Firenet’s Conduct Rules and Acceptable Use Policy

Firenet Hi-Speed Internet and Dial Up Conduct Rules and Acceptable Use Policy [AUP] were updated on 17/12/2008 to include the new range of Anytime dialup services added 10/12/2008.

This service is provided by Firenet Ltd and the Brand Anytime Plus and Anytime plus 2 are property of Firenet Ltd.

These Conduct Rules have been created to promote the integrity, security, reliability and privacy of Firenet’s systems and networks and form part of the legally binding Terms and Conditions which govern the use of Firenet’s systems, services and equipment by you. These Conduct Rules also identify the actions that Firenet considers to be intrinsically abusive, and thus, strictly prohibited.

Firenet Ltd and the Brand Firenet including Angelfire reserve the right to change any part of these terms and conditions with or without prior notification in response to the ever-changing information technology environment. We will however within all reasonable purposes try to keep you informed of any changes on these terms either by your account email or by the website as a public information service.

By using our services, you agree to be bound by all Firenet terms and conditions.

In event of it being necessary to change the terms and conditions on our website, you will be considered to have accepted the changes if any of the following conditions apply:

• 7 days have passed from the date that the new terms and conditions were posted.
• We, by any reasonable means, try to keep you informed of any changes on these terms either by your account email or by the website as a public information service.
• If you have logged on to the service and continue to do so.

If you do not agree to the new terms and conditions, you are perfectly within your rights to cancel the said service with Firenet Internet providing you are still within 7 days of the changes initially being posted.

• The Service, Anytime Basic at a price of £4.25 per month exc VAT, has a disconnect time of 1hours and you are allocated a monthly session time of 50 hours per month, based on Standard pricing. Any hours clocked up after the standard hours will be charged at 0.6 pence per minute inc vat.
• The Service, Anytime Lite at a price of £7.65 per month exc VAT, has a disconnect time of 2 hours and you are allocated a monthly session time of 100 hours per month, based on Standard pricing. Any hours clocked up after the standard hours will be charged at 0.6 pence per minute inc vat.
• The Service, Anytime Lite Plus at a price of £11.06 per month exc VAT, has a disconnect time of 2 hours and you are allocated a monthly session time of 150 hours per month based on Standard pricing. Any hours clocked up after the standard hours will be charged at 0.6 pence per minute inc vat.
• The Service, Anytime Plus at a price of £12.76 per month exc VAT, has a disconnect time of 4 hours and you are allocated a monthly session time of 250 hours per month based on the hours on standard pricing. Any hours clocked up after the standard hours will be charged at 0.6 pence per minute inc vat.

The above services are available to new customers, and as a regrade option for existing customers as of 10/12/2008. Regrades may be placed via the customer control panel.

All our unmetered packages are based on a three month minimum term of contract, with all payments made in advance.

The Service Price may vary in line with any promotions we have for new customers or resellers, this does not entitle any already contracted subscriber to benefit from all or any or the new offers Firenet may have other than the subscriber has left the service for a term of no lesser than 1 month and may wish to re-join.

You may not be allowed to use an auto-dialler to continue the services when no-one is using the computer, this service is not designed for heavy users. If you are a heavy user and require more hours than the max value of 150 hours per month please email support@firenet.uk.net with your requirements and we will be able to provide bespoke services for you.

Heavy usage will not be tolerated, any persons using the service for more than the time requirement without written authorisation from Firenet authorities will be disconnected, and any time outside the Standard maximum hours, will be charged from your account, plus any over use will be charged at 0.6 pence per minute inc vat.

Firenet reserve the right to inflate the monthly price on the need to continue the services in a profitable manner and to keep in line with competitors pricing modules.

Firenet reserve the right to reduce the monthly price on the need to continue the services in a profitable manner and to keep in line with competition prices.

All services and offers are subject to terms and conditions, errors and omissions excluded.

Firenet will inform you of any price change 1 month prior to doing so, as a subscriber, if you are unhappy with any proposals you reserve the right to cancel your subscription with 1 months notice.

Under the consumer protection (Distance Spelling) regulations 2000, you may have the right to a 7 day ''Cooling Off Period'' within which you can cancel this agreement. However, you acknowledge that you wish to be able to connect to the internet, as soon as is reasonably possible and once connected you waive any such right to the 7 day 'Cooling Off Period' and your ability to cancel this agreement during that period.

The termination of this contract is immediate by way of a Cancellation form provided in the ''My Account'' section. No other method of cancellation will be accepted, and incorrect methods will be denied. The account can only be cancelled once all outstanding amounts have been paid.

