Terms of Service

December 10th, 2009

The use of services from IBWT.com, LLC [hereafter referred to as "IBWT"] constitutes agreement to these terms. You may view our Privacy Policy here.

1.) Account Setup / Email on file
We will setup your account after we have received payment and we and/or our payment partner(s) have screened the order(s) in case of fraud. It is your responsibility to provide us with an email address which is not @ the domain(s) you are signing up under. If there is ever an abuse issue or we need to contact you, the primary email address on file will be used for this purpose. It is your responsibility to ensure the email address on file is current or up to date at all times.

Transfers
Our transfers team will make every effort to help you move your site to us. However, transfers are provided as a courtesy service, and we can not make guarantees regarding the availability, possibility, or time required to complete an account transfer. Each hosting company is configured differently, and some hosting platforms save data in an incompatible or proprietary format, which may make it extremely difficult if not impossible to migrate some or all account data. We will try our best, but in some cases we may be unable to assist you in a transfer of data from an old host.

The free transfer services are available for 30 days from your sign up date. Transfers outside of the 30 day free period will incur a charge; please contact a member of the transfers department with specific details to receive a price quote.

2.) Content
All services provided by IBWT may only be used for lawful purposes. The laws of the State of Mississippi and the United States of America apply.

The customer agrees to indemnify and hold harmless IBWT from any claims resulting from the use of our services.

Use of our services to infringe upon any copyright or trademark is prohibited. This includes but is not limited to unauthorized copying of music, books, photographs, or any other copyrighted work. The offer of sale of any counterfeit merchandise of a trademark holder will result in the immediate termination of your account. Any account found to be in violation of anothers copyright will be expeditiously removed, or access to the material disabled. Any account found to be in repeated violation of copyright laws will be suspended and/or terminated from our hosting. If you believe that your copyright or trademark is being infringed upon, please email abuse@ibwt.com with the information required. A list of required information may be found here. If the request is of a licensing issue, we may require further documentation.

Using a shared account as a backup/storage device is not permitted, with the exception of one cPanel backup of the same account. Please do not take backups of your backups.

Examples of unacceptable material on all Shared servers include:

  • Topsites
  • IRC Scripts/Bots
  • Proxy Scripts/Anonymizers
  • Pirated Software/Warez
  • Image Hosting Scripts (similar to Photobucket or Tinypic)
  • AutoSurf/PTC/PTS/PPC sites
  • IP Scanners
  • Bruteforce Programs/Scripts/Applications
  • Mail Bombers/Spam Scripts
  • Banner-Ad services (commercial banner ad rotation)
  • File Dump/Mirror Scripts (similar to rapidshare)
  • Commercial Audio Streaming (more than one or two streams)
  • Escrow/Bank Debentures
  • High-Yield Interest Programs (HYIP) or Related Sites
  • Investment Sites (FOREX, E-Gold Exchange, Second Life/Linden Exchange, Ponzi, MLM/Pyramid Scheme)
  • Sale of any controlled substance without prior proof of appropriate permit(s)
  • Prime Banks Programs
  • Lottery Sites
  • MUDs/RPGs/PBBGs
  • Hateful/Racist/Harassment oriented sites
  • Hacker focused sites/archives/programs
  • Sites promoting illegal activities
  • Forums and/or websites that distribute or link to warez/pirated/illegal content
  • Bank Debentures/Bank Debenture Trading Programs
  • Fraudulent Sites (Including, but not limited to sites listed at aa419.org & escrow-fraud.com)
  • Mailer Pro

Examples of unacceptable material on all Dedicated servers include:

  • IRCD (irc servers)
  • IRC Scripts/Bots
  • Pirated Software/Warez
  • IP Scanners
  • Bruteforce Programs/Scripts/Applications
  • Mail Bombers/spam Scripts
  • Escrow
  • High-Yield Interest Programs (HYIP) or Related Sites
  • Investment Sites (FOREX, E-Gold Exchange, Second Life/Linden Exchange, Ponzi, MLM/Pyramid Scheme)
  • Sale of any controlled substance without prior proof of appropriate permit(s)
  • Prime Banks Programs
  • Lottery Sites
  • Hateful/Racist/Harassment oriented sites
  • Hacker focused sites/archives/programs
  • Sites promoting illegal activities
  • Forums and/or websites that distribute or link to warez/pirated/illegal content
  • Bank Debentures/Bank Debenture Trading Programs
  • Fraudulent Sites (Including, but not limited to sites listed at aa419.org & escrow-fraud.com)
  • Mailer Pro

IBWT services, including all related equipment, networks and network devices are provided only for authorized customer use. IBWT systems may be monitored for all lawful purposes, including to ensure that use is authorized, for management of the system, to facilitate protection against unauthorized access, and to verify security procedures, survivability, and operational security. During monitoring, information may be examined, recorded, copied and used for authorized purposes. Use of IBWT system(s) constitutes consent to monitoring for these purposes.

