Acceptable Use Policy
Effective Date: September 4, 2026
Service Provider: HostYourself
Website: hostyourself.com
Location: Ontario, Canada
Email: info@hostyourself.com
This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") describes permitted and prohibited uses of HostYourself web hosting, email, server, network and related services. It is intended to protect customers, infrastructure, service providers and third parties from unlawful, abusive, harmful or disruptive activity.
1. Scope
This Acceptable Use Policy applies to all customers and users of HostYourself hosting and related services.
It applies to activity involving:
- Websites.
- Domains and subdomains.
- Email accounts.
- Databases.
- Files and stored content.
- Applications and scripts.
- Hosting control panels.
- Network traffic.
- APIs and automated processes.
- Other systems or services provided through a HostYourself hosting account.
Customers are responsible for activity performed through their hosting accounts, including activity by employees, contractors, developers, website users or other persons to whom they provide access.
2. General Requirement
HostYourself services must be used lawfully, responsibly and in a manner that does not create unreasonable risk, harm or disruption to HostYourself, our infrastructure providers, other customers or third parties.
Customers must comply with:
- Applicable laws and regulations.
- Our Hosting Terms.
- This Acceptable Use Policy.
- Reasonable technical and security requirements communicated by HostYourself.
- Applicable requirements of underlying infrastructure and service providers.
3. Unlawful Activity
HostYourself services may not be used to facilitate, promote, store, transmit or support activity that violates applicable law.
Prohibited activity includes, without limitation:
- Fraud or deceptive commercial activity.
- Identity theft.
- Unauthorized access to systems or data.
- Distribution of unlawfully obtained information.
- Illegal sale or distribution of goods or services.
- Activity that violates applicable intellectual-property laws.
- Activity involving unlawful threats, harassment or exploitation.
- Content or activity that is otherwise prohibited by applicable law.
HostYourself is not required to make a final legal determination before taking reasonable action to protect its services, infrastructure or users.
4. Malicious Software and Harmful Activity
Hosting services may not be used to create, distribute, host, control or facilitate malicious software or harmful activity.
Prohibited examples include:
- Viruses.
- Ransomware.
- Trojans.
- Worms.
- Botnets.
- Credential-stealing software.
- Malicious scripts.
- Remote-access malware.
- Exploit kits.
- Software designed primarily to compromise or damage systems.
A compromised website may be suspended temporarily where reasonably necessary to prevent further abuse or damage.
5. Phishing and Credential Theft
Phishing, credential theft and impersonation intended to obtain passwords, financial information, personal information or other sensitive data are strictly prohibited.
This includes hosting:
- Fake login pages.
- Fraudulent payment pages.
- Imitation banking or financial-service pages.
- Pages designed to capture credentials through deception.
- Content intended to impersonate another organization for fraudulent purposes.
Where urgent action is needed to protect users, systems or third parties, HostYourself may suspend affected services without advance notice.
6. Spam and Unsolicited Email
HostYourself email services may not be used to send unsolicited bulk email or other abusive electronic messaging.
Prohibited activity includes:
- Sending spam.
- Sending large volumes of unsolicited commercial email.
- Using purchased, harvested or improperly obtained email lists.
- Sending deceptive or fraudulent email.
- Phishing or credential-harvesting email.
- Operating mail systems in a manner likely to damage server or IP reputation.
- Attempting to bypass sending limits or anti-spam controls.
Legitimate business communications, transactional messages and permission-based mailing activities must comply with applicable legal and technical requirements.
7. Network and System Abuse
Customers may not use HostYourself services to interfere with, probe, compromise or disrupt networks, systems or services without proper authorization.
Prohibited activity includes:
- Unauthorized port scanning.
- Unauthorized vulnerability scanning.
- Brute-force attacks.
- Password attacks.
- Denial-of-service attacks.
- Distributed denial-of-service activity.
- Unauthorized penetration testing.
- Attempting to bypass authentication or access controls.
