Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) | Privacy

Sheer Web Host provides Internet World Wide Web page hosting, Marketing, and Development. Sheer Web Host has certain legal and ethical responsibilities consisting with the use of its server and equipment involved in these services.

Sheer Web Host general policy is to act as a provider of Internet presence. Sheer Web Host reserves the right to suspend or cancel a customer's access to any or all services provided by Sheer Web Host when we decide that the account has been inappropriately used.

Server Abuse

Unauthorized use of other people's accounts or computers Sheer Web Host will strongly react to any use or attempted use of an Internet account or computer without the owner's authorization. Such attempts include "Internet scamming" (tricking other people into releasing their passwords), password robbery, security hole scanning etc.

Any unauthorized use of accounts or computers by a Sheer Web Host customer, whether or not the attacked account or computer belongs to Sheer Web Host, will result in action against the attacker. Possible actions include warnings, account suspension or cancellation, and civil or criminal legal action, depending on the seriousness of the attack.

IMPORTANT NOTE - Sheer Web Host has the right to discontinue service, or deny access to anyone who violates our Policies or the terms and conditions shown below WITHOUT WARNING OR PRIOR NOTICE. No refunds of fees paid will be made if account termination is due to violation of the terms outlined below.

Customers may not run IRC, bots or clients on shared servers. Unacceptable uses also include, but are NOT limited to: Bulk emailing, unsolicited emailings, newsgroup spamming, pornographic content, illegal content, copyright infringement, trademark infringement, warez, cracks, software serial numbers, and/or anything else determined by Sheer Web Host to be unacceptable use of Sheer Web Host's services including abuse of server resources.

Shared hosting accounts may be terminated that include the following content or which have links to the following content: Providing material that is grossly offensive to the Web community including blatant expressions of bigotry, racism, hatred, or profanity Promoting or providing instructional information about illegal activities, or promoting physical harm or injury against any group or individual Displaying material containing obscene nudity or pornographic material (not applicable to managed dedicated servers) Displaying material that exploits children under 18 years of age Acts of copyright infringement including offering pirated computer programs or links to such programs, information used to circumvent manufacturer-installed copy-protect devices, including serial or registration numbers for software programs, or any type of cracker utilities

Abuse of Disk Usage

Abuse of Traffic

Unsolicited Email (Spam)

Sheer Web Host takes a zero-tolerance approach to spam originating from our servers or for spam advertising of domains hosted on our servers. We will charge the compromised account up to $25 per unsolicited email message sent.

The following activities are not allowed: Unsolicited bulk or commercial messages ("spam"). This includes, but is not limited to, bulk mailing of commercial advertising, informational announcements, charity requests, petitions for signatures, and political or religious tracts. Such messages may only be sent to those who have explicitly requested it from your domain. Forging, altering or removing electronic mail headers is prohibited. Any domain sending stealth spam will be terminated without warning and without refund. Sending numerous copies of the same or substantially similar message with the intent to disrupt a server or account ("mail bombing"). Spamming Newsgroups: Commercial advertisements are unwelcome in most Usenet discussion groups and on most e-mail mailing lists. Inappropriate posting may result in account cancellation. See the newsgroup or mailing list's charter for whether advertising is allowed or not. "Spamming," or sending a message to many different off-topic newsgroups, is particularly unethical and will be treated as such. Mail may not be used to harass or intimidate others. Harassment, whether through language, frequency of messages, or size of messages, is prohibited. Sending a single unwelcome message may be considered harassment. If a recipient asks to stop receiving e-mail, you must not send that person any further messages.

Note: If you use the services of another provider to promote a web site hosted by or through Sheer Web Host (spamvertising), then the provisions of the above Policy shall apply as if the spam were sent through our servers.

Uptime Guarantee

(2.) Service Level Agreement & Specifications Sheer Web Host endeavors to have the content of your web site available for http access by any party in the world 100% of the time. Network downtime (unavailability) is defined as 100% packet loss from Sheer Web Host to its backbone providers. Downtime is measured past 10 minutes after notification of network failure via Sheer Web Host's online ticketing system. If the ticketing system itself is unreachable, the ticket must be started by calling Sheer Web Host. Sheer Web Host's administrators will determine the end of the downtime by a traceroute to the customer's machine from outside the Sheer Web Host network.

