Quest Records & Reporting, LLC Acceptable Use Policy

Introduction

This document sets forth the principles, guidelines and requirements of the Acceptable Use Policy of Quest Records & Reporting, LLC (“Company”) governing the use by the Customer (“Customer”) of the Company’s services and products (“Services and Products”). The Purpose of the Quest Records & Reporting, LLC’s Acceptable Use Policy, hereinafter referred to as the AUP, is to comply with all federal, state, and local laws coupled with protecting the network security, network availability, physical security, Customer privacy, and other factors affecting the services provided by Quest Records & Reporting, LLC. Quest Records & Reporting, LLC reserves the right to impose reasonable rules and regulations regarding the use of its services provided to all Customers and such rules and regulations are subject to change. Such rules and regulations are located on the Internet at http://www.questrecords.net/acceptable_use. The AUP is not an all-inclusive or exhaustive list and Quest Records & Reporting, LLC reserves the right to modify the AUPs at any time as needed, effective upon either the posting of the modified AUPs to http://www.questrecords.net/acceptable_use or notification to the Customer via email. Any violation of the AUPs may result in the suspension or termination of your account or such other action, as Quest Records & Reporting, LLC deems appropriate. No credits will be issued for any interruption in service resulting from policy violations.

VIOLATION OF ANY SECTION OF THE AUP IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED AND MAY RESULT IN THE IMMEDIATE TERMINATION OR SUSPENSION OF THE SERVICES YOU RECEIVE FROM QUEST RECORDS & REPORTING, LLC.

Any questions or comments regarding the AUP should be directed to aup@questrecords.net

Compliance with Law

Customer shall not post, transmit, re-transmit or store material on or through any of Company’s Services or Products which, in the sole judgment of the Company (i) is in violation of any local, state, federal or non-United States law or regulation, (ii) threatening, obscene, indecent, defamatory or that otherwise could adversely affect any individual, group or entity (collectively, “Persons”) or (iii) violates the rights of any person, including rights protected by copyright, trade secret, patent or other intellectual property or similar laws or regulations including, but not limited to, the installation or distribution of “pirated” or other software products that are not appropriately licensed for use by Customer. Customer shall be responsible for determining what laws or regulations are applicable to its use of the Services and Products.

Customer Security Obligation

Each Customer must use reasonable care in keeping software they run on the Quest Records & Reporting, LLC’s servers up-to-date and patched with the latest security updates. Failure to use reasonable care to protect your account may result in a security compromise by outside sources. A compromised server creating network interference will result in immediate Customer notification and will be disconnected from the network immediately so as to not directly affect other Customers. No service credits will be issued for outages resulting from disconnection due to breached server security. The Customer is solely responsible for any breaches of security under Customer control affecting servers. If a Customer intentionally creates a security breach, the cost to resolve any damage to Customer’s server or other servers will be charged directly to the Customer. The labor used to resolve such damage is categorized as Emergency Security Breach Recovery and is currently charged at $300 USD per hour.

System and Network Security

Violations of system or network security are strictly prohibited, and may result in criminal and civil liability. Quest Records & Reporting, LLC investigates all incidents involving such violations and will cooperate with law enforcement if criminal violation is suspected.

Examples of system or network security violations include, without limitation, the following:

