Acceptable Use Policy
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This policy outlines the acceptable use of Bubblehost services and the activities that are prohibited on our hosting platform. It exists to protect our customers, our network, and the wider internet community.
This Acceptable Use Policy applies to everyone who uses our services, including shared hosting, WordPress hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, email and domains. It also applies to your end users, website visitors and, if you are a reseller, your customers. It forms part of our Terms of Service. By using our services, you agree to follow this policy.
1. Prohibited Activities
We strictly prohibit any use of our hosting services for illegal, malicious or harmful activities. This includes, but is not limited to:
1.1 Illegal Activity
- Any activity that breaks Australian law, or the laws of the country where you or your users are located
- Fraud, scams, pyramid schemes or deceptive business practices
- Selling or promoting illegal goods, drugs, weapons or services
- Hosting, sharing or linking to child sexual abuse material. This will be reported to law enforcement immediately, and the account will be terminated without notice
1.2 Network and Security Abuse
- Hacking, cracking or attempting to gain unauthorised access to any server, network, account or system, including ours and those of other customers
- Scanning networks or systems for vulnerabilities without the owner’s permission
- Launching or taking part in denial-of-service (DoS or DDoS) attacks
- Running botnets, command-and-control servers, open proxies or open mail relays
- Intercepting or monitoring data that does not belong to you
- Forging email headers, IP addresses or other network information
1.3 Malicious Software and Phishing
- Creating, hosting or distributing malware, viruses, ransomware, spyware or other harmful software
- Phishing, or creating websites that imitate banks, businesses or other organisations to trick people into giving personal information
- Hosting exploit kits, hacking tools or stolen data
1.4 Other Prohibited Uses
- Cryptocurrency mining on shared, WordPress or reseller hosting
- Using our services primarily as file storage, a backup destination, or a file-sharing or media-streaming service
- Harassing, threatening or stalking any person
- Any activity that could harm our servers, network, reputation or other customers
2. Email and Spam
We have a zero-tolerance approach to spam. You must follow the Spam Act 2003 (Cth) and any other anti-spam laws that apply to you. You must not:
- Send unsolicited bulk or commercial email (spam) from our servers, or advertise a website hosted with us through spam sent from anywhere else
- Send commercial email to people who have not consented to receive it
- Send commercial email without clearly identifying yourself and including a working unsubscribe option
- Use purchased, rented or scraped email lists
- Send large volumes of email that exceed the sending limits of your plan
- Operate mailing lists without a confirmed opt-in process
If you need to send newsletters or large mailouts, we recommend using a dedicated email marketing service. If our servers are placed on a blacklist because of email sent from your account, we may suspend your email sending until the issue is fixed, and we may charge a reasonable fee to cover the cost of removing the listing.
3. Resource Usage
Our shared, WordPress and reseller hosting plans run on servers shared with other customers. You must not misuse server resources, including CPU, memory, disk input/output, processes and bandwidth. Activities that negatively affect server stability or other customers are not allowed, including:
- Running scripts or processes that use excessive resources for long periods
- Running background services, daemons or game servers on shared hosting
- Heavy cron jobs that run too often
- Using disk space for anything other than your website and email, such as storing large archives, backups of other systems or media collections
- Unoptimised websites or plugins that repeatedly overload the server
Where a plan is described as “unlimited”, it is subject to fair use and intended for normal website use.
We may monitor resource usage to ensure fair usage and performance for everyone. If your account uses more than its fair share, we will usually contact you first to help optimise your website or suggest a more suitable plan. If your account is causing an urgent problem, such as affecting the stability of the whole server, we may limit or suspend it immediately to protect other customers and will let you know as soon as possible.
4. Content Restrictions
You are responsible for all content you and your users upload to our servers, including website content, files, comments, forum posts and emails. You must not host, publish or link to content that:
- Is illegal in Australia
- Is defamatory, or makes false claims that could harm another person’s or business’s reputation
- Promotes violence, terrorism, self-harm or hatred against people based on race, religion, gender, sexuality, disability or other characteristics
- Harasses, threatens, bullies or invades the privacy of others, including publishing someone’s personal information without permission
- Infringes copyright, trademarks or other intellectual property rights, including pirated software, films, music, books or courses
- Is misleading or deceptive, including fake reviews or false product claims
- Is sexually explicit and involves anyone under 18, or anyone who has not consented
We reserve the right to decide whether content breaches this policy, and to remove or disable access to it. Where practical, we will contact you first and give you time to fix the problem.
