Acceptable Use Policy

This policy applies to all Services and to all Content stored, processed or distributed through them. It protects our infrastructure, our customers and the internet. Breaches lead to measures under Section 10 of the Terms.

1. Illegal Content. Content and uses that violate applicable law at the location of the Service, in Germany, or in the country the offering is aimed at are prohibited, in particular:

• child sexual abuse material and any form of its distribution; we report such cases to the competent authorities;
• terrorist content, incitement to violence or hatred, and symbols of unconstitutional organisations, insofar as these are criminal offences;
• Content infringing third-party rights, in particular copyright, trademark, personality and data protection rights (such as unauthorised distribution of films, music or software, or doxing);
• offering and trading prohibited goods and services (such as narcotics, weapons without a permit, forged documents, stolen data);
• illegal gambling and Content violating youth protection laws;
• fraudulent offers, pyramid schemes and deceptive business models.

2. Malware and attacks. In particular, the following are prohibited:

• distributing, hosting or controlling malware (viruses, trojans, ransomware, botnets, command-and-control servers);
• phishing, fake shops and imitating third-party websites or brands to deceive;
• attacks on other systems: denial of service, brute-force login attempts, exploiting vulnerabilities, unauthorised port and vulnerability scans, IP or email spoofing;
• circumventing protective measures and accessing third-party data or services without authorisation — including other customers and NorthVault’s infrastructure.

3. Spam and network abuse. In particular, the following are prohibited:

• sending unsolicited bulk or advertising messages (spam) through the Services, or promoting Services through spam even if sent elsewhere;
• operating open mail relays, open proxies, open DNS resolvers or other open services that can be misused to amplify attacks;
• operating Tor exit nodes and public VPN exits without our prior consent in text form;
• manipulating routing or address information.

4. Resources and fair use. Uses that excessively and persistently burden the infrastructure or affect other customers are prohibited, in particular:

• cryptocurrency mining and persistent full load of shared CPU cores without prior consent;
• on web hosting: file hosting, download archives, backup storage for other systems, and media streaming as the main purpose (see Section 6.5 of the Terms);
• methods that deliberately circumvent limits and measurements (such as traffic or resource limits).

5. Security. The Customer adequately protects their Services against misuse by third parties. A compromised Service from which attacks or spam originate is taken offline until the Customer has cleaned it up.

6. Reports. Breaches can be reported at any time to abuse@northvault.com. A report should state the affected address (URL, IP, time with time zone), a description and — for infringements — the rights infringed. We do not process manifestly abusive reports.

7. Cooperation with authorities. We cooperate with law enforcement authorities within the limits required by law. We disclose information only on the basis of a legal obligation or order.