Policies

HQ Secure Global Internet provides web hosting to many clients, and we have a responsibility to protect each client and to provide the best services available. The following guidelines were designed to ensure these obligations are met.

These terms and conditions also apply to resellers and their customers.

Content

All services provided by HQ Secure Global Internet may be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, storage, or presentation of any information, data or material in violation of any or United States Federal, State or City, or any International laws is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, material we judge to be threatening or obscene, or material protected by trade secret and other statute. The subscriber agrees to indemnify and hold harmless HQ Secure Global Internet  from any claims resulting from the use of the service which damages the subscriber or any other party.

Pornography and sex-related merchandising is prohibited on all HQ Secure Global Internet servers. This includes equally sites that links to such content.

If you are unsure whether or not your site falls into this category feel free to contact us with a description before signing up for an account or publish material as an existing customer.

HQ Secure Global Internet will be the sole arbiter in determining violations of this provision.

Also prohibited are sites that promote any illegal activity or present content that may be damaging to HQ Secure Global Internet servers or any other server on the internet.  Links to such materials are also prohibited.

Examples of unacceptable content or links:

	Pirated software.
	Pornography and sex-related merchandising.
	Violations of Copyrights.
	Hacker programs or archives.
	Warez sites.
	Hate propaganda.

Spam is a direct violation and will get the site deleted without notice or refund. Selling of software and or bulk email addresses is not acceptable on our servers.

MP3 and other types of sites designed for downloading of material by a mass user group. This includes but is not limited to, Music, video, audio, Software or Freeware or Shareware, Free Images and backgrounds, and anything else that makes it an excessively high bandwidth site with the sole purpose to distribute freely products for download.

HQ Secure Global Internet will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of  this provision.

Your Responsibilities

You’re responsible for your conduct, Your staff and you must comply with our Terms of Service. Content in the Services may be protected by others’ intellectual property rights. Please don’t copy, upload, download or share content unless you have the right to do so.

We may review your conduct and content for compliance with these Terms and our Terms of Service. With that said, we have no obligation to do so. We aren’t responsible for the content people post and share via the Services.

Please safeguard your password to the Services, make sure that others don’t have access to it, and keep your account information current.

Finally, our Services are not intended for and may not be used by people under the age of 13. By using our Services, you are representing to us that you’re over 13.

Account Security and HQ Secure Global Internet Systems.

Computer programs are often large and complex. It is inevitable that some of the software you use on a regular basis contains undiscovered errors, and it is likely that some of these errors could undermine your computer’s security. Software developers continue to find these errors, however, and release updates to fix them.

It is your responsibility to ensure that scripts/programs installed under your account are secure and permissions of directories are set properly, regardless of the 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. You are required to 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 or update your password before suspending your account.

The Services, including all related equipment, networks and network devices are provided only for authorized customer use. HQ Secure Global Internet may, but is not obligated to, monitor our systems, including without limitation, to ensure that use is authorized, 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. By using the Services, you 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 requires the express written consent of the third party. HQ Secure Global Internet may, at our discretion, request documentation to prove that your access to a third party network or system is authorized.

Any account that is found to be compromised, infected with virus or other malicious software may be disabled and/or terminated. If you do not clean up your account after being notified by HQ Secure Global Internet of an ongoing issue, we reserve the right to keep your account disabled and or remove the offending software. Upon your request, HQ Secure Global Internet may clean-up your account, and or re-install or upgrade out of date and vulnerable software for an additional fee.

HQ Secure Global Internet reserves the right to migrate your account from one data center to another in order to comply with applicable data center policies, local law or for technical or other reasons without notice.

Harassment and Abuse

HQ Secure Global Internet does not tolerate abuse of any kind towards it’s employees. This includes all verbal harassment, yelling, swearing, rudeness, threats, and any intentionally disruptive behavior directed at HQ Secure Global Internet or any of it’s staff or agents. Client agrees to engage our HQ Secure Global Internet in a professional manner whether in person, email, helpdesk tickets, live chat, forums, or on the telephone. Any abuse will be construed as a violation of this Terms of Service agreement. No refunds will be provided for any service termination which arises as a result of a violation of this clause.
 

Backups

All of HQ Secure’s VPS servers are backed up every night, but you should know that the backups we restore from are generally only used for emergency disaster recovery, and are not suitable for restoring partial content (one site) but for restoring our entire VPS server environment. We will need to extract the full backup in order to get at your files, and this will take a while to complete. If possible, you should really have your own backup system in place so you can restore more quickly and have direct control over your backup policies. We can’t always guarantee that we’ll have suitable backups for you to restore from, so it’s always a good idea to have your own in place. You may want to look into our remote FTP backup solutions which cost $15 per month per 10 GB of remote backup space, or download full website backups, selected database backups, email filter and alias backup and or home directory backup as you feel is needed. Note: When creating full site backups, the backup file is stored in your root directory (one below public_html). Its size can be very large depending upon your website and other uploaded content. Leaving multiple backup files will count against your allotted disk space.