(3.) Credits - In the event that your web site is available for less than 100%, Sheer Web Host will credit the following year's service fee as follows. For any shared hosting client, such credit shall be retroactive and shall be as calculated below and as measured 24 hours a day in a calendar month, with the maximum credit not to exceed fifty (50) percent of the monthly service charge for the affected month. Monthly Uptime Credit:
 

89.9% or below your account will be credited 50% of your monthly hosting fee

(3.) Restrictions Credits shall not be provided to you in the event that you have any outage resulting from (1.) scheduled maintenance as posted from time to time at Sheer Web Host, (2.) your behavior or the performance or failure of your equipment, facilities or applications, or (3.) circumstances beyond Sheer Web Host's reasonable control, including, without limitation, acts of any governmental body, war, insurrection, sabotage, embargo, fire, flood, strike or other labor disturbance, interruption of or delay in transportation, unavailability of interruption or delay in telecommunications or third party services, including DNS propagation, domain name registration / transfer, failure of third party software or hardware or inability to obtain raw materials, supplies, or power used in or equipment needed for provision of your web site, or (4.) a client breaking any item in Sheer Web Host's "terms of conditions and acceptable use policy" causing a machine to fail as a result.
 

Chat Rooms

We do not allow clients to install their own chat rooms within a shared hosting account, without approving it with the Sheer Web Host Support Team. Most chat rooms tend to be large system hogs and we cannot allow it as an account option. However, we do provide a choice of Java chat rooms for a small extra charge that will more than fill your needs and run without hindering the performance of the machine for others. Note: Parachat chat rooms do not apply to this rule. They are perfectly fine to install.

 

Abuse of SMTP Mail Server

We do not allow clients to send more than 2000 pieces of e-mail per day from a shared hosting account. If you do send more than 2000 pieces of e-mail per day, your account will be placed on hold for Network Abuse. If you are sending legitimate e-mails and they total more than 2000 per day your account will be moved to a special server that is specifically designed to handle high volumes of e-mail. You will be charged $50.00/month in addition to your regular hosting charges if your account is moved to this server. Please contact support@sheerwebhost.com to have your domain moved.

 

Background Running Programs

We may allow programs to run continually in the background. These are considered on a one-to-one basis and an extra charge will be incurred based on system resources used and operational maintenance needed. (this section does not apply to managed dedicated servers)

 

IRC

We currently do not allow IRC or IRC bots to be operated on our servers. You can however, install IRC clients on managed dedicated servers. IRC servers are not permitted on our network.

 

Payment Policies

All accounts are set up on a pre-pay basis. Setup fees are charged for all new accounts and major account changes and are non-refundable. All pricing is guaranteed for the term of pre-payment. Sheer Web Host reserves the right to change prices at any time, unless other terms have been agreed upon. Any account not brought current within a week (7 days) of e-mail notice or exceeding this time frame in any way is subject to suspension. The customer is responsible for all money owed on the account from the time it was established to the time that the customer notifies Sheer Web Host at cancel@hostdepartment.com to request for termination of services. All payment is in U.S. currency. Sheer Web Host will bill each client $50 per returned check, per wire transfer received and per credit card chargeback received. All Sheer Web Host accounts are setup on anniversary billing cycles. Your particular billing cycle corresponds to the contract length that was initially chosen at setup. Your account will automatically re! new at this length. There is no fee to change to a shorter billing cycle at the end of the current cycle. However, if you wish to change to a shorter billing cycle, during a current cycle, there will be a $50.00 fee. Please contact the billing department at billing@hostdepartment.com should you wish to change your anniversay billing cycle.

 

Cancellation

Sheer Web Host reserves the right to cancel service at any time. All fees paid in advance of cancellation will be prorated and paid by Sheer Web Host if Sheer Web Host institutes its right of cancellation. Any violation of policies which results in extra costs will be billed to the customer (i.e. transfer, space etc.)