- Interfering with other hosting accounts or shared systems.
- Attempting to obtain privileges beyond those provided to the Customer.
8. Resource Abuse
HostYourself hosting services operate within shared infrastructure and must be used in a manner consistent with the intended scope of the applicable hosting plan.
Customers must not operate applications, scripts or processes that unreasonably consume shared resources or materially affect service for other customers.
This may include excessive use of:
- Processor resources.
- Memory.
- Database resources.
- Disk input/output.
- Email processing.
- Background processes.
- Automated requests.
- Network connections.
If a website consistently exceeds the reasonable capabilities of its current environment, HostYourself may request optimization, an upgrade or migration to a more appropriate hosting environment.
9. Cryptocurrency Mining and Similar Processing
Shared HostYourself hosting plans may not be used for cryptocurrency mining or other continuous high-intensity computational workloads that are inconsistent with ordinary website hosting.
Applications requiring substantial continuous CPU, memory or processing capacity require prior approval and may require a different hosting environment.
10. File Storage and Backup Services
HostYourself web hosting plans are intended primarily for websites, web applications, email and related website content.
Hosting accounts may not be used primarily as general-purpose file storage, remote backup storage or archival storage unless expressly approved.
Examples of inappropriate use may include:
- Large personal file archives unrelated to the hosted website.
- Backup repositories for unrelated computers or servers.
- Large collections of media files not actively used by the hosted website.
- Software distribution archives unrelated to the Customer's website or service.
11. Proxies, VPNs and Traffic Relay Services
Shared hosting accounts may not be used to operate public proxy services, VPN exit nodes, traffic relays or similar services unless specifically approved by HostYourself.
These services may create security, abuse, reputation and resource-management risks that are not appropriate for standard web hosting environments.
12. Copyright and Intellectual Property
Customers must respect copyrights, trademarks and other intellectual-property rights.
HostYourself services may not knowingly be used to distribute or host material that unlawfully infringes third-party intellectual-property rights.
If HostYourself receives a credible complaint concerning allegedly infringing material, we may review the complaint and take reasonable action based on the circumstances and applicable law.
Customers are responsible for ensuring that they have appropriate rights or licences for software, images, videos, text, themes, plugins, fonts and other content used on their websites.
13. Privacy and Personal Information
Customers who collect, use or store personal information through their websites are responsible for complying with applicable privacy and data-protection requirements.
This may include responsibility for:
- Providing appropriate privacy notices.
- Obtaining consent where required.
- Protecting personal information.
- Responding appropriately to privacy requests.
- Using reasonable security safeguards.
HostYourself's own handling of personal information is described in our Privacy Policy .
14. Security Responsibilities
Customers must take reasonable steps to protect their websites and hosting accounts.
This includes:
- Using strong and unique passwords.
- Protecting administrative credentials.
- Keeping website software reasonably current.
- Removing abandoned or unnecessary applications.
- Restricting administrative access appropriately.
- Responding to known security issues.
- Informing HostYourself promptly of suspected account compromise.
If a website becomes compromised, HostYourself may temporarily restrict or suspend the affected service until the security issue has been addressed.
15. Vulnerable or Outdated Software
Customers should maintain applications, themes, plugins and other website software in a reasonably secure condition.
HostYourself may request that outdated, abandoned, compromised or materially vulnerable software be updated, removed or disabled where it presents an unreasonable security risk.
Where urgent action is required to protect infrastructure or other customers, HostYourself may temporarily restrict affected applications or services.
16. Impersonation and Fraud
Customers may not use HostYourself services to impersonate another person, business, organization or service for deceptive, fraudulent or harmful purposes.
This includes deceptive use of:
- Domains.
- Subdomains.
- Email addresses.
- Logos or branding.
- Login interfaces.
- Payment pages.
- Business identities.
17. Harm to Service Reputation
Customers may not use HostYourself services in a manner that creates unreasonable risk to the reputation, availability or technical standing of HostYourself or its infrastructure.