VPS Nightly Backups TOS

HQ Secure Global Internet performs nightly backups of VPS accounts as a courtesy service only. HQ Secure Global Internet is not responsible for the completeness, integrity, or freshness of your VPS backup. HQ Secure Global Internet recommends you have your own backup system in place. VPS backups are intended for disaster recovery purposes only. HQ Secure Global Internet reserves the right to charge fees for restores which are requested that are not for disaster recovery purposes; Minimum $75.00.

All Accounts

We have found most our customers to stay within “reasonable limits”  However, to maintain the integrity of our service, we must state the  following restrictions:

To all our accounts applies the following restrictions:

	Multiple hosts resolving at an IP or domain name that we provide.
	Sites with cgi’s running from their domain used on other domains.
	Sites using more than 20% of system resources.
	HQ Secure Global Internet will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.

Email Storage Limitations

All use of hosting space provided by HQ Secure Global Internet is subject to the terms of this Agreement and the Acceptable Use Policy.

Shared hosting space may only be used for web files, active email and content of User Websites. Shared hosting space may not be used for storage (whether of media, emails, or other data), including, as offsite storage of electronic files, email or FTP hosts. HQ Secure expressly reserves the right to review every shared account for excessive usage of CPU, disk space and other resources that may be caused by a violation of this Agreement or the Acceptable Use Policy. HQ Secure may, in our sole discretion, terminate access to the Services, apply additional fees, or remove or delete User Content for those accounts that are found to be in violation of HQ Secure’s terms and conditions.

Web hosting servers are geared for storing your website files and delivering those as efficiently as possible. While we do offer robust email services, it must be pointed out it is not the focus of our business. To wit we cannot archive client’s emails in perpetuity and will not provide email cloud services. All clients are urged to download emails to their devices that access email. HQ Secure is happy to provide email and webmail services, however you must understand that we do not intend the service to be archival. Email accounts are limited to 250 Megabytes (MB) of email storage.

HQ Secure Global Internet doesn’t recommend a single email account go over 250MB in size on our servers. If you go over 250MB HQ Secure will clean up your mail folder; deleting junk, spam, trash and any mail over a year old for server-performance reasons.

Email Solutions

If you intend to store your emails in the cloud then you may be better served using one of the many online email services such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, FuseMail, FastMail or Outlook. I can setup routing to forward a copy of emails to your Gmail or other mail account. If you don’t have one, you can set one up for free J Google will give you ~2-5 gigabytes of storage for free!

Mitigating Email Storage Limitations

Email Applications
Most desktop, tablet and or smart phones email have a setting that once email is downloaded to your device it is then deleted from our servers (your hosting account).
More Info

One of the more popular ways to use POP email and not have saved emails impact storage limits is to link ones account to Gmail. From within Gmail you will be able to send POP mail from your domain account (you@yourdomain.com) and receive mail addressed to you@yourdomain.com. Email can be automatically deleted from your hosting account while being retained within Gmail – up to their storage limits.

Request HQ Secure to Bulk Delete Stored Email
Stored email can be deleted in bulk, or deleted based upon date range.

Commercial Advertising – Email

Spamming, or the sending of unsolicited email, from a HQ Secure Global Internet server or using an email address or domain that is maintained on a HQ Secure Global Internet machine as reference is STRICTLY prohibited. As delegated by our backbone provider, any sites using spam or selling of spam related software or bulk email content will be closed.

HQ Secure Global Internet will be the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision.

Spamming WILL get your account terminated.

Chat Rooms

We do not allow clients to install their own chat rooms. These tend to be a large drain on system resources and we cannot allow it as an account option.

Resellers

In the event that you become unsatisfied with our services within 30 days of your account activation, you would only qualify for a refund if you have not yet added additional domains to your account. We do not refund domain registration fees. We can not be responsible for any fees that you charge your clients.

Billing

Recurring Billing: The credit card information you supply us when you join is kept on file.  Upon sign up, charges are immediately made to your card for your first months’ hosting and the setup fees (if applicable… see plan details).  Then on the first day of each month following, you will be charged for your next month’s hosting.  If you initially sign up after the 15th of the month, then you will get the rest of that month for free, and you first monthly charge (after your initial payment) will NOT be the first of the next month, but the month after that.
Account Deactivation: Any account deactivated due to non-payment will be deactivated and we require a reactivation fee of $5.00 per domain to be paid prior to reactivating the account. Reseller’s deactivated due to non-payment will also result in the deactivation of all accounts under their reseller plan. Prior to reactivating the reseller accounts we require a reactivation fee of $2.50 per domain.