All of Sheer Web Host's web hosting plans are backed by a 30-day money back guarantee (Valid for 30 days, $10 Cart32 setup fee is non-refundable). If you are not completely satisfied with our services or support within the first 30 days of your contract, you will be given a full refund of the contract amount excluding setup fees, domain registration fees, addon/upgrade fees and overages. Setup fees are refundable only if the account order is canceled prior to account activation. For all web hosting clients who cancel, the full contract amount less any setup fees and overages will be refunded if Sheer Web Host is notified within the first 30 days following activation. No refund is available after the 30th day. This policy does not apply to any additional services such as overages, referrer logs, real audio/video, additional disk space, additional pop accounts, domain registration fees etc. Due to security concerns, all account cancellations must be done via our cancellation forms at cancel@hostdepartment.com . Phone or email requests will not constitute a! cceptance of any cancellation. Refunds will be made by company check or issued back to your credit card within 30 days of receipt of cancellation.

Intellectual Property Rights

Material accessible to you through Sheer Web Host's services may be subject to protection under the United States or other copyright laws, or laws protecting trademarks, trade secrets or proprietary information. Except when expressly permitted by the owner of such rights, you must not use Sheer Web Host or its servers and network in a manner that would infringe, violate, dilute or misappropriate any such rights, with respect to any material, which you access or receive through the Sheer Web Host network. If you use a domain name in connection with Sheer Web Host or similar service, you must not use that domain name in violation of any trademark, service mark, or similar rights of any third party.

 

Network Security

Customers may not use the Sheer Web Host network with an attempt to circumvent user authentication or security of any host, network, or account. This includes, but is not limited to, accessing data not intended for the customer, logging into a server or account the customer is not expressly authorized to access, password cracking, probing the security of other networks in search of weakness, or violation of any other organization's security policy. Customers may not attempt to interfere or deny service to any user, host, or network. This includes, but is not limited to, flooding, mail bombing, or other deliberate attempts to overload or crash a host or network. Sheer Web Host will cooperate fully with investigations of violations of systems or network security at other sites, including cooperating with law enforcement authorities in the investigation of suspected criminal violations. Users who violate system or network security may incur criminal or civil liability.

 

Electronic Commerce

You will be solely responsible for the development, operation and maintenance of your online store and products and all contents and materials appearing online or on your products, including without limitation (a) the accuracy and appropriateness of content and materials appearing within the store or related to your products, (b) ensuring that the content and materials appearing within the store or related to your products do not violate or infringe upon the rights of any third party, and (c) ensuring that the content and materials appearing within the store or related to your products are not libelous or otherwise illegal. You will be solely responsible for the final calculation and application of shipping and sales tax. You will also be solely responsible for accepting, processing, and filling any customer orders, and for handling any customer inquiries or complaints arising therefrom.

You are also responsible for the security of any customer credit card numbers and related customer information you may access as a result of conducting electronic commerce transactions through your Web Site. You will keep all such information confidential and will use the same degree of care and security as you use with your confidential information.

Static / Dynamic Content Caching

You expressly (i) grant to Sheer Web Host a license to cache the entirety of your Web Site, including content supplied by third parties, hosted by Sheer Web Host under this Agreement and (ii) agree that such caching is not an infringement of any of your intellectual property rights or any third party's intellectual property rights.

 

IP Address Ownership

Sheer Web Host shall maintain and control ownership of all IP numbers and addresses that may be assigned to you by Sheer Web Host and Sheer Web Host reserves, in its sole discretion, the right to change or remove any and all such IP numbers and addresses.

 

Domain Name Registration

Customer agrees to pay Sheer Web Host prior to the effectiveness of the desired domain name registration, the then-current amounts set forth in the Sheer Web Host price schedule for the initial registration of the domain name and, should Customer choose to renew the registration, subsequent renewals of the registration. All fees are non-refundable, in whole or in part, even if Customer's domain name registration is suspended, cancelled or transferred prior to the end of Customer's then current registration term. Sheer Web Host reserves the right to change fees, surcharges, renewal fees or to institute new fees at any time, for any reason, at its sole discretion. Customer's requested domain name will not be registered unless and until we receive actual payment of the registration fee, and have confirmed Customer's registration in an email from Sheer Web Host to the email address indicated in Customer's registration application. In the event of a chargeback by a credit card company (or similar action! by another payment provider allowed by Sheer Web Host) in connection with the payments of the registration fee for Customer's domain name registration, Customer agrees and acknowledges that the domain name registration shall be transferred to Sheer Web Host as the paying entity for that registration to the registry and that we reserve all rights regarding such domain name including, without limitation, the right to make the domain name available to other parties for purchase. Sheer Web Host will reinstate Customer's domain name registration solely at Sheer Web Host's discretion, and subject to our receipt of the initial registration or renewal fee and our then-current reinstatement fee.

