Acceptable use policy

1. General Notice

Thank you for reading the Herotel Group’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).  Any reference to the Herotel Group includes reference to all of its alliance companies.

By accessing this website, or by contracting with us for service, you agree, without limitation or qualification, to be bound by this policy and the terms and conditions it contains, as well as any other additional terms, conditions, rules or policies which are displayed to you in connection with this service/website.

The purpose of this AUP is to comply with the relevant laws of the Republic of South Africa; to specify to customers and users of our service/website what activities and online behaviour are considered an unacceptable use of the service/website; to protect the integrity of our network and to specify the consequences that may flow from undertaking such prohibited activities.

This document contains a number of legal obligations which you are presumed to be familiar with.

The Herotel Group respects the rights of our customers and users of our services to freedom of speech and expression; access to information; privacy; human dignity; religion, belief and opinion in accordance with our constitution. We undertake not to interfere with any of those rights unless required to do so by law; unless those rights are exercised for unlawful purposes; or unless the exercise of those rights threatens to cause harm to another person or affect the integrity of our network.

2.1 Unlawful Use

The Herotel Group’s services/website may only be used for lawful purposes and activities. We prohibit any use of our website/network including the transmission, storage and distribution of any material or content using our network that violates any law or regulation of the Republic. This includes:

1. Any violation of local and international laws prohibiting child pornography; obscenity; discrimination (including racial, gender or religious slurs) and hate speech; or speech designed to incite violence or hatred, or threats to cause bodily harm.
2. Any activity designed to defame, abuse, stalk, harass or physically threaten any individual in the Republic or beyond its borders; including any attempt to link to, post, transmit or otherwise distribute any inappropriate or defamatory material.
3. Any violation of Intellectual Property laws including materials protected by local and international copyright, trademarks and trade secrets. Moreover the Herotel Group cannot be held liable if you make any unlawful use of any multimedia content accessed through the search facility provided by the Herotel Group’s network, or otherwise available through access to our network, whether for commercial or noncommercial purposes.
4. Any violation of the individual's right to privacy, including any effort to collect personal data of third parties without their consent.
5. Any fraudulent activity whatsoever, including dubious financial practices, such as pyramid schemes; the impersonation of another subscriber without their consent; or any attempt to enter into a transaction with the Herotel Group on behalf of another subscriber without their consent.
6. Any violation of the exchange control laws of the Republic.
7. Any activity that results in the sale, transmission or distribution of pirated or illegal software.
8. Failing to respond to a request by a recipient of unsolicited mail to be removed from any mailing or direct marketing list and continuing to send unsolicited mail following such a request for removal.

Where any user resides outside of the Republic, permanently or temporarily, such user will be subject to the laws of the country in which s/he is currently resident and which apply. On presentation of a legal order to do so, or under obligation through an order for mutual foreign legal assistance, The Herotel Group will assist foreign law enforcement agencies (LEA) in the investigation and prosecution of a crime committed using the Herotel Group’s resources, including the provisioning of all personal identifiable data.

3. Prohibited Activities

The following sections outline activities that are considered an unacceptable use of the Herotel Group’s services/network/website and also detail the guidelines for acceptable use of certain facilities/services, as the case may be.

3.1 Threats to Network Security

Any activity which threatens the functioning, security and/or integrity of the Herotel Group’s network is unacceptable. This includes:

1. Any efforts to attempt to gain unlawful and unauthorised access to the network or circumvent any of the security measures established by the Herotel Group for this goal;
2. Any effort to use the Herotel Group’s equipment to circumvent the user authentication or security of any host, network or account ("cracking" or "hacking");
3. Forging of any TCP-IP packet header (spoofing) or any part of the header information in an email or a newsgroup posting;
4. Any effort to breach or attempt to breach the security of another user or attempt to gain access to any other person's computer, software, or data without the knowledge and consent of such person;
5. Any activity which threatens to disrupt the service offered by the Herotel Group through "denial of service attacks"; flooding of a network, or overloading a service or any unauthorised probes ("scanning" or "nuking") of others' networks;
6. Any activity which in any way threatens the security of the network by knowingly posting, transmitting, linking to or otherwise distributing any information or software which contains a virus; Trojan horse; worm, lock, mail bomb, cancelbot or other harmful, destructive or disruptive component.
7. Any unauthorised monitoring of data or traffic on the network without the Herotel Group’s explicit, written consent.
8. Any unsolicited mass mailing activity including direct marketing; spam and chain letters for commercial or other purposes, without the consent of the recipients of those mails.

3.2 Public Space and Third-Party Content and sites

In reading this AUP or in signing a service contract with the Herotel Group, you acknowledge that the Herotel Group has no power to control the content of the information passing over the Internet and its applications, including e-mail; chat rooms; news groups; or other similar fora, and that the Herotel Group cannot be held responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any of the abovementioned content, in any way for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of, or in connection with your use of, or reliance on, any such content.

