Effective date: 7 September 2026
1. Purpose
This Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) protects HostAbby customers, infrastructure, third parties and the wider internet. It applies to hosting, reseller hosting, VPS/cloud, email, domains, websites, storage and related Services.
HostAbby is a Christian family business. Our values include faith, dignity, stewardship, honesty, safety and respect for people. Those values inform our content and conduct standards, but we apply this policy consistently and subject to applicable law.
2. Lawful use only
You may use the Services only for lawful purposes. You may not use them to commit, facilitate, encourage or conceal crime, fraud, unauthorised access, intellectual-property infringement, privacy violations or conduct prohibited by applicable local, national or international law.
3. Cybercrime, malware and unauthorised access
Prohibited activity includes phishing, credential theft, malware distribution, botnets, ransomware, command-and-control infrastructure, cryptojacking, unlawful interception, unauthorised vulnerability exploitation, password attacks, denial-of-service attacks, scanning or intrusion against systems you do not own or have permission to test, and attempts to bypass authentication or security controls.
Legitimate security research, penetration testing or red-team activity is allowed only where you have documented authority from the system owner and the activity does not threaten HostAbby infrastructure or other customers. We may require advance coordination for high-volume testing.
4. Spam, fraud and deceptive communications
You may not send unsolicited bulk email, operate phishing or scam campaigns, spoof identities for deception, distribute fraudulent offers, run pyramid or unlawful investment schemes, or use compromised mailing lists.
Email users must follow reasonable anti-spam practices and, where applicable, use SPF, DKIM and DMARC and comply with POPIA, the ECT Act and other electronic-marketing rules.
5. Hate, violence, exploitation and harmful content
HostAbby will not knowingly host content or services whose principal purpose is to promote or organise violence, terrorism, criminal extremism, targeted hatred, dehumanising harassment, abuse or exploitation of children, trafficking, or instructions intended to cause serious unlawful harm.
We also do not accept sites principally dedicated to coercive or abusive cult-like activity, incitement of violence, or exploitation carried out under religious, ideological or other pretences. We do not prohibit lawful expression merely because it is critical of, different from, or inconsistent with HostAbby's Christian beliefs.
Pornographic or sexually exploitative content, especially any material involving minors or non-consensual exploitation, is prohibited. We may decline categories of lawful adult content where they conflict with our published service values, provided that we act lawfully and consistently.
6. Resource and platform abuse
Shared hosting must not be used in a way that materially degrades service for others. Prohibited abuse includes sustained excessive CPU, RAM, disk I/O or network use outside plan limits; bulk public file distribution or media streaming where the plan is not designed for it; cryptocurrency mining; or using shared hosting as an unrestricted backup/archive platform.
We may contact you to optimise, upgrade or move a workload before restricting it, unless immediate action is necessary to protect service stability or security.
7. Intellectual property and impersonation
You must have the rights needed to publish or distribute hosted content. Counterfeit, pirated or infringing content and deliberate impersonation designed to deceive are prohibited.
We may act on sufficiently substantiated copyright, trademark, fraud or impersonation complaints and may request additional evidence from the complainant or customer.
8. Privacy and personal information
You must process personal information lawfully and must not use HostAbby Services for unlawful data harvesting, doxxing, sale of unlawfully obtained personal information, credential databases, identity theft or surveillance that violates applicable law.
Customers are responsible for privacy notices, consent or other lawful bases, security controls and data-subject rights relating to their own hosted applications and datasets.
9. Domains and DNS abuse
Domains and DNS may not be used for phishing, malware, command-and-control, deceptive impersonation, spam infrastructure, DNS abuse or other unlawful activity. We may lock, suspend or coordinate with a registrar/registry where necessary and permitted by applicable domain rules.
10. Enforcement
Depending on severity, HostAbby may issue a warning, request remediation, rate-limit, quarantine files, disable a compromised account, temporarily suspend a Service, permanently terminate a Service, preserve evidence, or report activity to an upstream provider, registrar, regulator or law-enforcement authority where legally justified.
For immediate threats, child sexual abuse material, active malware, phishing, fraud, violent threats or attacks against our network, we may act without prior notice. Where a breach is remediable and there is no urgent risk, we will ordinarily give a reasonable opportunity to correct it.
11. Reporting abuse and vulnerabilities
Report abuse to abuse@hostabby.com and security vulnerabilities to cyber@hostabby.com. Include the affected domain/IP, timestamps, relevant headers or logs, and enough detail for us to investigate.
Do not exploit a vulnerability beyond what is reasonably necessary to demonstrate it, access customer data, persist in systems, disrupt services or publicly disclose sensitive details before reasonable remediation coordination.
12. Changes
We may update this AUP to respond to law, security threats, abuse patterns, service changes or upstream requirements. The current version will be published on our website. Mandatory consumer rights are not reduced by an AUP update.