Firenet reserve the right to terminate any customer’s subscription with or without notice should any customer breach any terms.

Firenet reserve the right to withdraw any services giving 1 month’s notice to all subscribers.

Payment will be taken from your account on a monthly basis and upon signup you will immediately be debited from your account the subscription amount for the advertised sum.

Should payment be rejected by your bank or building society, Firenet reserve the right to disconnect you without notice until payment is made. There will be a re-connection charge of £1.50. It is the responsibility of the customer to ensure that payment details are kept up to date in order for payment to be made on time.

Firenet accept no responsibility for penalty charges charged to the customer by their bank for any payment processed or attempted by Firenet. The customer should ensure that the payment details they have submitted for their order are valid, up to date, and that funds are available when payment is due.

Services provided by Firenet carry a minimum of 3 months term. Should you cancel within this time you will be obliged to pay the full contractual term from your account. Firenet reserve the right not to refund any monies that are taken from your account during contractual term.

Services including a first month free offer, carry a 6 months minimum term. Customer will be given the option to accept the free month or to waive this offer for a minimum term of three months. Should you cancel within this time you will be obliged to pay the full contractual term from your account. Firenet reserve the right not to refund any monies that are taken from your account during contractual term.

Proof of account ownership must be provided either by using the MyAccount login on the Firenet website or by requesting in writing providing your account reference details, including your account email address and password.

Payment disputes must be brought to the attention of Firenet before any action can be taken. Any payment outstanding on an account will be passed to our debt recovery team, who will seek a resolution by whatever means necessary. Please note: Any credit chargebacks for services provided without sufficient effort to notify Firenet beforehand, will result in a £25 administration charge per transaction and the service may be disconnected. If the issue cannot be resolved, the debt shall be forwarded to our debt collection specialists, and they will seek a resolution by whatever means necessary.

You the subscriber, must ensure that your service is running on minimum equipment that will provide you with normal internet access, we will not accept responsibility for any subscriber that getting problems connection due to badly programmed operating systems or problematic computers. The computer must be error free in order to take full advantage of our services; this is the customer’s responsibility. We will not accept technical support requests with problematic machines.

When calling technical support you must at all times try to ensure that the person we are speaking to is, at least comfortable with helping us over the phone and have a basic understanding of how to work a computer.

Support services provided by Firenet are provided in the languages of English only, please ensure the person we are dealing with on any Technical, billing or situation that requires a phone call, can speak proper fluent English.

1. You shall not post, publish transmit, re-transmit or store material on or through any of the Firenet's systems services or products which:
   1. Is in violation of any law or regulation which is enforceable in the United Kingdom; or
   2. Is threatening, obscene, indecent, defamatory, or blasphemous; or
   3. Is calculated to incite hatred against any ethnic, religious or other minority or is otherwise calculated to adversely affect any individual, group or entity (collectively, 'Persons'); or
   4. Violates the rights of any Person, including rights of privacy, rights of personality;
   5. Infringes or breaches any third party intellectual property rights (which shall include but not be limited to copyrights, trade marks, design rights, trade secrets patents, moral rights and performance rights).

For the avoidance of doubt, the installation or distribution of 'pirated' software or other software products that are not appropriately licensed to the customer will constitute a violation of intellectual property rights. In the event of any disagreement as to whether materials posted, transmitted, re-transmitted or stored by a customer are in contravention of this section, the decision of Firenet shall be final.

1. You shall not post, transmit, re-transmit or publish
   1. Unsolicited promotional or advertising material; or
   2. chain letters or pyramid selling schemes.
2. You shall not undertake any activity designed or likely to:
   1. waste networked resources, including but not limited to time on end systems accessible via Firenet anytime or anytime plus; or
   2. corrupt, interfere with or destroy another anytime user's ('Users') data; or
   3. violate the privacy of other Users; or
3. interfere with other Users' enjoyment of anytime, including but not limited to overloading access links or switching equipment.

Prohibited Uses of Firenet’s Systems, Services and Equipment

You may only use Firenet’s systems, services and equipment in a manner that, in Firenet’s sole judgement, is consistent with the purposes of such systems, services and products. If, after reading the Conduct Rules, you are unsure whether a contemplated use or action is permitted under the Conduct Rules, you should contact Firenet with a description of the proposed use by emailing abuse@firenet.uk.net for an explanation as to whether the use is permissible under these Conduct Rules.

Please ensure you await our response before carrying out any use or action that you are unsure about.