  1. Introduction of malicious programs into the network or server (example: viruses, worms, Trojan Horses and other executables intended to inflict harm).
  2. Effecting security breaches or disruptions of Internet communication and/or connectivity. Security breaches include, but are not limited to, accessing data of which the Customer is not an intended recipient or logging into a server or account that the Customer is not expressly authorized to access. For purposes of this section, “disruption” includes, but is not limited to port scans, flood pings, email bombing, packet spoofing, IP spoofing and forged routing information.
  3. Executing any form of network activity that will intercept data not intended for the Customer’s server.
  4. Circumventing user authentication or security of any host, network or account.
  5. Interfering with or denying service to any user other than the Customer’s host (example: denial of service attack or distributed denial of service attack).
  6. Using any program script/command, or sending messages of any kind, designed to interfere with or to disable, a user’s terminal session, via any means, locally or via the Internet.
  7. Failing to comply with the Company’s procedure relating to the activities of Customers on the Company’s premises. Violators of the policy are responsible, without limitations, for the cost of labor to correct all damage done to the operation of the network and business operations supported by the network. Such labor is categorized as Emergency Security Breach Recovery and is currently charged at $300 USD per hour required. Network interference by any Customers that may cause or is currently causing network interference with another Customer will be disconnected immediately. No service credits will be issued to Customers disconnected for network violations.
  8. Transmission, distribution or storage of any material in violation of any applicable law or regulation is prohibited. This includes, without limitation, material protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret or other intellectual property right used without proper authorization, and material that is obscene, defamatory, constitutes an illegal threat, or violates export control laws.
  9. Sending Unsolicited Bulk Email (“UBE”, “spam”). The sending of any form of Unsolicited Bulk Email through Quest Records & Reporting, LLC’s servers is prohibited. Likewise, the sending of UBE from another service provider advertising a web site, email address or utilizing any resource hosted on Quest Records & Reporting, LLC’s servers is prohibited. Quest Records & Reporting, LLC accounts or services may not be used to solicit customers from, or collect replies to, messages sent from another Internet Service Provider where those messages violate either this Policy or that of the other provider.
  10. Running Unconfirmed Mailing Lists. Subscribing email addresses to any mailing list without the express and verifiable permission of the email address owner is prohibited. All mailing lists run by Quest Records & Reporting, LLC customers must be Closed-loop (“Confirmed Opt-in”). The subscription confirmation message received from each address owner must be kept on file for the duration of the existence of the mailing list. Purchasing lists of email addresses from 3rd parties for mailing to from any Quest Records & Reporting, LLC-hosted domain, or referencing any Quest Records & Reporting, LLC account, is prohibited.
  11. Running any process that listen on a network port unless first authorized by Quest Records & Reporting, LLC
  12. Running chat servers or clients, including (but not limited to) IRC servers, IRC clients, Instant Messaging proxies, and web-based chat programs.
  13. Running game servers or clients, including (but not limited to) web-based games, interactive shell games, and play-by-email games that require a process running on Company’s server.
  14. Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this AUP or the AUP of any other Internet Service Provider, which includes, but is not limited to, the facilitation of the means to send Unsolicited Bulk Email, initiation of pinging, flooding, mail-bombing, denial of service attacks.
  15. Operating an account on behalf of, or in connection with, or reselling any service to, persons or firms listed in the Spamhaus Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database at www.spamhaus.org.
  16. Unauthorized attempts by a user to gain access to any account or computer resource not belonging to that user (e.g., “cracking”).
  17. Obtaining or attempting to obtain service by any means or device with intent to avoid payment.
  18. Accessing or attempting to access your account or other Quest Records & Reporting, LLC services after you (or Company) has cancelled Customer’s account.
  19. Unauthorized access, alteration, destruction, or any attempt thereof, of any information of any Quest Records & Reporting, LLC customers or end-users by any means or device, including the use of ‘sudo’ or other privileged operating system commands.
  20. Knowingly engage in any activities designed to harass, or that will cause a denial-of-service (e.g., synchronized number sequence attacks) to any other user whether on the Quest Records & Reporting, LLC network or on another provider’s network.
  21. Using Quest Records & Reporting, LLC’s Services to interfere with the use of the Quest Records & Reporting, LLC network by other customers or authorized users.

System and Network Resource Usage

Quest Records & Reporting, LLC’s servers and networks are carefully maintained to provide optimum performance for certain types of usage; namely, serving content on the Internet. Customers are expected to operate their accounts in such a manner as to maintain system and network performance and stability. Quest Records & Reporting, LLC monitors its servers and networks carefully, and failure to comply with the following restrictions could result in the termination of service and fees assessed against your account:

  1. Excessive Processor Utilization

    Processes utilizing a significant percentage of a server’s processor will, at Quest Records & Reporting, LLC’s discretion, be terminated. Quest Records & Reporting, LLC will make every attempt to notify Customer of this process termination and the underlying reason. Quest Records & Reporting, LLC utilizes several automated tools to discover and “re-nice” these processes, and in some instances the process may be terminated automatically without warning. It is Customer’s responsibility to ensure their processes use a minimum of server resources.
  2. Excessive Network Utilization

    While Customers are allocated a certain amount of bandwidth per month; Quest Records & Reporting, LLC generally prefers not to cap Customers’ bandwidth. To this end, Customers using an excessive amount of bandwidth in a short period of time will, at Quest Records & Reporting, LLC’s discretion, be throttled or have their site and/or account otherwise rendered unusable until the Customer is able to rectify their usage.
  3. Scheduled Processes