Our services also offer access to numerous third-party webpages. You acknowledge that we exercise absolutely no control over such third-party content, or sites and in such cases, our network is merely a conduit or means of access and transmission. This includes, but is not limited to, third party content contained on or accessible through the Herotel Group network websites and web pages or sites displayed as search results or contained within a directory of links on the Herotel Group network. 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.

Access to public Internet spaces, such as bulletin boards, Usenet groups, chat rooms and moderated forums is entirely voluntary and at your own risk.

The Herotel Group’s 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.

3.3 Usenet Newsgroups

The customer is responsible for determining and familiarizing himself or herself with the written policies of a given newsgroup before posting to it.

The customer must comply with these guidelines at all times which can be obtained from other users of the newsgroup upon request, or from the group's administrators/moderators.

The following are prohibited practices with regard to Usenet newsgroups and the Herotel Group reserves the right to delete and/or cancel posts which violate the following conditions:

1. Excessive cross-posting of the same article to multiple newsgroups.
2. Posting of irrelevant or off-topic material to newsgroups (also known as USENET spam).
3. Posting binaries to a non-binary newsgroup.
4. Posting adverts, solicitations, or any other commercial messages unless the guidelines of the newsgroup in question explicitly permit them.

3.4 Unsolicited, Spam and Junk mail

Spam and unsolicited bulk mail are highly problematic practices. They affect the use and enjoyment of services by others and often compromise network security. The Herotel Group will take swift and firm action against any user engaging in any of the following unacceptable practices:

1. Sending unsolicited bulk mail for marketing or any other purposes (political, religious or commercial) to people who have not consented to receiving such mail;
2. Operating or maintaining mailing lists without the express permission of all recipients listed;
3. Failing to promptly remove from lists invalid or undeliverable addresses or addresses of unwilling recipients or a recipient who has indicated s/he wishes to be removed from such list;
4. Using the Herotel Group’s service to collect responses from unsolicited e-mail sent from accounts on other Internet hosts or e-mail services, that violate this AUP or the AUP of any other Internet service provider;
5. Including the Herotel Group’s name in the header or by listing an IP address that belongs to the Herotel Group in any unsolicited email whether sent through the Herotel Group’s network or not;
6. 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. The Herotel Group reserves the right to examine users' mail servers to confirm that no mails are being sent from the mail server through public relay and the results of such checks can be made available to the user. The Herotel Group also reserves the right to examine the mail servers of any users using the Herotel Group’s mail servers for "smarthosting" (when the user relays its mail via a the Herotel Group mail server to a mail server of its own or vica-versa) or similar services at any time to ensure that the servers are properly secured against public relay. All relay checks will be done in strict accordance with the Herotel Group’s privacy policy.

3.5 Spam/virus Filtering

The Herotel Group provides a spam and virus filtering system to protect customers from unsolicited mail and viruses. The customer acknowledges that this system might incorrectly identify a valid message as spam or as a virus and consequently this message might not be delivered to the customer. The customer acknowledges and agrees that the Herotel Group shall without limitation have no responsibility for, or liability in respect of any data lost as a result of this system.

The Herotel Group reserves the right to examine incoming or outgoing mail to the extent necessary to determine if it is classified as spam.

3.6 Webmail

Webmail and other web based email services made available by the Herotel Group are provided on an "as is" basis without representations, warranties or conditions of any kind, and the customer acknowledges and agrees that the Herotel Group shall have no responsibility for, or liability in respect of, any aspect of the Webmail services, including without limitation for any lost or damaged data or any acts or omissions of the Herotel Group. As webmail storage space is limited, some Webmail messages may not be processed due to space constraints or message limitations.

Webmail is provided to individuals and for personal use only. Any unauthorised commercial use of the Webmail service, or resale of the Webmail service is expressly prohibited.

4. Abuse of the Service(s)

The Herotel Group reserves the right to establish policies, rules and limitations concerning the use of any Herotel Group service in order to inter alia, detect and prevent abuse of a service and protect the integrity of the Herotel Group network.

The Herotel Group reserves the right to monitor its network for excessive usage and may, in its sole discretion, impose limitations on bandwidth.  Users are required to comply with any such bandwidth limitations imposed by the Herotel Group.  Failure to do so may result in the restriction, termination or suspension of your service.

Unless a user subscribes to a business package and the user is permitted in terms of such business package, users –

• may not use any service for anything other than the user’s personal use; and
• may not resell any services;
• may not receive any charge or benefit for the use of the service; and
• may not provide Internet access or any other feature of the service to any third party or in any way exploit the service for commercial benefit.

If the Herotel Group has reason to believe, in its own discretion, that a user is acting in violation of this clause in any way, the Herotel Group may take steps to:

• limit throughput;
• prevent or limit the service through specific ports or communication protocols; and/or
• suspend or completely terminate the service in respect of users who grossly abuse the network through improper or excessive usage.

5. Protection of Minors

The Herotel Group prohibits customers from using the Herotel Group’s service 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.

6. Privacy and Confidentiality

The Herotel Group respects the privacy and confidentiality of our customers and users of our service. Please review our privacy policy which details how we collect and use personal information gathered in the course of operating this service.

