Suso Virtual Private Server AUP version 1.2

Preamble

In all honesty, we really would rather not have an Acceptable Use Policy, but unfortunately there are those in this world that feel the need to take advantage of people's good will and ruin services such as Suso at the expense of others who use and respect it.

To keep things fair, this agreement was developed and reviewed by the staff of Suso and several long standing Suso citizens.

Also, since typical legal speak can be difficult to read and understand, we have written this out in Plain English to make it actually worth reading. Enjoy!

Introduction

1. suso.com is a wholly owned subsidiary of Suso Technology Services, Inc., a privately held corporation.
2. The provider, owner and maintainer or suso.com services is Suso Technology Services, Inc. In this document we refer to the suso.com business as suso.com, suso.org, Suso web hosting, Suso Technology Services, Inc. or we. We will refer to this document as the AUP, meaning Acceptable Use Policy.
3. This agreement is between Suso Technology Services, Inc. and the customer, afterwards referred to as you or the customer.
4. This AUP refers to Virtual Private Server service, which may also be called server, virtual host, virtual server, virtualization, Xen host or Xen server and may also be placed with the brands and terms Xen, KVM, VirtualBox and VMware. The virtual private server service is defined as us providing an isolated virtual server on a host physical machine, bandwidth and IP addresses for your server in order to provide network and Internet services. This often takes the form of a web or mail server.
5. If you use this service, you automatically agree to the terms of this Acceptable Use Policy or AUP. For all current customers when this acceptable use policy has been enacted, your continued use of virtual private servers after this date constitutes your acceptance of these policies and this agreement.
6. This service comes with a Suso shared hosting account at no additional charge. That account and any other Suso accounts are subject to the "Suso Shared Web Hosting Account AUP" available at http://www.suso.com/legal/aup.php.
7. We may change this AUP from time to time and you will be responsible for knowing the terms of newer versions. We will let you know at least 7 days before the new version takes affect and how you can read the new version.
   

   Your use of our services

8. Suso Technology Services, Inc. has the right to refuse or terminate service to anyone for any reason. This includes technical limitations, financial reasons, inability to provide such services or your stated or implied intentions.
9. You must be eighteen years of age to use this service.
10. The use of any Microsoft Windows operating system or derivative on your server is strongly discouraged. You are encouraged to use a distribution of Linux, FreeBSD or other unix variant on an x86 32 or 64-bit architecture. A version of Mac OS X is acceptable as well. This is for the security of our network and simplicity of support. The only exception we will grant for this is if you are a trained and certified Windows System Administrator and will be remaining the primary administrator for the server.
11. You are responsible for making sure that all software on your server is kept up to date and free of known security weaknesses. This means that you need to stay informed about security weaknesses in all software that you use and fix vulnerabilities as soon as possible. We can provide this service for you at a reasonable monthly cost, contact us for details.
12. Your server and its services cannot use the resources of our network in ways that it causes degradation of service for other customers of Suso Technology Services, Inc. or of the Internet in general. It is at Suso's discretion what is to be considered a degradation of service.
13. The nature of a VPS host is that you are contending for resources with other VPS hosts on the same physical machine. This works best when the server is not accessing the disk frequently. Since swap space is a form of disk IO and significant use of swap space can degrade everyone's performance, Suso can ask you to turn off your swap space if you do not reduce the amount of memory that processes on your virtual host use.
14. You must not use any software on your server to send unsolicited mail (spam) to other accounts on the Internet or Suso accounts.

      (Warning: If you spam others from your virtual server, it will be turned off
      immediately and we may take further action to make it difficult for you to get an
      account other places and/or press charges against you.  It depends on the
      situation.)
    