30 Day Money Back Guarantee/Refunds

If for whatever reason, you become unsatisfied with our services within the first 30 days of your account activation, we will refund your hosting fees, no questions asked. Domain name registration fees however, cannot be refunded.

If you have already added additional accounts to your plan, you are still eligible to receive your full refund. As long as you cancel within 30 days of your initial signup, you qualify for the full refund.

If you wish to cancel your account(s) after the 30 days has expired, we do not refund partial monthly fees.  Your account will still be accessible for the duration of the period you’ve paid for (typically until the end of the month).

Cancellation of Account(s)

Upon cancellation of an account(s), no further charges will be made to your credit card.  If you are canceling prior to the end of your billing term (i.e. in the middle of the month, or the year if you paid for a year), there can be no refunds for that portion of the term you did not use. If you are canceling your account(s) within the first 30 days of your initial signup date, you are entitled to a full refund of your hosting fees. We cannot refund domain name registration fees under any circumstances.

Background Running Programs

CRON JOBs: We may allow programs to run continually in the background. These are considered on a case-by-case basis and an extra charge will be incurred  based on system resources used and operational maintenance needed.
IRC: We currently do not allow IRC or IRC bots to be operated on our servers.

Server Abuse

Any attempt to undermine or cause harm to a server, or customer, of HQ Secure Global Internet is strictly prohibited. Offenders will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Refusal of Service

We reserve the right to refuse, cancel, or suspend service at our sole discretion.

Sub-domains

HQ Secure Global Internet reserves the right to transfer any sub-domain in domains of its possession to an alternative domain.

Limitation of liability

Your use of HQ Secure Global Internet’s services are at your sole risk.  All  HQ Secure Global Internet services are provided on an “AS IS” basis WITHOUT  WARRANTIES OF ANY  KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED, IMPLIED, CONSTRUCTIVE, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,  NON INFRINGEMENT OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so this exclusion may not apply to you in full.

HQ Secure Global Internet makes no guarantee of availability of service and reserves the right to change, withdraw, suspend, or discontinue any functionality or feature of the HQ Secure Global Internet service.

IN NO EVENT WILL HQ Secure Global Internet BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE HQ Secure Global Internet’s SERVICES OR ANY CONTENT THEREON. THIS DISCLAIMER APPLIES, WITHOUT  LIMITATION, TO ANY DAMAGES OR INJURY, WHETHER FOR BREACH OF CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE, CAUSED BY ANY FAILURE OF PERFORMANCE; ERROR; OMISSION; INTERRUPTION; DELETION; DEFECT; DELAY IN OPERATION OR TRANSMISSION; COMPUTER VIRUS; FILE CORRUPTION; COMMUNICATION-LINE FAILURE; NETWORK OR SYSTEM OUTAGE; OR THEFT, DESTRUCTION, UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO, ALTERATION OF, OR USE OF ANY RECORD.

The formation, construction and interpretation of this agreement shall be controlled by  the laws of the United States of America.  Any dispute relating to this agreement shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts in the United States, and the parties agree to submit to the personal and exclusive jurisdiction and venue of these courts.

HQ Secure Global Internet reserves the right to change or amend these Terms of Service at any time without prior notice. By submitting your order  to HQ Secure Global Internet, you signify your agreement to these Terms of Service.

If you do not agree to these Terms, then please don’t submit an order!

Violations of these Acceptable Uses Policies and Terms of Service should be referred to abuse@hqsecure.com

All complaints will be investigated promptly.

Serious violations of terms or conditions can be ground for immediate account deactivation without refund.

Privacy Policy

Your privacy is very important to us. Accordingly, we have developed this Policy in order for you to understand how we collect, use, communicate and disclose and make use of personal information. The following outlines our privacy policy.

• Before or at the time of collecting personal information, we will identify the purposes for which information is being collected.
• We will collect and use of personal information solely with the objective of fulfilling those purposes specified by us and for other compatible purposes, unless we obtain the consent of the individual concerned or as required by law.
• We will only retain personal information as long as necessary for the fulfillment of those purposes.
• We will collect personal information by lawful and fair means and, where appropriate, with the knowledge or consent of the individual concerned.
• Personal data should be relevant to the purposes for which it is to be used, and, to the extent necessary for those purposes, should be accurate, complete, and up-to-date.
• We will protect personal information by reasonable security safeguards against loss or theft, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification.
• We will make readily available to customers information about our policies and practices relating to the management of personal information.

Late Payment Policy