General Notice

Thank you for reading BSS Connect’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). By accessing this website, or by contracting with us for service, you agree, without limitation or qualification, to be bound by this policy and the terms and conditions it contains, as well as any other additional terms, conditions, rules or policies which are displayed to you in connection with this service/website.

The purpose of this AUP is to comply with the relevant laws of the Republic; to specify to clients and users of our service/website what activities and online behavior are considered an unacceptable use of the service/website; to protect the integrity of our network and to specify the consequences that may flow from undertaking such prohibited activities.

This document contains a number of legal obligations that you are presumed to be familiar with. As such, we encourage you to read this document thoroughly and direct any queries to our client services/legal department.

BSS Connect respects the rights of our clients and users of our services to freedom of speech and expression; access to information; privacy; human dignity; religion, belief and opinion in accordance with our constitution. We undertake not to interfere with any of those rights unless required to do so by law; unless those rights are exercised for unlawful purposes; or unless the exercise of those rights threatens to cause harm to another person or affect the integrity of our network.

Code of Conduct

BSS Connect confirms that in compliance with section 72 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002, BSS Connect has adopted and implemented the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) official Code of Conduct, which can be viewed at https://ispa.org.za/code-of-conduct/

Unlawful Use

BSS Connect’s services/website may only be used for lawful purposes and activities. We prohibit any use of our website/network including the transmission, storage and distribution of any material or content using our network that violates any law or regulation of the Republic.

This includes:

1. Any violation of local and international laws prohibiting child pornography; obscenity; discrimination (including racial, gender or religious slurs) and hate speech; or speech designed to incite violence or hatred, or threats to cause bodily harm.
2. Any activity designed to defame, abuse, stalk, harass or physically threaten any individual in the Republic or beyond its borders; including any attempt to link to, post, transmit or otherwise distribute any inappropriate or defamatory material.
3. Any violation of Intellectual Property laws including materials protected by local and international copyright, trademarks and trade secrets. Moreover BSS Connect cannot be held liable if you make any unlawful use of any multimedia content accessed through the search facility provided by BSS Connect’s network, or otherwise available through access to our network, whether for commercial or noncommercial purposes.
4. Any violation of the individual’s right to privacy, including any effort to collect personal data of third parties without their consent.
5. Any fraudulent activity whatsoever, including dubious financial practices, such as pyramid schemes; the impersonation of another subscriber without their consent; or any attempt to enter into a transaction with BSS Connect on behalf of another subscriber without their consent.
6. Any violation of the exchange control laws of the Republic.
7. Any activity that results in the sale, transmission or distribution of pirated or illegal software.
8. Failing to respond to a request by a recipient of unsolicited mail to be removed from any mailing or direct marketing list and continuing to send unsolicited mail following such a request for removal. Where any user resides outside of the Republic, permanently or temporarily, such user will be subject to the laws of the country in which s/he is currently resident and which apply. On presentation of a legal order to do so, or under obligation through an order for mutual foreign legal assistance, BSS Connect will assist foreign law enforcement agencies (LEA) in the investigation and prosecution of a crime committed using BSS Connect’s resources, including the provisioning of all personal identifiable data.

 

Prohibited Activities

The following sections outline activities that are considered an unacceptable use of Company’s services/network/website and also detail the guidelines for acceptable use of certain facilities/services, as the case may be.

Threats to Network Security

Any activity which threatens the functioning, security and/or integrity of BSS Connect’s network is unacceptable.

This includes:

1. Any efforts to attempt to gain unlawful and unauthorised access to the network or circumvent any of the security measures established by BSS Connect for this goal;
2. Any effort to use BSS Connect’s equipment to circumvent the user authentication or security of any host, network or account (“cracking” or “hacking”);
3. Forging of any TCP-IP packet header (spoofing) or any part of the header information in an email or a newsgroup posting;
4. Any effort to breach or attempt to breach the security of another user or attempt to gain access to any other person’s computer, software, or data without the knowledge and consent of such person;
5. Any activity which threatens to disrupt the service offered by BSS Connect through “denial of service attacks”, flooding of a network, or overloading a service or any unauthorised probes (“scanning” or “nuking”) of others’ networks;
6. Any activity which in any way threatens the security of the network by knowingly posting, transmitting, linking to or otherwise distributing any information or software which contains a virus; Trojan horse; worm, lock, mail bomb, cancelbot or other harmful, destructive or disruptive component.
7. Any unauthorised monitoring of data or traffic on the network without BSS Connect’s explicit, written consent.
8. Any unsolicited mass mailing activity including direct marketing; spam and chain letters for commercial or other purposes, without the consent of the recipients of those mails.
   
   
   

Public Space & Third Party Content & sites

In reading this AUP or in signing a service contract with BSS Connect, you acknowledge that BSS Connect has no power to control the content of the information passing over the Internet and its applications, including e-mail; chatrooms; news groups; or other similar fora, and that BSS Connect cannot be held responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any of the above mentioned content, in any way for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of, or in connection with your use of, or reliance on, any such content.