Any account found connecting to a third party network or system without authorization from the third party is subject to suspension. Access to networks or systems outside of your direct control must be with expressed written consent from the third party. IBWT may, at its discretion, request and require documentation to prove access to a third party network or system is authorized.

We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Any material that, in our judgment, is obscene, threatening, illegal, or violates our terms of service in any manner may be removed from our servers (or otherwise disabled), with or without notice.

Failure to respond to email from our abuse department within 48 hours may result in the suspension or termination of your services. All abuse issues must be dealt with via troubleticket/email and will have a response within 48 hours.

If in doubt regarding the acceptability of your site or service, please contact us at abuse@ibwt.com and we will be happy to assist you.

Potential harm to minors is strictly forbidden, including but not limited to child pornography or content perceived to be child pornography (Lolita):

Any site found to host child pornography or linking to child pornography will be suspended immediately without notice.

Your services will be terminated with or without notice.

Violations will be reported to the appropriate law enforcement agency.

It is your responsibility to ensure that scripts/programs installed under your account are secure and permissions of directories are set properly, regardless of installation method. When at all possible, set permissions on most directories to 755 or as restrictive as possible. Users are ultimately responsible for all actions taken under their account. This includes the compromise of credentials such as user name and password. It is required that you use a secure password. If a weak password is used, your account may be suspended until you agree to use a more secure password. Audits may be done to prevent weak passwords from being used. If an audit is performed, and your password is found to be weak, we will notify you and allow time for you to change/update your password.

3.) Zero Tolerance Spam Policy
We take a zero tolerance stance against sending of unsolicited e-mail, bulk emailing, and spam. “Safe lists” and purchased lists will be treated as spam. Any user who sends out spam will have their account terminated with or without notice.

Please read Mail Policy for our mail policy.

Sites advertised via SPAM (Spamvertised) may not be hosted on our servers. This provision includes, but is not limited to SPAM sent via fax, email, instant messaging, or usenet/newsgroups. No organization or entity listed in the ROKSO may be hosted on our servers. Any account which results in our IP space being blacklisted will be immediately suspended and/or terminated.

IBWT reserves the right to require changes or disable as necessary any web site, account, database, or other component that does not comply with its established policies, or to make any such modifications in an emergency at its sole discretion.

IBWT reserves the right to charge the holder of the account used to send any unsolicited e-mail a clean up fee or any charges incurred for blacklist removal. This cost of the clean up fee is entirely at the discretion of IBWT.

4.) Payment Information
You agree to supply appropriate payment for the services received from IBWT, in advance of the time period during which such services are provided. You agree that until and unless you notify IBWT of your desire to cancel any or all services received, those services will be billed on a recurring basis. This includes when accounts are suspended.

Cancellations must be done in writing via the cancellation form provided. Once we receive your cancellation and have confirmed all necessary information with you via e-mail, we will inform you in writing (typically email) that your account has been canceled. We require that cancellations of service are done through the online form to (a) confirm your identity, (b) confirm in writing you are prepared for all files/emails to be removed, and (c) document the request. This process reduces the likelihood of mistakes, fraudulent/malicious requests, and ensures you are aware that the files, emails, and account may be removed immediately after a cancellation request is processed.

As a client of IBWT, it is your responsibility to ensure that your payment information is up to date, and that all invoices are paid on time. You agree that until and unless you notify IBWT of your desire to cancel any or all services received (by the proper means listed in the appropriate section of the Terms of Service), those services will be billed on a recurring basis, unless otherwise stated in writing by IBWT. IBWT reserves the right to bill your credit card or billing information on file with us. IBWT will suspend account for non payment immediately upon date due unless otherwise agreed in writing. Access to the account will not be restored until payment has been received.

IBWT reserves the right to change the monthly payment amount and any other charges at anytime.

5.) Backups and Data Loss
Your use of this service is at your sole risk. Our backup service is provided to you as a courtesy. IBWT is not responsible for files and/or data residing on your account. You agree to take full responsibility for files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored on IBWT servers. Backups will not be provided for accounts that have been suspended or terminated for any reason unless otherwise agreed to in writing by IBWT.

6.) Cancellations and Refunds
IBWT reserves the right to cancel, suspend, or otherwise restrict access to the account at any time with or without notice.

Any abuse of our staff in any medium or format will result in the suspension or termination of your services.

Customers may cancel at any time via a cancellation form.

There are no refunds on dedicated servers, administrative fees, install fees for custom software, or custom graphics or theme purchases. We reserve the right to refund accounts within 15 days of service with the exception of fees already incurred by us including custom work and/or installation services.

Violations of the Terms of Service will waive the refund policy.