    Scheduled processes, including (but not limited to) “cron jobs” and “at jobs”, can significantly drain server and network resources due to overuse. Customers are restricted from running any processor- or network-intensive scheduled process more than once per day. Processes which do not excessively use (at Quest Records & Reporting, LLC’s discretion) processor or network resources may be run more often, but no more than once every hour.
  4. Process Monitoring

    Using any script or program that continually monitors running processes, internal or external sites or applications, or e-mail accounts that execute at an interval of less than one hour is strictly prohibited.
  5. Long-running Processes

    Quest Records & Reporting, LLC strictly prohibits the execution of long-running processes (more than 5 minutes of CPU time) unless specifically authorized in advance by Quest Records & Reporting, LLC.
  6. Terminal/Shell Access

    As a service to Customers, to make managing their account easier, Quest Records & Reporting, LLC makes available server access via SSH (i.e.: shell accounts). Customers are prohibited from using this method of account access to attempt to access other Customers’ or Quest Records & Reporting, LLC’s accounts or information. In addition, to prevent excessive resource consumption, Customers are restricted to the use of two terminals at once and must disconnect them when not in use (Quest Records & Reporting, LLC currently allows up to 30 minutes of “idle” time before automatic disconnection.) Quest Records & Reporting, LLC may, at any time, remove access to this service to any customer for abuse, excessive utilization, any activity deemed harmful or adverse to Quest Records & Reporting, LLC or its Customers, or to improve system and network security.
  7. Spam/UCE Processing

    As a service to Customers, Quest Records & Reporting, LLC makes available a centralized spam-processing cluster to reduce the amount of incoming spam or Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE). Customers have access to tools that can further refine the spam/UCE processing Quest Records & Reporting, LLC does, but this refinement comes at the cost of increased resource utilization. Any spam/UCE processing that excessively utilizes server or network resources will be stopped.
  8. Server Processes

    Quest Records & Reporting, LLC allows some customers, with authorization, to run certain server processes (that listen on specific network ports) on its servers including, but not limited to, Lighttpd and Instiki. Customer is responsible for ensuring that these processes do not consume an inordinate amount of server or network resources. When permission is granted to run such processes, Customer is limited to only ONE such process. The privilege to run such processes may be revoked at any time.
  9. Database Access

    Database resources, including MySQL and PostgreSQL, are closely monitored by Quest Records & Reporting, LLC. Access to databases is restricted to within individual servers. Quest Records & Reporting, LLC allows Customers the ability to “tunnel” into a server via SSH for testing database connectivity from a single workstation. This access is only allowed for testing purposes and must not be used for general database access from outside of Quest Records & Reporting, LLC’s network.
  10. Number of Allowed Databases

    Customers are restricted to using only the number of databases included within their hosting plan. Any databases found that exceed this number will be deleted by Quest Records & Reporting, LLC and Quest Records & Reporting, LLC is not responsible for data loss due to databases deleted for this reason.
  11. Resolution of Problems

    All problems found by Quest Records & Reporting, LLC that are within the Customer’s control and that result in excessive server or network utilization are the responsibility of the Customer to fix. Quest Records & Reporting, LLC may, from time to time, assist Customer in researching and repairing the problem; this is done as a courtesy and does not imply that Quest Records & Reporting, LLC has taken responsibility for fixing this problem. Quest Records & Reporting, LLC may, at its discretion, remove access to the services impacted until the Customer resolves the problem.
  12. Process Limits

    Quest Records & Reporting, LLC currently limits Customers’ processes to the following resource restrictions:
    • CPU time: 20 minutes
    • Resident memory:48 megabytes
    • Virtual memory: 80 megabytes
    • Open files: 240
    • Running processes: 20

Quest Records & Reporting, LLC reserves the right to remove access to any service or feature that it feels is being abused, even if through negligence or ignorance, by the Customer.

Internet Etiquette

Each Customer is expected to execute reasonable Internet etiquette. The Customer will comply with the rules appropriate to any network to which Quest Records & Reporting, LLC may provide access. The Customer should not post, transmit, or permit Internet access to information the Customer desires to keep confidential. The Customer is not permitted to post any material that is illegal, libelous, and tortuous, indecently depicts children or is likely to result in retaliation against Quest Records & Reporting, LLC by offended users. Quest Records & Reporting, LLC reserves the right to refuse or terminate service at any time for violation of this section. This includes advertising services or sites via IRC or USENET in clear violation of the policies of the IRC channel or USENET group.