This may include repeated activity that causes:
- Email-server blacklisting.
- IP reputation damage.
- Abuse complaints.
- Network blocks.
- Security alerts.
- Upstream-provider sanctions.
18. Resale and Sharing of Hosting Accounts
Customers may not resell, sublicense or commercially redistribute HostYourself hosting resources unless HostYourself has expressly approved that arrangement.
A hosting plan that permits multiple websites does not automatically grant the Customer the right to operate an independent hosting-reseller business.
Customers remain responsible for users to whom they provide access to their hosting account.
19. Automated Activity
Automated scripts, scheduled tasks and website processes are permitted where they are appropriate for the hosted website and do not create excessive load, security risks or abuse.
HostYourself may limit or require modification of automated processes that:
- Run excessively frequently.
- Generate unreasonable processor or database load.
- Send excessive email.
- Make abusive automated requests to third-party systems.
- Interfere with shared-hosting stability.
20. Security Testing
Customers must not perform penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, stress testing or similar activity against HostYourself systems or shared infrastructure without prior authorization.
Testing performed against a Customer's own website must also be conducted in a manner that does not interfere with shared infrastructure or other customers.
If you need to conduct security testing, contact info@hostyourself.com in advance.
21. Reports of Abuse
Reports regarding suspected abuse of HostYourself services may be sent to:
Email: info@hostyourself.com
Where possible, reports should include:
- The relevant domain or URL.
- A description of the alleged activity.
- Relevant dates or times.
- Supporting evidence where reasonably available.
- Contact information for follow-up where appropriate.
HostYourself may review abuse reports and determine an appropriate response based on the circumstances.
22. Investigation
HostYourself may investigate activity that appears to violate this policy, our Hosting Terms, applicable law or reasonable infrastructure requirements.
As part of an investigation, we may review relevant technical information reasonably necessary to understand or address the issue.
We may also request information or cooperation from the Customer.
23. Enforcement
If HostYourself determines that a service is being used in violation of this policy, we may take reasonable action based on the seriousness and urgency of the issue.
This may include:
- Contacting the Customer.
- Requesting corrective action.
- Removing or disabling specific content where appropriate.
- Restricting a service or application.
- Temporarily suspending hosting or email services.
- Requiring a hosting-plan or infrastructure change.
- Terminating service in serious or repeated cases.
Where appropriate, HostYourself will make reasonable efforts to allow the Customer to correct a remediable issue.
Immediate action may be taken where reasonably necessary to address malware, phishing, active attacks, fraud, unlawful activity or significant threats to infrastructure or third parties.
24. Upstream Provider Requirements
HostYourself relies on third-party infrastructure and service providers to deliver hosting services.
Customer activity must not place HostYourself in violation of material policies or lawful requirements imposed by those providers.
Where an upstream provider identifies activity that threatens service availability, security or compliance, HostYourself may take reasonable action to address the issue.
25. No Guarantee Against Abuse
HostYourself uses reasonable measures intended to reduce abuse and protect hosting infrastructure.
However, no Internet-connected hosting environment can guarantee that abuse, compromise, malware or unauthorized activity will never occur.
Customers remain responsible for reasonable security and oversight of their own websites and applications.
26. Changes to This Policy
HostYourself may update this Acceptable Use Policy from time to time to reflect changes to our infrastructure, services, security practices, abuse patterns or applicable requirements.
The Effective Date shown at the top of this page identifies the most recent version.
Material changes affecting active hosting customers may be communicated by email, website notice or another reasonable method.
27. Relationship to Hosting Terms
This Acceptable Use Policy forms part of the HostYourself Hosting Terms / Service Agreement .
A violation of this policy may constitute a violation of the Hosting Terms and may result in suspension or termination of service in accordance with those terms.
28. Contact
Questions regarding this Acceptable Use Policy or whether a proposed use is appropriate may be directed to: