Acceptable Use Policy

1. Who this applies to

This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") is part of the Terms of Service between you and Sable Servers Ltd. ("we", "us"). It covers every service we provide: game servers, virtual servers (including Windows and HomeLab VPS), web hosting and email, object storage, managed servers and business IT.

It applies to you and to anyone who uses your services, such as your staff, players, site visitors, mailbox users or your own customers. You're responsible for what runs on your services and what they send, whoever set it up. That includes activity from a service that has been hacked.

You must:

• keep your software, plugins and passwords secure and up to date;
• fix a compromised service promptly, and tell us if it's been used to harm others;
• reply to our abuse notices within the time we give you.

If you aren't sure whether something is allowed, ask us first at hello@sableservers.com.

2. Illegal content and activity

Don't use our services for anything that breaks the law of Canada or Nova Scotia, or the law where you or your users are. Our services run from Canada, so content that's legal where you live but illegal in Canada isn't allowed. This includes:

• fraud, scams, pyramid or Ponzi schemes, and counterfeit goods;
• stolen data, leaked credentials or payment card data, and markets that sell them;
• content promoting terrorism or violent extremism, or helping human trafficking;
• intimate images shared without the consent of the person shown;
• impersonating a person or organization to deceive people;
• breaking sanctions or export control laws.

Legal adult content is allowed on web hosting and object storage if it's age-gated and everyone shown is an adult who consented. You must be able to show that consent if asked.

3. Child sexual abuse material

We have zero tolerance for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) or any content that sexualizes children. This includes drawn, generated or altered images.

If we find or are told about CSAM on a service, we will:

• suspend the service immediately and terminate the account, without notice or refund;
• report it to Cybertip.ca and the RCMP or local police, as Canadian law requires, and to the US National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) where relevant;
• preserve the data as the law requires and give it only to the authorities.

Don't send us CSAM as evidence. Give us the location (URL or IP address) and report it directly to Cybertip.ca.

4. Harassment, hate and threats

Don't use our services to:

• harass, stalk, bully or threaten anyone;
• publish someone's private information to target them ("doxxing");
• promote hatred or violence against people based on race, religion, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or a similar characteristic;
• post graphic violence meant to shock or intimidate.

If you run a community, act on this kind of abuse when it's reported to you.

5. Intellectual property

Only host and share content you have the right to use. Don't use our services for pirated software, games, films, music or books, or for torrent trackers or file-sharing sites mainly used for piracy. Don't host tools built to break copy protection. Repeat infringers may lose their account.

Don't use our name or logo, or suggest we endorse you, without our written permission.

Canada's Notice and Notice regime

We follow the Notice and Notice rules in Canada's Copyright Act. When we receive a notice that meets the Act's requirements, we will:

• forward it to the customer as soon as we can;
• tell the sender that we forwarded it, or why we couldn't;
• keep the records the Act requires.

Forwarding a notice doesn't mean we agree with it. We don't share your identity with the sender unless a court orders us to.

We may also remove clearly infringing content, or ask you to remove it, under this AUP. If you believe a notice is wrong, reply to us with your reasons.

Notices from the United States

We're a Canadian company, so the US DMCA doesn't govern how we handle notices. We still accept DMCA-style notices from US rights holders. Send them to abuse@sableservers.com and include:

• your name, address, email and phone number, and your relationship to the rights holder;
• the work you say is being infringed;
• the exact URL, IP address or file location of the infringing material;
• a statement that you believe in good faith the use isn't authorized;
• a statement that your notice is accurate, and your physical or electronic signature.

We handle these under the Notice and Notice rules above and this AUP.

6. Email and messaging

Any commercial message you send through our services must follow Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), the US CAN-SPAM Act and any other anti-spam law that applies. In short:

• get consent first, and keep a record of it;
• identify who's sending, with valid contact details;
• include a working unsubscribe link and honour requests within 10 business days;
• don't use false headers, sender names or subject lines.

