KICS: Terms of Use

Non-profits that don't have their own domain name, however, will use youraccount.kics.bc.ca.
In this case, replace youraccount with your KICS Account name.

Please review these pages carefully. If you still can't find the information you need, request assistance by submitting a Support Ticket.

	Acceptable Use Policy
	If you violate the terms of this policy, your service may be suspended or terminated at the discretion of the system administrator. Refunds will not be provided. 1. General You may not resell the services that we provide to you. For example, you cannot charge someone to host a mailing list that runs on our server. You cannot charge someone to host their web page by putting it inside your own. However, you can charge someone to advertise for them on your site. You may not do anything that is illegal in British Columbia. The remaining rules are divided into categories for convenience. Obviously, that doesn't mean you're allowed to break into other people's equipment using your email account, just because break-ins appear in the shell account category. 2. Use of email service You may not send spam. See the spam policy for more details. You may not participate in a "get rich quick" mailing list. Pyramid schemes are illegal in Canada. They don't work anyway, so you're not missing anything. You may not knowingly send a virus, trojan horse, etc. (unless, of course, you identify it as such, and only send it to someone who wants to study it and knows what to expect). Please do not forward a "virus warning" to anyone until you verify that it is real. Most are hoaxes. 3. Use of web hosting service You may not distribute copyrighted material without permission. You may not distribute any material intended to encourage hatred, violence, or crime. You may not distribute pornography. You may not distribute viruses, trojan horses, etc. See above. You may not use spam to advertise your web site (even if you send your spam from someone else's mail server). 4. Use of shell accounts You may not break into our equipment. You may not use our equipment to help you break into anyone else's. ("Breaking in" is defined broadly, to include any attempt to use resources without explicit or implicit permission from the owner. For example, a denial of service attack counts as breaking in.) You may not obstruct other peoples' legitimate access to our equipment. You may not use excessive computing resources. Normally, it takes some effort to break this rule on a UNIX computer. However, if you install your own programs, you should use tools like "time" and "ps" to find out how much memory and CPU time they use. 5. Publicity and Referrals If you would like to send out publicity about your web site that refers to KICS, we ask that you confine it to acknowledging KICS as your hosting provider ("hosted by KICS"). If you would like to refer to KICS in a different way ("a KICS project" or "brought to you by KICS"), please ask us first.



	Spam Policy
	1. Sending spam You may not use KICS equipment to send spam. You may not use spam to advertise a web site hosted by KICS (even if you send your spam from someone else's mail server). If you use KICS equipment to send spam, whether intentionally or not, we simply prevent your computer from connecting to our mail server. This applies to everyone: KICS members, customers, and the general public. You may apply to a review board to have service restored. Our mail server also refuses connections from publicly listed spam sources. We use several public RBL services like ordb.org, orbl.org, orbz.org, and mail-abuse.org. If you can't get off their lists, you may apply to a review board to have service restored. 2. Receiving spam If you receive spam, the easiest thing to do is delete it. If you receive spam that has passed through the KICS server on its way to you, and you wish to help us do something about it, please forward it to spam@kics.bc.ca for inspection (Note: you must forward all of the headers as well as the message itself). The headers sometimes reveal likely spam sources, which can be blacklisted automatically. You might also try an automatic spam filter. For example, your email program might be able to filter everything that contains the phrase "absolutely free" in upper case, or five consecutive exclamation points. Anything that mentions "turnkey franchise-type biz" is probably junk. 3. Identifying spam Spam is commercially motivated email that you did not explicitly request. "Opt-out mailing lists" are spam. Reputable companies require that you initiate the subscription process. They also ask you to return a confirmation message before they put you on their mailing list. That is the only way to verify that you are the same person who requested the subscription. Another common feature of legitimate bulk mail is that it tells you how to subscribe. Spammers rarely advertise a subscription address. Don't try to unsubscribe from a spam list. If it does anything at all, it will just inform the spammer that your email address is a good target because it reaches a real person. If you receive a form letter from someone you've never heard of, it's almost certainly spam. Forward it along with all original headers to spam@kics.bc.ca before you delete it. 4. Other junk: email viruses Non-commercial junk messages, like petitions and virus hoaxes, are called email viruses. The only reasonable response is to politely notify the sender, who is probably an intelligent and reasonable person with inadequate netiquette.



	Disclaimer of Liability

	KICS does not accept any liability arising from the use of this service. We do keep backups, but we can not guarantee that your data will not be lost. If your data is critically important, you should keep your own backups as well. KICS shall not be liable for damages against the customer including: loss, or expense of any kind arising out of or resulting from malfunction, delays, interruption of service, loss of business income, loss of goodwill, work stoppage, loss of data, and/or subsequent damage. Our service is extremely reliable (about 99.995% availability over the 12 months before this was written) but we can not guarantee quality of service. We take security seriously, but we can not guarantee that your private data is inaccessible to others.