Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)

1.          Introduction

Exchanging email with other Internet users is generally a matter of common sense and courtesy to others.

We assume the majority of AirPower customers are able to use their own sense of what is appropriate to guide their online behavior. From time to time however, we will have customers that decide that it would be fun to abuse this service with bulk mailings, unsolicited email and other forms of abuse.

It is not always obvious whether such mail is innocent, inadvertent, or intentional, however, certain activities will result in action being taken by AirPower as described in Section 3 of this document.

AirPower provides email services as a free service to the Internet community at large. AirPower reserves the right to change this Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) for email services at their sole discretion and without prior notice. Any decision made by AirPower in relation to this service shall be final on all matters.

2.           What Constitutes Email Abuse?

Email Abuse is an abuse of mail facilities and not necessarily abuse on the Internet. To qualify as Email Abuse, an act must be unwelcome as well as interfere with an individual or group of individuals in some specific way. Abuse also includes activities that are illegal or dishonest.

Under the terms of this AUP, Email Abuse includes, but is not limited to, the following:

o               Chain Letters and Ponzi Pyramid-Selling Schemes.
Such messages work (or rather, don't work) in much the same way as their paper-based cousins. The most common example of this in email is 'Make Money Fast' - gifting programs or reports purchasing programs that try to convince the reader that they will become fabulously wealthy by sending other people money. In addition to being a waste of resources, such messages are illegal in certain countries. Protecting people from these sorts of email is the primary reason AirPower exists in the first place.

o               Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE).
Unsolicited Commercial Email is advertising material received by email without the recipient either requesting such information or otherwise expressing an interest in the material advertised.

o               Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE).
Similar to the above UCE but not attempting to sell anything. Its sole purpose is usually to generate traffic to a website.

o               Forged Headers and / or Addresses.
Forging headers or messages means sending mail such that its origin appears to be another user or machine, or a non-existent machine. It is also forgery to arrange for any replies to the mail to be sent to some other user or machine, or to use a AirPower account as a drop box for such activities. However, in either case, if prior permission has been granted to you by the other user or the administrators of the other machine, then there is no problem.

o               Mail Bombing.
Mail bombing is the sending of multiple emails, or one large email, with the sole intent of annoying and/or causing the corruption of the email box of a fellow Internet user. Due to the time taken to download it, sending long email to sites without prior agreement can amount to denial of service, or access to email at the receiving site. Note that if binary attachments are added to mail this may increase the size considerably.

o               Denial of Service attacks.
Denial of Service is any activity designed to prevent a specific host on the Internet making full and effective use of their facilities. This includes, but is not limited to:

§                 Mail bombing an address in such a way to make their Internet access impossible, difficult, or costly.

§                 Opening an excessive number of mail connections to the same host.

§                 Intentionally sending email designed to damage the receiver's systems when interpreted; for example, sending malicious programs or viruses attached to an email.

§                 Using a smarthost or SMTP relay without authorization to do so.

3.           What AirPower will do

Serious Email Abuse via AirPower accounts will result in the following action:

First offense.

o               The offending account will be suspended and access will not be available.

o               The customer will be required to contact abuse@AirPower.com and convince a senior member of staff that there will be no further breaches of the Acceptable Use Policies from the account.

o               If the customer fails to contact AirPower within 7 days, the account may be terminated.

o               Should it, in the sole opinion of AirPower, be considered necessary, then a public announcement will be made and this will include the disclosure of any and all information revealing the sender's identity.

Second offense.

o               The customer account will be terminated immediately.

o               Should it, in the sole opinion of AirPower, be considered necessary, then a public announcement will be made and this will include the disclosure of any and all information revealing the sender's identity.

o               Legal action against the customer will ensue.

4.           Conclusion

The resources we have at AirPower are free for our customers' use within the guidelines we have set. This does not mean that we allow, condone, give permission to, or support the use of our services outside of our guidelines. If you abuse our services, you will be stealing from our company. AirPower will not tolerate theft of resources.