Don't send unsolicited bulk email, SMS or chat messages, or buy, rent or harvest address lists. Keep your lists clean: remove bounces, complainers and unsubscribes.

Web hosting email

Web hosting email is for normal business and personal mail, not newsletters or bulk campaigns. Use a dedicated email service for those.

Each web hosting account can send up to 300 messages per hour. Outbound mail is spam-filtered. Don't try to get around the limit or the filter. If your account causes spam complaints or blocklisting, we may hold its outbound mail while we investigate.

7. Network abuse

Don't use our services to attack, disrupt or gain access to any network or system you don't control. This includes:

• denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, including selling them as "stressers" or "booters";
• port or vulnerability scanning of other people's systems;
• brute-force or credential-stuffing login attempts;
• spoofing IP addresses, MAC addresses or packet headers;
• intercepting or tampering with other people's traffic;
• running botnets, command-and-control servers or malware distribution;
• hosting phishing pages or kits.

Don't run open mail relays, open DNS resolvers or open proxies. If you run a VPN, proxy or Tor node, you're responsible for the traffic that passes through it. Tor exit nodes need our written approval first.

Our DDoS protection filters attacks against you. It doesn't permit attacks from you.

8. Security testing

You may scan and test systems you own, or systems whose owner has given you written permission. Keep that permission and show it to us if asked.

Don't test our infrastructure, the panel or other customers' services without our written permission. If you find a security problem with us, report it to abuse@sableservers.com with enough detail to reproduce it. Give us reasonable time to fix it before you make it public. Don't access, change or delete anyone else's data while testing.

9. Cryptocurrency mining

Cryptocurrency mining, including proof-of-space and proof-of-storage "farming", isn't allowed on web hosting, game servers or VPS plans.

We may allow mining on a resource with our prior written approval. Mining without approval leads to immediate suspension. Running miners on systems you don't own or control (cryptojacking) is always banned.

Running a blockchain node, wallet or validator that doesn't mine is allowed on VPS plans, within fair use.

10. Fair use of shared resources

Most of our services share physical hardware and network capacity. If your use harms other customers, we'll contact you to fix it, move you to a suitable plan, or limit the workload. If it's urgent, we may throttle or pause it first and tell you right after. Throttling is lifted once usage returns to normal.

Web hosting

• CPU, RAM, disk I/O, processes and inodes (file counts) are limited per plan. Stay within them.
• Use web hosting for websites, web apps and their email. Don't run long-lived background processes, game servers or heavy compute jobs.
• Disk space is for your site's files, not for backup archives, file dumps or media libraries. Object storage is built for that.

Game servers and VPS

• Game servers get fixed RAM, CPU and disk per plan. Use them to run game servers and directly related tools, not general compute.
• VPS CPU is shared fairly. Sustained full use of every core for long periods may be throttled to protect others on the host.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth that comes with your plan is for normal use of that service. Don't use it as a public file mirror, a CDN replacement, a video streaming platform, or to resell traffic.

HomeLab VPS

HomeLab VPS is private. It has no public IPv4 and is reached over WireGuard. Don't use tunnels, reverse proxies or similar tools to expose public services that break this AUP, such as open proxies, public file sharing or mail servers sending bulk mail. Don't try to get around the network isolation.

11. Game servers

• Follow the end user licence agreement and server rules of the game you host. For example, Minecraft servers must follow Mojang's EULA and Minecraft Usage Guidelines, including the limits on charging players.
• Don't run pirated or cracked game servers or server software.
• Don't host or distribute cheats, hacks or exploits that target other servers or players.
• Don't use a game server to launch DDoS attacks or host DDoS-for-hire tools, including attacks on rival servers.
• Plugins, mods and maps must be ones you're allowed to use.

You're responsible for the chat and content your players create on your server.

12. Windows VPS licensing

Windows VPS is bring your own licence. It's delivered unactivated, and we don't sell or supply Microsoft licences. You must activate it with a valid licence that you own and that allows use on a virtual server hosted by a third party.