The examples identified in the sub-sections below are non-exclusive and are provided, in part, for guidance purposes only. The following uses of Firenet’s systems, services and equipment as described in subsections A through D are expressly prohibited:

1. Prohibited Actions: General Conduct
   1. Actions that restrict or inhibit any person, company, firm or organisation whether a customer of Firenet or otherwise, in its use or enjoyment of any of Firenet’s systems, services or products.
   2. Resale of Firenet’s services and products, without the prior written consent of Firenet.
   3. Deceptive or misleading on-line advertising or marketing practices
   4. Furnishing false data on Firenet’s sign-up form, contract, or on-line application, including fraudulent use of credit card numbers (and such conduct is ground for immediate termination and may subject the offender to civil or criminal liability).
   5. Firenet Internet residential services are for residential and business use
2. Prohibited Actions: System and Network Security
   1. Attempting to circumvent user authentication or security of any host, network, or account ('cracking'). This includes, but is not limited to, accessing data not intended for the customer, logging into a server or account the customer is not expressly authorised to access, or probing the security of other networks (such as running a SATAN scan or similar tool).
   2. Effecting security breaches or disruptions of Internet communications. Security breaches include, but are not limited to, accessing data of which customer is not an intended recipient or logging onto a server or account that customer is not expressly authorised to access. For purposes of this section, 'disruption' includes, but is not limited to, port scans, ping floods, packet spoofing, forged routing information, deliberate attempts to overload a service, and attempts to 'crash' a host.
   3. Using any program/script/command, or sending messages of any kind, designed to interfere with a user's terminal session, by any means, locally or by the Internet.
   4. Executing any form of network monitoring which will intercept data not intended for the customer.
3. Prohibited Actions: e-mail
   1. Harassment, whether through language, frequency, or size of messages sent, is prohibited.
   2. Transmission of e-mail to any person containing offensive or abusive language; and
   3. Sending unsolicited mail messages, including the sending of 'junk mail' or other advertising material to individuals who did not specifically request such material ('e-mail Spam'). Customers are explicitly prohibited from sending unsolicited bulk mail messages. This includes, but is not limited to, bulk mailing of commercial advertising, promotional, or informational announcements, and political or religious tracts. Such material may only be sent to those who have explicitly requested it. If a recipient asks to stop receiving e-mail of this nature, the customer must not send that person any further e-mail.
   4. Creating or forwarding 'chain letters' or other 'pyramid schemes' of any type, whether or not the recipient wishes to receive such mailings.
   5. Malicious e-mail, including, but not limited to, 'mail-bombing' (flooding a user or site with very large or numerous pieces of e-mail).
   6. Unauthorised use, or forging, or mail header information.
   7. Use of unsolicited e-mail originating from the Firenet network or networks of other Internet Service Providers on behalf of, or to advertise any service hosted by Firenet, or connected via Firenet network.
   8. Wilful failure to secure open SMTP ports so as to prevent the unauthorised use of customer resources for the purposes of sending unsolicited e-mail by a third party.
   9. For the avoidance of doubt any systematic, repeated or bulk referral of third parties to Firenet contained in e mails shall be deemed 'e mail Spam' and a breach of this sub-section C and in addition to Firenet’s right to suspend and/or terminate your contract and any other rights Firenet may have, Firenet shall not be obliged to credit you with any amounts pursuant to any referral program in existence (if any) from time to time.
4. Prohibited Actions: Usenet Newsgroups
   1. Posting the same or similar messages to large numbers of Usenet newsgroups (Newsgroup Spam, USENET Spam, Unsolicited Commercial Messaging, Unsolicited Commercial Mail, Mass Mail Fraud).
   2. Posting chain letters or other pyramid schemes, of any type.
   3. Posting encoded binary files to newsgroups not specifically named for that purpose.
   4. Postings that contain offensive or abusive language.
   5. Cancellation or superseding of postings other than your own, with the exception of official newsgroup moderators performing their duties.
   6. Forging of header information. This includes attempting to circumvent the approval process for posting to a moderated newsgroup
   7. Solicitations of mail for any other e-mail address other than that of the poster's account or service, with intent to harass or to collect replies.
   8. Postings that are in violation of the written charters or FAQs for those newsgroups.
   9. Posting of Usenet articles from the Firenet anytime network or networks of other Internet Service Providers on behalf of, or to advertise any service hosted by Firenet, or connected via the Firenet anytime network.
   10. Failure to secure a news server so as to prevent the unauthorised use of customer resources by a third party which may result in Usenet posts, which violate this policy.
   11. Advertisements posted in newsgroups whose charters/FAQs explicitly prohibit them. The poster of an advertisement or other information is responsible for determining the etiquette of a given newsgroup, prior to posting to it.
   12. For the avoidance of doubt any systematic, repeated or bulk referral of third parties to Firenet contained in Usenet newsgroups shall be deemed ''Usenet Spam'' and a breach of this sub-section D and in addition to Firenet’s right to suspend and/or terminate your contract and any other rights Firenet may have, Firenet shall not be obliged to credit you with any amounts pursuant to any referral program in existence (if any) from time to time.