15. If your service is terminated, you have the right to the data on your server that is considered your own, provided that we are able to retrieve it for you. Any software and data on the server will be backed up and provided to you at your request and using a reasonable medium provided by you, such as CD or DVD recordable discs, external hard drive or backup tape. No regular periodic backup of customer owned servers will be performed unless requested and paid for.
16. Sometimes we need to fix equipment, restart or move network equipment, make changes to the rack space arrangement or move your equipment. During any such planned change or outage, you will be notified at least 24 hours before such changes are made. We are not responsible for lost connections, money or time resulting from such changes and outages. Whenever the total downtime from an outage on our part exceeds 24 hours, your service cost will be pro-rated for that month based on the price of your services.
17. The base price of a virtual private server includes a set amount of memory and disk space. This extra memory and disk space can be increased at an extra charge. Contact us for details.
18. If your server transfers more than the agreed upon per month bandwidth limit during one month, you will be subject to a charge of $1 per 1GB per month for every gigabyte over the limit. Here, GB and gigabyte both refer to 2³⁰ bytes, which is 1,073,741,824 bytes. Thus, a limit of 50 gigabytes is 150 * 1,073,741,824 = 53,687,091,200 bytes.
    You can check how much bandwidth your server receives and sends by going to the Suso account control center available from the main Suso website at http://www.suso.com/. The official count of your bandwidth usage is done by a custom program written by us that calculates the difference in your network interface byte counter every five minutes. This official amount is shown in the account control panel. Any reset of the byte counter as a result of rebooting or rollovers will be treated as a 0 byte difference from the previous reading. The source code for the custom program is available upon request.
19. We work hard to ensure that the Suso network is at minimal risk from software attacks. We ask that you take the security of your server seriously by keeping programs that you use up to date with the latest patch levels. If you fail to keep your server updated, we reserve the right to turn it off and cancel your service on the basis that you are a liability on Suso's network. If you need help doing upgrades, Suso can provide this service to you at an additional cost, contact us for details. In addition to one of the above, we may also scan the services that your server runs periodically to make sure that there are no visible external vulnerabilities. This is not in any way used to invade on your privacy, use your services or watch what you are doing with your server. It is only to ensure that the vulnerability of the Suso network is kept to a minimum. A list of the services that will be scanned is available from us.
20. The server facilities are not publicly accessible and you will not be given a key to the building, server room or rack. All access to the rack and facilities is done through us. When you sign up for colocation service, you will be given a way to contact us 24 hours a day so that you can access your server in the event of an emergency or for maintenance access. During any emergency or maintenance access, you will be escorted in the room.
21. Unless specified otherwise, we will allocate 1 usable IP address for you to use with your server unless otherwise specified. Additional IPs can be provided at a monthly rate. See our website for details and pricing. These IPs are not transferable if you terminate your service with us.
22. Your virtual private server runs along with others on a physical host. This physical equipment is not yours and will not be transferred to you if you terminate your service with us.
23. We will be in control of the reverse DNS for the IP addresses that we provide for you. You need to give us the names that you want to use for each IP at least 24 hours in advance of the change.
24. Forward DNS such as domains can either be stored on our name servers or your own. Please let us know what you prefer when you setup your server. Suso needs to be notified at least 24 hours in advance of any forward DNS change.
    

    Billing

25. You will receive an invoice every month if you have a positive account balance. You are responsible for checking this invoice and making sure that you can access the invoice and that it is accurate. By default the invoice is sent to your main Suso account as well as the contact e-mail you provided us when you signed up for an account. If need to have invoices sent to other e-mail addresses, you must contact billing@suso.org.
26. If you have a question about your invoice, please let us know immediately so that we may help you better.
27. Billing is done during the first week of the month, you may receive your invoice as much as one week later though. All accounts are billed for the current month of service. Some invoice items such as bandwidth charges are billed for the previous month because they are based on account statistics gathered for the previous month.
28. If your server is not installed by the end of the first day of the month, then the first partial month will be pro-rated based on the services that you have subscribed to.
29. You must pay for your account balance before the first day of the month after the invoice was sent. After the 1st of the month after the invoice was sent the payment will be considered late. You have until the 15th of that month to pay for your invoice or your service will be disabled.
30. Monthly services and the billing for services on your account will automatically renew at the end of each term unless you make a prior written arrangement with us. Written arrangement can be made either in person at our office or through an e-mail to billing@suso.org.
31. The prices for your subscribed services will never increase within any 1 year period. You will be given no less than a 3 month notice before your service prices do change. If you subscribe to additional services, or if you remove and re-add a service, or if your service is disabled, removed and re-enabled or re-added, you are subject to the service pricing that is effective at that time.
32. Payment shall be made in one of the following ways:
    1. Through Paypal payment to 'suso@suso.org'
    2. Check by postal mail to the following address:

           Suso Technology Services, Inc.
           P.O. Box 3476
           Bloomington, IN 47402
       

       Make checks payable to: Suso Technology Services, Inc.
    3. By credit card, check or cash in person at our office:

           101 W. Kirkwood Ave., Suite 222
           Fountain Square Mall
           Bloomington, IN 47404
       

    4. Through arranged recurring payment via credit card. Contact us at billing@suso.org for information about this.
    Please include the full name of the person listed on the account and the invoice items that you are paying for on any payment you make.
33. Any unused balance on your account will be prorated and refunded if you cancel your service. Refunds can only be given for the cost of services that we provide. We cannot give full or partial refunds for setup fees, labor, equipment costs, domain registration, SSL certificate registration or any other service or material that we must pay to a 3rd party for your service. Any 3rd party resources will be indicated to you when the estimate for your service is made.
34. If you would like to cancel your service, please contact us at least 14 days prior to the 1st of the next month to cancel your service. Please send an e-mail notification to billing@suso.org and/or a letter to the following address:

        Suso Technology Services, Inc.
        P.O. Box 3476
        Bloomington, IN 47404
    

35. Please let us know if your address, name or other information related to your account has changed. You are responsible for notifying us if any information that is important for billing or tracking your account has changed.
    

    Liability

36. We are not liable or responsible for lost connectivity, data, money or time as a result of your usage of your server. You are responsible for keeping your own backups. We can provide backup services for you, please contact us if you are interested.
37. By using Suso's services you waive the right to sue us for any loss of data, service or other damages.
38. We are not responsible or liable for problems that we cannot control such as fire, flood earthquake, tornado and other acts of nature.
39. If some part of this agreement is found to be unlawful or not enforceable by law, then only that part shall be invalid, the rest of the agreement is still in effect.
40. Your use of our services is governed by laws in your area and in the United States, the State of Indiana and the City of Bloomington.
41. Domain names are under the terms and conditions of the registrar that they are registered through or the governing body for them.
42. Signed SSL certificates are under the terms and conditions of the certificate authority they are signed through.