3. Access to your Plusnet email will not be possible if your Plusnet account is, for any reason, suspended or terminated.
9.4. In the event that you use your email service to post unsolicited messages to groups of people, or operate an Open Relay, we reserve the right to:
9.4.1. Temporarily suspend or permanently remove access to your account, and/or
9.4.2. Report your actions to any appropriate regulator (such as the Information Commissioner's Office or Ofcom).
9.5. It is your responsibility to back up the contents of your Plusnet email account. Upon termination of your email services, any contents of your email account may be removed and permanently deleted without notice.
10.1. This section 10 will apply if you take one of our hosting products (paid or unpaid) or if you use one of our broadband products for your own hosting purposes.
10.2. You must ensure that:
10.2.1. the content you are hosting does not disrupt other services used on your residential line by other users or customers;
10.2.2. your hosted content does not breach any law of any jurisdiction; and
10.2.3. the activities that you undertake through your hosted service are not in any way in breach of the obligations outlined in paragraph 2.2.
10.3. It is your responsibility to back up any contents placed on the hosted service or hosted by you using our broadband service.
10.4. Any use of our hosted service which results in an excessive use of data transfer volumes and/or has an adverse impact on our systems may result in the hosted service being removed with or without prior notice.
11.1. This section 11 will apply if you take a mobile phone SIM card from us (either with or without a mobile phone).
11.2. To ensure that our mobile phone service isn't being misused no more than five SIM cards can be:
11.2.1. registered in the same individual's name; or
11.2.2. registered at one address.
11.3. The service or any mobile phone we provide can't be used:
11.3.1. for automatic communication between two devices (sometimes known as 'machine to machine communication' or 'M2M'). For example, you must not insert a SIM card into any smart appliance, such as a thermostat in your home, or into a connected vehicle;
11.3.2. with any device that routes, re-routes, forwards, or diverts calls, data, text messages, multimedia (picture) messages or other services from or to our network, to avoid charges, make money or for any other purpose. These types of devices include a 'GSM gateway', a 'SIM box' or a 'repeater';
11.3.3. with equipment that we haven't authorised you to use with the service including (but not limited to): (i) mobile broadband devices such as dongles or USB modems; or (ii) mobile WiFi devices that use our service to provide internet access to other WiFi enabled devices;
11.3.4. for making calls and/or sending texts to more than 300 different numbers in a month; or
11.3.5. to make send offensive or nuisance communications in whatever form, or to make or receive reverse charge calls.
11.4. You mustn't use more than one SIM card in the same mobile phone in any one month unless we've provided you with a replacement SIM card for any reason (for example, if the SIM card is faulty or if you've lost it).
11.5. You mustn't carry out organised resale of Plusnet mobile SIM cards. Organised resale includes reselling a number of Plusnet mobile SIM cards to people not mainly residing in or having stable links in the UK.
11.6. For any mobile call plan or bolt-on including 500 or more inclusive minutes that includes calls to 070 personal numbering services, you shall not make more than 150 calls or 500 minutes (whichever is reached first) a month. If you exceed this limit, we have the right to charge you for any further calls made to 070 personal numbering services, as well as take any further action under this Acceptable Use Policy for breach of this section 11.6.
12.1. We may change this policy from time to time and we'll update this web page when we do so.
12.2. It is your responsibility to regularly check our website for changes and updates to the policy.
12.3. Your continued use of any of our Services after any change to our policy shall constitute acceptance of the changes.
12.4. Our policy was last updated on 8th August 2017.
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