Don't use unlicensed copies, key generators, activation cracks or shared keys. The same applies to other software you install. If a vendor or Microsoft raises a licensing issue with us, we may ask for proof of your licence and suspend the service until you provide it.

13. Object storage

Everything in this AUP applies to object storage buckets, whether public or private. In particular:

• Don't use public buckets or shared links to distribute illegal content, malware, pirated material or stolen data.
• Don't use buckets as a public download mirror, or allow abusive hotlinking that pushes heavy traffic to sites you don't run.
• Request rates that degrade the service for others may be rate-limited.

14. Personal data you host

When you collect personal information on your services, such as customer records, player accounts, mailing lists or website sign-ups, you control that data. We process it only to run the service for you.

You must:

• follow the privacy laws that apply to you, such as PIPEDA, Quebec's Law 25, and US state privacy laws;
• tell people what you collect and why, and get consent where required;
• protect it with reasonable security, and deal with any breach as the law requires;
• handle access and deletion requests from your users yourself.

Don't collect personal data without a lawful reason, or collect sensitive data such as passwords or payment cards by deception. Our own handling of your account data is in our Privacy Policy.

15. Reselling and accounts

You may use your services to host your own clients' websites, game servers or applications. For example, as a web designer or IT provider. You're responsible for those clients and what they do, as if they were you. They have no agreement with us, so support requests come through you.

Selling our services under your own brand as a stand-alone hosting product needs a written reseller agreement with us. Contact hello@sableservers.com.

You may have more than one account for a real business reason. Don't open accounts to get around limits, suspensions or bans, or to claim a promotion more than once.

16. How we enforce this policy

We don't actively monitor your content. We do monitor resource use and network traffic to keep services running, and we investigate reports and anything our systems flag.

What we usually do

For most problems, we act in steps:

1. Warning. We email you, explain the problem and set a deadline to fix it.
2. Suspension. If it isn't fixed, or comes back, we suspend the affected service until it is.
3. Termination. For repeated or unresolved violations, we end the service or the account.

When we act right away

We may suspend or terminate without warning for serious or illegal abuse, or when a service is actively harming others. Examples include CSAM, outgoing attacks, malware or phishing, spam runs and compromised servers. We may also:

• remove or disable access to specific content;
• block ports, hold outbound mail, or null-route an IP address;
• throttle a workload that's harming other customers.

We'll take the smallest step that stops the harm, and tell you what we did unless the law or an investigation prevents it.

Refunds and data

Services terminated for breaking this AUP aren't refunded. Where the content isn't illegal, we'll usually give you a short window to copy your data before deletion.

Law enforcement

We cooperate with law enforcement when they present valid legal process, such as a production order, warrant or court order. We may also disclose information without one where Canadian law allows, such as in an emergency involving a risk to someone's life or safety. We'll tell you about a request for your data unless the law or a court order prevents it. Law enforcement should send requests to abuse@sableservers.com.

17. Changes to this policy

We'll give you 30 days' notice of material changes by email and on our website. We may make urgent changes sooner when the law or a security threat requires it, and we'll tell you why. The effective date at the top always shows the current version. If you keep using our services after a change takes effect, the new version applies. If you don't agree, you can cancel from the panel.

If this AUP and the Terms of Service conflict, the Terms of Service apply.

18. Reporting abuse

To report abuse coming from our network or services, email abuse@sableservers.com. Include:

• what happened and the type of abuse;
• the IP address, domain, URL or game server address involved;
• dates and times, with time zone;
• evidence such as log extracts, full email headers or screenshots;
• how we can reach you.

Don't send CSAM; see section 3.

A person on our team reads every report. We acknowledge reports within 2 business days. Urgent reports, such as active attacks or CSAM, are handled sooner. We may not share the outcome with you, since it involves another customer's account.

Contact

Sable Servers Ltd.
215 Honeysuckle Road
Middle Sackville, NS B4E 3K7
Canada

• Abuse and law enforcement: abuse@sableservers.com
• Questions about this policy: hello@sableservers.com
• Customers: open a ticket in the Unified Panel