STRANGE DUCKHOSTING

Legal / ACCEPTABLE-USE

Acceptable Use Policy

The rules that protect customers, systems, networks and the public.

Effective: 11 September 2026 Last updated: 11 September 2026

1. Purpose

This Acceptable Use Policy protects customers, infrastructure providers, networks and the public. It forms part of the Strange Duck Hosting Terms of Service and applies to customers, authorised users and all content or activity associated with an account.

You must ensure that anyone using your account follows this policy.

2. Lawful use only

You must not use the service:

  • unlawfully, fraudulently or dishonestly;
  • to infringe copyright, trade marks, privacy, confidentiality or other rights;
  • to promote or facilitate criminal activity;
  • to harm or attempt to harm children or any other person;
  • to host or distribute material that is defamatory, unlawfully discriminatory, threatening, harassing, abusive, obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit;
  • to impersonate another person or falsely suggest endorsement; or
  • in breach of a court order, sanction, regulatory requirement or applicable local, national or international law.

3. Security abuse

You must not:

  • conduct or assist unauthorised access, probing, scanning, credential attacks or exploitation;
  • operate phishing pages or collect credentials deceptively;
  • distribute malware, ransomware, spyware, malicious code or compromised software;
  • launch, assist or knowingly permit denial-of-service attacks;
  • circumvent authentication, access controls, resource limits or security measures;
  • use compromised accounts, stolen credentials or unlawfully obtained data; or
  • knowingly leave a compromised site unaddressed after we notify you.

Legitimate security testing requires advance written authorisation and must be limited to systems you own or are expressly authorised to test.

4. Email and messaging

You must not:

  • send spam or unsolicited bulk messages;
  • use purchased, scraped or unlawfully obtained mailing lists;
  • maintain an open mail relay;
  • send phishing, fraudulent or deceptive messages;
  • forge headers or identities;
  • continue sending to recipients who have validly opted out; or
  • use the service in a way that damages shared sending reputation.

Normal transactional and properly consented business email is permitted, subject to law and reasonable shared-hosting limits.

5. Shared-hosting restrictions

The plans are for ordinary website and email hosting. They must not be used primarily for:

  • bulk file, media or software distribution;
  • video or audio hosting, download services or streaming;
  • backup, archival or long-term file storage;
  • personal cloud or office platforms such as Nextcloud or OwnCloud;
  • public proxies, VPN exit nodes, Tor exit nodes or traffic relays;
  • cryptocurrency mining;
  • game servers, bots or continuously running background workers not designed for shared hosting;
  • high-volume crawling or automated scraping;
  • resale, free hosting or sub-hosting for third parties; or
  • workloads that unreasonably consume CPU, memory, storage, processes, database or network resources.

Embedding externally hosted video from a suitable streaming platform is permitted.

Backup or archive files stored inside the hosting account may be removed when more than seven days old. Important backups must be stored separately from the hosting account.

6. Resource use

You must remain within the plan limits shown in the client area. “Bandwidth” or any other allowance does not override CPU, memory, process, email, security or fair-use restrictions.

We may temporarily limit a process, request that you optimise an application, require an upgrade or suspend the affected workload where it risks service stability. We will explain the reason where security and practical circumstances allow.

7. Customer content and software

You must:

  • keep software supported and reasonably current;
  • remove unused applications, plugins and accounts;
  • use legitimate licences;
  • secure forms, upload areas and administrator accounts;
  • investigate unusual mail or traffic promptly; and
  • cooperate with reasonable abuse and security investigations.

8. Reports and complaints

Report suspected abuse to abuse@strangeduck.co.uk. Include the affected domain or IP address, relevant URLs, dates, evidence and your contact details.

We may preserve and disclose information where reasonably necessary to investigate abuse, protect people or systems, comply with law or respond to a valid legal request.

9. Enforcement

Depending on severity and urgency, we may:

  • issue a warning or remediation request;
  • remove or disable content;
  • restrict email, scripts or other functions;
  • quarantine infected files;
  • temporarily suspend the service;
  • require migration to a more suitable platform;
  • permanently terminate the service; or
  • notify an upstream provider, rights holder, regulator or law-enforcement body where appropriate.

We will act proportionately where circumstances permit. Immediate action may be necessary for phishing, malware, attacks, child-safety risk, serious illegality or an urgent threat to systems or people.