Censorship

The Internet contains material that is inappropriate for minors and may cause offence to others. We do not censor or restrict access to any material or information on the Internet unless required to do so by the Police or other competent authority. We will however refer any complaints regarding censorship to the Police for further investigation. Please see below for details of Firenet’s complaints procedures.

Security

he security (including authentication) of any Internet Protocol services used by you from home is your responsibility. It is also your responsibility to ensure that you keep your passwords secure. Firenet is not liable for any negative consequences, for instance lost or corrupted files, incurred by your failure to employ adequate security measures.

Firenet Is Not Responsible For Content

Firenet is not responsible for the content of any USENET posting, whether or not a posting was made by a customer of ours. Firenet is not responsible for the content of materials and information published by others, which are accessible through the Companies network, and does not accept responsibility for the violation of any laws resulting from such publication.

Removal of Materials

At its sole discretion, Firenet reserves the right to remove materials from its servers and to terminate Internet access to customers that Firenet determines have violated this Conduct Rules.

Complaint and Enforcement

Complaint

• Complaints regarding abusive conduct will be accepted via the following email address; abuse@firenet.uk.net, provided a valid return address is included. Firenet must be able to verify each instance of abuse, and so each complaint must include the COMPLETE TEXT OF THE OBJECTIONAL MESSAGE, INCLUDING ALL HEADERS.
• Please do NOT send excerpted parts of a message; sending a copy of the entire message, including headers, helps to prevent misunderstandings based on incomplete information, or information used out of context. Full headers demonstrate which path the message has taken, and enable us to determine whether any part of the message has been forged.
• This information is vital to our investigation.

Complaints Procedure

If you have a complaint please contact our customer services department.
We will record relevant information regarding your complaint, supply a reference number and initiate an investigation, or if possible resolve the issue directly with you.
If the complaint can't be resolved, it will be escalated to a team leader. You will receive a reply within 24 - 48 working hours.
If the explanation or resolution is not acceptable you can submit a written complaint, this will be directed to the department manager who will respond in writing within 7 working days from receipt of the letter.
If the reply from the department manager is still not satisfactory to you, you can request that the complaint is further escalated within the company. The complaint will then be passed to the relevant director and a reply will be received within 21 days.
If you are still not satisfied with any proposed resolution or explanation, you will have the option of raising a case with CISAS (Communications and Internet Services Adjudication Scheme), who will act as independent arbitrator.

To initiate this procedure, you should contact CISAS directly:

CISAS
24 Angel Gate
City Road
London
EC1V 2PT.

Telephone: 020 520 3827
Fax: 020 7404 4023
E-mail: info@cisas.org

If you have any queries about our formal complaints procedures, please contact our Customer Services Team on 0870 9777 186, or by e-mail at support@firenet.co.uk, or by writing to the following address:

Customer Services 195 - 197 North Street Leeds West Yorkshire LS7 2AA

Enforcement

Firenet may, in its sole discretion, suspend or terminate a customer's service for violation of any of the Conduct Rules at any time and without warning.

As a general matter, Firenet attempts to work with customers to cure violations and to ensure that there is no re-occurrence of the violation prior to terminating service, but it shall not be obliged to do so.

Breaches of the Conduct Rules

In applying the Conduct Rules, it is intended that common sense and responsible attitudes should be the guiding principles.

If you breach the Conduct Rules, you may receive a formal warning from Firenet specifying the unacceptable conduct and notifying you that repeated breaches may result in anytime services being temporarily or permanently withdrawn from you.

If, after you have received a formal warning from Firenet, your conduct continues to breach the Conduct Rules Firenet will withdraw its services from you until such time as Firenet is satisfied that you have implemented appropriate steps to ensure that your use of Firenet’s systems, services or equipment will comply with the Conduct Rules.

Further breaches will be grounds for termination of your contract with Firenet.

Notwithstanding the above, Firenet may terminate your contract with Firenet without following the above procedures if you commit a breach of the Conduct Rules which in Firenet’s reasonable opinion is serious enough to merit immediate termination.

Further information

For further information or advice regarding this document or use of Firenet’s services please email support@firenet.uk.net