Child Pornography

Quest Records & Reporting, LLC will cooperate fully with any criminal investigation into a Customer’s violation of the Child Protection Act of 1984 concerning child pornography.

According to the Child Protection Act, child pornography includes photographs, films, video or any other type of visual presentation that shows a person who is or is depicted as being under the age of eighteen years and is engaged in or is depicted as engaged in explicit sexual activity, or any written material or visual representation that advocates or counsels sexual activity with a person under the age of eighteen years.

Email Policy

Mass Mailings

Quest Records & Reporting, LLC has a zero tolerance policy on SPAM, Junk E-mail or UCE. Spam, Junk-mail and UCE are defined as: the sending of the same, or substantially similar, unsolicited electronic mail messages, whether commercial or not, to more than one recipient. A message is considered unsolicited if it is posted in violation of a newsgroup charter or if it is sent to a recipient who has not requested or invited the message. UCE also includes e-mail with forged headers, compromised mail server relays, and false contact information. This prohibition extends to the sending of unsolicited mass mailings from another service, which in any way implicates the use of Quest Records & Reporting, LLC whether or not the message actually originated from our servers.

Mailing Lists

Quest Records & Reporting, LLC’s mass mailing rules also apply to mailing lists, list servs, or mailing services you may contract with. The policy is stated as follows: An acceptable mailing list will be focused at a targeted audience that has voluntarily signed up for your e-mail information or that has made their e-mail address available for distribution of information from you. The list must also allow for automatic removal by all end Customers with non-distribution in the future.

If your actions have caused Quest Records & Reporting, LLC mail servers or Quest Records & Reporting, LLC IP address ranges to be placed on blackhole lists and other mail filtering software systems used by companies on the internet, you will be assessed a $500 charge to your account and $300 per hour for administrative charges incurred to remove and protect mail servers and IP ranges.

Violation of the above terms will result in one or all of the following:

  • A warning via email.
  • Removal of DNS for the advertised / originating site.
  • Temporary shutdown of the server or a block on outgoing mail.
  • IP address routing to null.

Repeat violation of the above terms will result in the following actions:

  • Immediate disconnection of service with no re-connection.
  • $500 fee assessed to your account for violation.

Copyright Infringement

Quest Records & Reporting, LLC services may only be used for lawful purposes. Transmission, distribution, or storage of any information, data or material in violation of United States or state regulation or law, or by the common law, is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to, material protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret, or other intellectual property rights.

Utilizing or distributing unauthorized copies of software constitutes a violation of federal and state law. If you copy, distribute or install the software in ways that the license does not allow, you are violating federal copyright law. Quest Records & Reporting, LLC will cooperate with all law enforcement agencies in relation to alleged copyright infringement housed on our servers.

IP Allocation

Customers shall NOT use IP addresses that were not assigned to them by Quest Records & Reporting, LLC. Any account utilizing IP addresses outside of those assigned to it will be suspended from network access until such time as the IP addresses overlap can be corrected. Use of an unauthorized IP address will result in a charge of $25 per IP. Use of an unauthorized IP address creating a third party Customer outage will result in a $500 charge and termination of service until the IP allocation is resolved.

Suspension and Cancellation

Quest Records & Reporting, LLC reserves the right to suspend service to any Customer located on our servers for violation of the AUP. Quest Records & Reporting, LLC will use reasonable care in notifying the Customer and in resolving the problem in a method resulting in the least amount of service interference as reasonably possible. For single or for continued and repeated violations of the AUP or, at Quest Records & Reporting, LLC’s discretion, to prevent a violation of the AUP, Quest Records & Reporting, LLC reserves the right to:

  • Terminate service without notice for single or for continued and repeated violations of the AUP.
  • Limit Customer access to services or implement service and resource usage restrictions.
  • Ask the Customer to upgrade to a higher service plan.

Quest Records & Reporting, LLC shall the sole determiner of which of the above actions are to be taken, and can reverse or revise its decision at any time. Continued violations of the AUP resulting in cancellation of services will also result in a fee in the amount of US $500 and contract acceleration for all amounts outstanding under the contract term.