2. Unacceptable Use and Prohibited Activities
2.1 Synergetix’s product and services may only be used for lawful purposes and activities. Synergetix prohibits any use of its services and products, including the transmission, distribution and storage of any material or content using Synergetix’s network that transgress, violate or are in non-compliance with any laws of South Africa, including, but not limited to:
2.1.1 any violation of with local and international laws prohibiting child pornography, obscenity, discrimination (including racial, gender or religious slurs), hate speech, speech designed to incite violence, intimidation or hatred and exchange control ;
2.1.2 any activity designed to defame, abuse, stalk, harass or physically threaten any individual in South Africa or beyond its borders; including any attempt to link to, post, transmit or otherwise distribute any inappropriate or defamatory material;
2.1.3 any infringement on intellectual property rights and copyright laws including materials protected by local and international copyright, trademarks and trade secrets and furthermore including any sale, transmission or distribution of pirated or illegal software, video and/or voice content and recordings;
2.1.4 any violation of another’s right to privacy, including any effort to collect personal data of third parties without their consent or contrary to the applicable data privacy laws;
2.1.5 any fraudulent activity, including dubious financial practices, such as pyramid schemes; the impersonation of another customer without their consent; or any attempt to enter into a transaction or agreement with Synergetix on behalf of another customer without their consent; and
2.1.6 any activity which threatens the functioning, security or integrity of Synergetix’s network and services including, but not limited to:
2.1.6.1 any efforts to attempt to gain unlawful and unauthorised access to the network or circumvent any of the security measures established by Synergetix;
2.1.6.2 any effort to use Synergetix’s services, equipment and products to circumvent the user authentication or security of any host, network or account (“cracking” or “hacking”);
2.1.6.3 forging of any TCP/IP packet headers (“spoofing”) or any part of the headers of an email or a newsgroup posting;
2.1.6.4 any effort to breach or attempt to breach the security of another customer or attempt to gain access to any other person’s computer, software, or data without the knowledge and consent of such person;
2.1.6.5 any activity which threatens to disrupt the services offered by Synergetix through “denial of service attacks” (“DOS”/“DDOS”), flooding of a network, overloading a service or any unauthorised probes (“scanning” or “nuking”) of others’ networks;
2.1.6.6 any activity which in any way threatens the security of Synergetix’s network by knowingly posting, transmitting, linking to or otherwise distributing any information or software, which contains a virus, trojan horse, worm, lock, mailbom, cancelbot, malware, botnet or other harmful, destructive or disruptive component;
2.1.6.7 unauthorised access, use, probe, scan of monitoring of a systems security or authentication measures, data or traffic, without Synergetix’s explicit, written consent;
2.1.6.8 running services and applications with known vulnerabilities and weaknesses, e.g. insufficient anti-automation attacks, any traffic amplification attacks, including recursive DNS attacks and SMTP relay attacks; and
2.1.6.9 employing posts or programs which consume excessive CPU time or storage space, permits the use of mail services, mail forwarding capabilities, POP accounts, or auto responders other than for their own account; or resale of access to CGI scripts installed on our servers.
2.2 Spam and Unsolicited Electronic Mail
It is contrary to Synergetix’s policy for customers to use our servers to effect or participate in any of the following activities:
2.2.1 sending unsolicited bulk mail for marketing, commercial or any other purposes (political, religious or commercial) to persons (natural and juristic) who/which have not consented to receiving such mail;
2.2.2 using any part of Synergetix’s infrastructure for the purpose of unsolicited bulk mail, whether sending, receiving, bouncing, or facilitating such mail;
2.2.3 operating or maintaining mailing lists without the express permission of all recipients listed. In particular, Synergetix does not permit the sending of “opt-out” mail, where the recipient must opt out of receiving mail which they did not request. For all lists, the sender must maintain meaningful records of when and how each recipient requested mail. Synergetix may also monitor customers deemed to be operating “cleaning lists”, which is using illegally obtained email addresses, but removing addresses as complaints arise. Should Synergetix, at its discretion, believe that this is the case, it will be treated as SPAM.
2.2.4 failing to promptly remove from lists invalid or undeliverable addresses or addresses of unwilling recipients or a recipient who has indicated he/she wishes to be removed from such list, or failing to provide the recipient with a facility to opt-out;
2.2.5 using Synergetix’s service to collect responses from unsolicited email sent from accounts on other Internet hosts or e-mail services that violate this AUP or the AUP of any other Internet service provider;
2.2.6 advertising any facility on Synergetix’s infrastructure in unsolicited bulk mail (e.g. a web site advertised in spam);
2.2.7 including Synergetix’s name in the header or by listing an IP address that belongs to Synergetix in any unsolicited email whether sent through Synergetix’s network or not; and
2.2.8 failure to secure a customer’s mail server against public relay as a protection to themselves and the broader Internet community. Public relay occurs when a mail server is accessed by a third party from another domain and utilised to deliver mails, without the authority or consent of the owner of the mail-server. Mail servers that are unsecured against public relay often become abused by unscrupulous operators for spam delivery and upon detection such delivery must be disallowed.
2.3 Public Space and Third Party Content and sites
2.3.1 Synergetix has no power to control the content of the information passing over the internet and its applications, including third party websites (whether accessible through the Synergetix network websites; contained within a directory of links on the Synergetix network or sites displayed as search results); e-mail; chat rooms; news groups; or other similar fora and our network is merely a conduit or means of access and transmission. Synergetix will not be held liable, whether directly or indirectly, for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of, or in connection with your use of, or reliance on, any of the abovementioned content.
2.3.2 Access to public internet spaces, such as bulletin boards, Usenet groups, chat rooms and moderated forums, is entirely voluntary and at your own risk. It remains your responsibility to review and evaluate any such content, and that any and all risk associated with the use of, or reliance on, such content rests with you.
2.3.3 Synergetix employees do not moderate any of these services, or your communications, transmissions or use of these services. We do not undertake any responsibility for any content contained therein, or for any breaches of your right to privacy that you may experience as a result of accessing such spaces.
2.4 Usenet Newsgroups
The customer is responsible for determining and familiarising himself with the written policies of a newsgroup before posting to it or participating in any discussions. The customer must abide by these rules at all times, which can be obtained from the group’s administrators/moderators, upon request. The following are prohibited practices with regard to Usenet newsgroups and Synergetix reserves the right to delete and/or cancel posts which violate the following conditions:
2.4.1 excessive cross-posting of the same article to multiple newsgroups;
2.4.2 posting of irrelevant or off-topic material to newsgroups (also known as USENET spam);
2.4.3 posting binaries to a non-binary newsgroup; and
2.4.4 posting adverts, solicitations, or any other commercial messages unless the guidelines of the newsgroup in question explicitly permit them.
2.5 Protection of Minors
Synergetix prohibits customers from using Synergetix’s services to harm or attempt to harm a minor, including, but not limited to, by hosting, possessing, disseminating, distributing or transmitting material that is unlawful, including child pornography.