Our services also offer access to numerous third party webpages. You acknowledge that we exercise absolutely no control over such third party content, or sites and in such cases, our network is merely a conduit or means of access and transmission. This includes, but is not limited to, third party content contained on or accessible through the BSS Connect network websites and web pages or sites displayed as search results or contained within a directory of links on the BSS Connect network. It remains your responsibility to review and evaluate any such content, and that any and all risk associated with the use of, or reliance on, such content rests with you.

Access to public Internet spaces, such as bulletin boards, Usenet groups, chat rooms and moderated forums is entirely voluntary and at your own risk.

BSS Connect employees do not moderate any of these services, or your communications, transmissions or use of these services. We do not undertake any responsibility for any content contained therein, or for any breaches of your right to privacy that you may experience as a result of accessing such spaces

Usenet Newsgroups

The client is responsible for determining and familiarizing himself or herself with the written policies of a given newsgroup before posting to it.

The client must comply with these guidelines at all times which can be obtained from other users of the newsgroup upon request, or from the group’s administrators/moderators.

The following are prohibited practices with regard to Usenet newsgroups and BSS Connect reserves the right to delete and/or cancel posts which violate the following conditions:

1. Excessive cross-posting of the same article to multiple newsgroups.
2. Posting of irrelevant or off-topic material to newsgroups (also known as USENET spam).
3. Posting binaries to a non-binary newsgroup.
4. Posting adverts, solicitations, or any other commercial messages unless the guidelines of the newsgroup in question explicitly permit them.

BSS Connect does not monitor nor control the content that is available or unavailable via newsgroup and/or usenet services. The services offered by BSS Connect in respect to usenet services is merely a convenience to BSS Connect clients to make the use of the service more convenient. BSS Connect accepts no liability and has no control over the content that may or may not be available, including, but not limited to, pornography, illegally obtained movies, applications and music.

Unsolicited, Spam and Junk mail

Spam and unsolicited bulk mail are highly problematic practices. They affect the use and enjoyment of services by others and often compromise network security. BSS Connect will take swift and firm action against any user engaging in any of the following unacceptable practices:

1. Sending unsolicited bulk mail for marketing or any other purposes (political, religious or commercial) to people who have not consented to receiving such mail;
2. Operating or maintaining mailing lists without the express permission of all recipients listed;
3. Failing to promptly remove from lists invalid or undeliverable addresses or addresses of unwilling recipients;
4. Using BSS Connect’s service to collect responses from unsolicited e-mail sent from accounts on other Internet hosts or e-mail services, that violate this AUP or the AUP of any other Internet service provider;
5. Including BSS Connect’s name in the header or by listing an IP address that belongs to BSS Connect in any unsolicited email sent through BSS Connect’s network or not;
   
   

Failure to secure a client’s mail server against public relay as a protection to themselves and the broader Internet community. Public relay occurs when a mail server is accessed by a third party from another domain and utilised to deliver mails, without the authority or consent of the owner of the mail-server. Mail servers that are unsecured against public relay often become abused by unscrupulous operators for spam delivery and upon detection such delivery must be disallowed. BSS Connect reserves the right to examine users’ mail servers to confirm that no mails are being sent from the mail server through public relay and the results of such checks can be made available to the user. BSS Connect also reserves the right to examine the mail servers of any users using BSS Connect’s mail servers for “smart hosting” (when the user relays its mail via a BSS Connect mail server to a mail server of its own) or similar services at any time to ensure that the servers are properly secured against public relay. All relay checks will be done in strict accordance with BSS Connect’s privacy policy.

Protection of Minors

BSS Connect prohibits clients from using BSS Connect’s service to harm or attempt to harm a minor, including, but not limited to, by hosting, possessing, disseminating, distributing or transmitting material that is unlawful, including child pornography.

Privacy and Confidentiality

BSS Connect respects the privacy and confidentiality of our clients and users of our service. Please review our privacy policy which details how we collect and use personal information gathered in the course of operating this service.

Notice and Take-down Procedures

BSS Connect confirms that it has a procedure in place for the notice and take-down of illegal material. In compliance with section 77 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (No. 25 of 2002)

The notice and take-down procedure can be viewed at https://ispa.org.za/code-of-conduct/.

Take-down notice email: complaints@ispa.org.za
Take-down notice information and form: https://ispa.org.za/tdn/

Clients are also notified of the content and procedures of the ISPA Code of Conduct (https://ispa.org.za/code-of-conduct/) which may be used against any Internet service provider who fails to comply with the code of conduct. We urge you to familiarise yourself with this code.

Action following breach of the AUP

Upon receipt of a complaint, or having become aware of an incident, BSS Connect| may take any of the following steps:

1. In the case of a network, inform the user’s network administrator of the incident and request the network administrator or network owner to deal address the incident in terms of this AUP and the ISPA Code of Conduct;
2. In severe cases suspend access of the user’s entire network until abuse can be prevented by appropriate means;
3. In the case of individual users, warn the user; suspend the user’s account and/or revoke or cancel the user’s network access privileges completely;
4. In all cases, charge the offending parties for administrative costs as well as for machine and human time lost due to the incident;
5. Assist other networks or website administrators in investigating credible suspicions of any activity listed in this AUP;
6. Institute civil or criminal proceedings;
7. Share information concerning the incident with other Internet access providers, or publish the information, and/or make available the users’ details to law enforcement agencies