Transfer domain registrar to Sheer Web Host
Customer agrees to pay Sheer Web Host prior to the effectiveness of the desired domain name transfer request, the then-current amounts set forth in the Sheer Web Host price schedule for the initial transfer request of the domain name.
Customer agrees and acknowledges that the domain name transfer will fail, and all fees are non-refundable, for the following reasons, but not limited to:
- No response from the Registered Name Holder or Administrative Contact
- Domain name in Registrar Lock Status
- Domain name registration period time expires or other constraints, other than during the first 60 days of initial registration or during the first 60 days after a registrar transfer


Sheer Web Host reserves the right to change or to institute new transfer fees at any time, for any reason, at its sole discretion. Customer's requested domain name will not be transferred unless and until we receive actual payment of the transfer fee, and have confirmed Customer's transfer request in an email from Sheer Web Host to the email address indicated in Customer's domain management account.

In the event of a chargeback by a credit card company (or similar action by another payment provider allowed by Sheer Web Host) in connection with the payments of the transfer fee for Customer's domain name transfer request, Customer agrees and acknowledges that the domain name transfer shall be transferred to Sheer Web Host as the paying entity for that registration to the registry and that we reserve all rights regarding such domain name including, without limitation, the right to reject the domain name transfer request. Sheer Web Host will reinstate Customer's domain name transfer solely at Sheer Web Host's discretion, and subject to our receipt of the initial transfer fee and our then-current reinstatement fee.

Transfer domain registrar away from Sheer Web Host
Sheer Web Host reserves all rights, without limitation, to reject the domain name transfer request for the following reasons, but not limited to:
- No response from the Registered Name Holder or Administrative Contact
- Domain name in Registrar Lock Status and there is no request from Registered Name Holder or Administrative Contact for the status change
- Domain name registration period time will be expiring in less than 60 days or other constraints, other than during the first 60 days of initial registration or during the first 60 days after a registrar transfer


Customer agrees and acknowledges that the failure or success of a domain name transfer will be his/her sole responsibility, and Sheer Web Host will not be held liable for the failure of a domain name transfer for any reasons.

 

Lawful Purpose

Sheer Web Host reserves the right to refuse service to anyone. Customers may only use Sheer Web Host server for lawful purpose. Transmission of any material in violation of any Federal, State or Local regulation is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to copyrighted material, material legally judged to be threatening or obscene, and material protected by trade secrets. The designation of any materials as such described above is left entirely to the discretion of Sheer Web Host management. Regardless of the place of signing this agreement, the client agrees that for purposes of venue this contract was entered into in Wilmington, Delaware, and any dispute will be litigated or arbitrated in Wilmington, Delaware. Defendants further waive all objections to venue and acknowledge that venue in any such litigation will be held in Delaware courts.In no event shall Sheer Web Host's maximum liability exceed five hundred ($500.00) dollars.

 

Indemnification

Customer agrees that it shall defend, indemnify, save and hold sheer web host harmless from any and all demands, liabilities, losses, costs and claims, including reasonable attorney's fees asserted against sheer web host, its agents, its customers, officers and employees, that may arise or result from any service provided or performed or agreed to be performed or any product sold by customer, it's agents, employees or assigns. Customer agrees to defend, indemnify and hold harmless sheer web host against liabilities arising out of; (1) any injury to person or property caused by any products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with sheer web host's server; (2) any material supplied by customer infringing or allegedly infringing on the proprietary rights of a third party; ( 3) copyright infringement and (4) any defective products sold to customer from sheer web host's server.
 

Disclaimer

Sheer Web Host will not be responsible for any damages your business may suffer. Sheer Web Host makes no warranties of any kind, expressed or implied for services we provide. Sheer Web Host disclaims any warranty or merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This includes loss of data resulting from delays, non-deliveries, wrong delivery, and any and all service interruptions caused by sheer Web Host and its employees. Sheer Web Host reserves the right to revise its policies at any time. All sub-networks, resellers and dedicated servers of Sheer Web Host must adhere to the above policies. Failure to follow any term or condition will be grounds for immediate account deactivation.