7. User Responsibilities

Customers are responsible for any misuse of the Herotel Group’s services that occurs through the customer's account. It is the customer's responsibility to ensure that unauthorised persons do not gain access to or misuse the Herotel Group’s service.

The Herotel Group urges customers not to reply to unsolicited mail or "spam", not to click on any suggested links provided in the unsolicited mail. Doing so remains the sole responsibility of the customer and the Herotel Group cannot be held liable for the Customer being placed on any bulk mailing lists as a result.

Where the customer has authorised a minor to use any of the Herotel Group’s services or access its websites, you accept that as the parent/legal guardian of that minor, you are fully responsible for: the online conduct of such minor; controlling the minor's access to and use of any services or websites; and the consequences of any misuse by the minor, including but not limited to transactions entered into by the minor using such access.

The Herotel Group cannot be held liable for any business dealings you have with any third parties on the Internet, including any vendors, or advertisers found on, or through, the Herotel Group network. Further, the Herotel Group assumes no responsibility whatsoever for any charges you or any user of your account incurs when making purchases or other transactions in this manner. Further, the responsibility for ensuring compliance with all applicable customs and exchange control laws in connection with any such transactions shall be the customer's.

8. Notice and Take-down Procedures

The Herotel Group confirms that it has a procedure in place for the notice and take-down of illegal material. In compliance with section 77 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (No. 25 of 2002) the designated agent for this process is the Internet Service Providers’ Association. ISPA can be reached at 010 500 1200 or [email protected]. The notice and take-down procedure can be viewed at http://www.ispa.org.za/code.

Customers are also notified of the content and procedures of the ISPA Code of Conduct which may be used against any Internet service provider who fails to comply with the code of conduct. We urge you to familiarise yourselves with this code.

9.1 Complaints and procedures

It is the customer's responsibility to familiarise himself or herself with the procedure set out below and report any cases of violation of this AUP to the Herotel Group’s designated complaints handling agent.

Please note that the Herotel Group cannot handle complaints concerning networks or users that do not have service contracts with us or our affiliates, or are outside of our control.

In order for the Herotel Group to thoroughly investigate the complaint and take appropriate action, all complaints must be in writing, via fax or e-mail and contain as much information as possible, including, but not limited to:

1. the origin of abuse or offence, including the website, full mail headers, relevant logfile extracts etc;
2. any contact details for the source of the complaint;
3. a brief explanation why the incident is considered to be an offence.

The Herotel Group discourages anonymous complaints being made via this service, and urges complainants to supply their name and contact details to us. Such information will not be released, except where required by law enforcement. Anonymous complaints will however be acted upon as long as sufficient detail as outlined above is supplied.

9.2 Action following breach of the AUP

Upon receipt of a complaint, or having become aware of an incident, the Herotel Group may take any of the following steps:

1. In the case of a network, inform the user's network administrator of the incident and request the network administrator or network owner to deal address the incident in terms of this AUP and the ISPA Code of Conduct;
2. In severe cases suspend access of the user's entire network until abuse can be prevented by appropriate means;
3. In the case of individual users, warn the user; suspend the user's account and/or revoke or cancel the user's network access privileges completely;
4. In all cases, charge the offending parties for administrative costs as well as for machine and human time lost due to the incident;
5. Assist other networks or website administrators in investigating credible suspicions of any activity listed in this AUP;
6. Institute civil or criminal proceedings;
7. Share information concerning the incident with other Internet access providers, or publish the information, and/or make available the users' details to law enforcement agencies.

10. Reservation and Non Waiver of Rights

The Herotel Group reserves the right to amend or alter this policy at any time, and without notice to you.

The Herotel Group reserves the right to take action against any individuals, companies or organizations that violate any of the prohibited activities set out herein, or engage in any illegal or unlawful activity while accessing our services, to the fullest extent of the law.

The Herotel Group reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to act against other types of abuse not listed in this document and to investigate or prevent illegal activities being committed over our network.

The Herotel Group reserves the right to monitor user and network traffic for site security purposes and prevent any unauthorised attempts to tamper with our site or cause damage to our property.

The Herotel Group reserves the right to suspend, revoke or cancel the Herotel Group’s services to the customer/user if the safety and integrity of the Herotel Group’s resources are placed at risk in continuing to provide service to the subscriber/user.

The Herotel Group reserves the right to remove any information or materials in whole or in part, that, in the Herotel Group’s sole discretion, is deemed to be offensive, indecent, or otherwise objectionable.

The Herotel Group does not undertake to guarantee the security of any data passing through its networks. Although the Herotel Group will provide a "best effort" service, including regular updates on computer viruses and other threats to security of data, it is the responsibility of the communicating parties to safeguard their data, and the Herotel Group cannot be held liable for any loss or damage arising as result of the failure to do so.

The Herotel Group does not waive its right to enforcement of this AUP at any time, or prejudice its right to take subsequent action, should the Herotel Group fail, neglect or elect not to enforce a breach of the AUP at any time.