5. Copyright and Intellectual Property Complaints
You must follow copyright and intellectual property laws when publishing content. Only publish content you own, have created, or have permission to use.
If you believe content hosted on our services infringes your copyright or other rights, please email report@bubblehost.com.au with:
- Your name and contact details
- A description of the work you believe has been infringed
- The web address (URL) where the infringing content appears
- A statement that you are the owner of the rights, or authorised to act on the owner’s behalf
- A statement that the information in your complaint is accurate
We will review the complaint, and if appropriate, ask the customer to remove the content or respond. If the content is not removed or a valid explanation is not provided, we may disable it ourselves. Customers who repeatedly infringe intellectual property rights may have their accounts terminated.
6. Security Measures
We secure and maintain our servers and platform, but you are responsible for the security of your own account and website. You must take reasonable steps to protect them, including:
- Keeping website software, such as WordPress, themes and plugins, up to date
- Removing old, unused or abandoned software, plugins and websites
- Using strong, unique passwords for your account, control panel, databases, FTP and email, and never sharing them
- Turning on two-factor authentication where it is available
- Only installing software from trusted sources
- Keeping regular backups of your website and data
You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our servers or other customers’ accounts, bypass any security or resource limits, or test the security of our systems without our written permission.
If your website is hacked or infected with malware, we may temporarily disable the affected files or website to protect our servers and other customers. As part of our managed hosting, we will help you clean up and restore your website where reasonably possible.
7. Resellers
If you use our reseller hosting, you are responsible for making sure your customers follow this policy. You must have your own terms of service or acceptable use policy that is at least as strict as this one. Any breach by one of your customers is treated as a breach by you. We may take action directly against a customer account that breaches this policy, and we will let you know when we do.
8. Monitoring and Investigation
We do not routinely review the content of your website or email. However, we monitor our servers and network for security threats, abuse and resource usage, and we may investigate any suspected breach of this policy.
During an investigation, we may access your account and files as needed, and we may temporarily suspend services to prevent further harm. We will cooperate with law enforcement and government authorities where required by law, and we may report illegal activity to the relevant authorities.
9. Reporting Violations
If you become aware of any breach of this policy, including spam, phishing, malware, copyright infringement or a security vulnerability in our services, please report it to us immediately at report@bubblehost.com.au.
To help us investigate quickly, please include as much detail as possible, such as the website address or IP address involved, the date and time, and any evidence such as email headers or screenshots. We treat all reports seriously and confidentially. We may not always be able to tell you the outcome, due to privacy reasons.
10. Consequences of Violation
Breaches of this policy may lead to a range of actions, depending on how serious the breach is and whether it has happened before. These may include:
- A warning and a request to fix the problem within a set time
- Removal or disabling of the content involved
- Temporary limits on resources or email sending
- Suspension of your services
- Termination of your account without a refund
- Reporting the activity to law enforcement, and taking legal action to recover any costs or damages
We assess each situation individually and take appropriate action to maintain the integrity of our services and protect our users. In serious cases, such as illegal content, phishing, malware or attacks on other systems, we may suspend or terminate services immediately without notice.
You will be responsible for any reasonable costs we incur because of your breach, such as cleaning up malware, removing blacklist entries or dealing with abuse complaints.
11. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Acceptable Use Policy to reflect changes in our practices, or for legal, operational or regulatory reasons. Updates will be posted on this page and the “Last updated” date will be changed. We may not always give prior notice of changes, so it is your responsibility to review this policy periodically to make sure you stay compliant.
12. Contact Us
If you have any questions about this policy, please contact us:
- Report abuse: report@bubblehost.com.au
- General support: support@bubblehost.com.au
- Phone: +61 474 384 572
- Mail: Unit 1, 32 Roberts Street, Moora WA 6510, Australia