7. Resource Usage

User may not:
a) Use 25% or more of system resources for longer then 90 seconds. There are numerous activities that could cause such problems; these include: CGI scripts, FTP, PHP, HTTP, etc.
b) Run stand-alone, unattended server-side processes at any point in time on the server. This includes any and all daemons, such as IRCD.
c) Run any type of web spider or indexer (including Google Cash / AdSpy) on shared servers.
d) Run any software that interfaces with an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network.
e) Run any bit torrent application, tracker, or client. You may link to legal torrents off-site, but may not host or store them on our shared servers.
f) Participate in any file-sharing/peer-to-peer activities
g) Run any gaming servers such as counter-strike, half-life, battlefield1942, etc
h) Run cron entries with intervals of less than 15 minutes.
i) When using PHP include functions for including a local file, include the local file rather than the URL. Instead of include(”http://yourdomain.com/include.php”) use include(”include.php”)

7b.) INODES
The use of more than 250,000 inodes on any shared account may potentially result in a warning first, and if no action is taken future suspension. Accounts found to be exceeding the 100,000 inode limit will automatically be removed from our backup system to avoid over-usage. Every file (a webpage, image file, email, etc) on your account uses up 1 inode.

Sites that slightly exceed our inode limits are unlikely to be suspended; however, accounts that constantly create and delete large numbers of files on a regular basis, have hundreds of thousands of files, or cause file system damage may be flagged for review and/or suspension. The primary cause of excessive inodes seems to be due to users leaving their catchall address enabled, but never checking their primary account mailbox. Over time, tens of thousands of messages (or more) build up, eventually pushing the account past our inode limit. To disable your default mailbox, login to cPanel and choose “Mail”, then “Default Address”, “Set Default Address”, and then type in: :fail: No such user here.

7c.) Backup Limit
Any shared account using more than 20 gigs of disk space will be removed from our off site weekly backup with the exception of Databases continuing to be backed up. All data will continue to be mirrored to a secondary drive which helps protect against data loss in the event of a drive failure.

8.) Bandwidth Usage
You are allocated a monthly bandwidth allowance. This allowance varies depending on the hosting package you purchase. Should your account pass the allocated amount we reserve the right to suspend the account until the start of the next allocation, suspend the account until more bandwidth is purchased at an additional fee, suspend the account until you upgrade to a higher level of package, terminate the account and/or charge you an additional fee for the overages. Unused transfer in one month cannot be carried over to the next month.

9.) Money back Guarantee
On dedicated servers and collocation no full refund will be honored — the 15 day money back guarantee does not apply. We reserve the right to refund a prorated amount or no refund at all.

Each of IBWT’s managed shared and reseller servers carry a 15 day partial money back guarantee on them. If you are not completely satisfied with our services within the first 15 days of your service, you will be given a full refund of the contract amount less any funds where we have incurred expense to third parties for installation and/or custom graphics or theme development. Remember, this is only for monthly shared or reseller packages and does not apply to dedicated servers, administrative fees, install fees for custom software, or other purchases.

IBWT will not activate new orders or activate new packages for customers who have an outstanding balance with IBWT. For a new order to be setup or a new package to be activated, you must have a balance of $0.00, unless otherwise stated by IBWT in writing

10.) Price Change
The amount you pay for hosting will never increase from the date of purchase. We reserve the right to change prices listed on ibwt.com, and the right to increase the amount of resources given to plans at any time.

11.) Coupons
Discounts and coupon codes are reserved for first-time accounts *or first-time customers* only and may not be used towards the purchase of a domain registration unless otherwise specified. If you have signed up using a particular domain, you may not resign up for that domain using another coupon at a later date. Any account found in violation of these policies will be reviewed by our sales department and the appropriate invoices will be added to the account. Coupon abuse will not be tolerated and may result in the suspension or termination of the account.

12a.) Indemnification
Customer agrees that it shall defend, indemnify, save and hold IBWT harmless from any and all demands, liabilities, losses, costs and claims, including reasonable attorney’s fees asserted against IBWT, 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, its agents, employees or assigns. Customer agrees to defend, indemnify and hold harmless IBWT against liabilities arising out of; (1) any injury to person or property caused by any products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with IBWT; (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 customers from IBWT’s server.

12b.) Arbitration By using any IBWT services, you agree to submit to binding arbitration. If any disputes or claims arise against IBWT or its subsidiaries, such disputes will be handled by an arbitrator of IBWT’s choice. An arbitrator from the American Arbitration Association or the National Arbitration Forum will be selected in the state of Mississippi. Arbitrators shall be attorneys or retired judges and shall be selected pursuant to the applicable rules. All decisions rendered by the arbitrator will be binding and final. The arbitrator’s award is final and binding on all parties. The Federal Arbitration Act, and not any state arbitration law, governs all arbitration under this Arbitration Clause. You are also responsible for any and all costs related to such arbitration.

13.) Disclaimer
IBWT shall not be responsible for any damages your business may suffer. IBWT makes no warranties of any kind, expressed or implied for services we provide. IBWT disclaims any warranty or merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This includes loss of data resulting from delays, no deliveries, wrong delivery, and any and all service interruptions caused by IBWT and its employees.

14.) Disclosure to law enforcement
IBWT may disclose any subscriber information to law enforcement agencies without further consent or notification to the subscriber upon lawful request from such agencies. We will cooperate fully with law enforcement agencies.

15.) Changes to the TOS
IBWT reserves the right to revise its policies at any time without notice.

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