1. INTRODUCTION

1. 1.1 Defined terms used in this AUP shall have the same meanings as given to them in the Signstix licence agreement and the rules of interpretation set out therein will also apply in this AUP.
2. 1.2 This document sets out the standards to be achieved and adhered to by all Customers and Users when using any Signstix Services and details certain restrictions on and unauthorised uses of, those Services.
3. 1.3 This AUP forms part of the Customer licence agreement for use of the Services and accordingly, will be binding. Where there is a contractual arrangement in place between the Customer and a Reseller, the Customer shall be required to agree to this AUP when it accesses the Services via the Signstix portal and in such circumstances, this AUP will be binding on the Customer and may be enforced directly by Signstix.
4. 1.4 The Customer shall ensure that all Users who agree to and accept the terms of this AUP adhere to it and further, the Customer undertakes to Signstix that those persons have authority to bind the Customer.

2. PROHIBITED USES OF THE SERVICES

1. 2.1 Services must strictly only be used for lawful purposes. Customers are entirely responsible for ensuring that they use the Services at all times in accordance with all applicable laws and not for any unlawful activity whatsoever.
2. 2.2 Without prejudice to the generality of the Customer’s other obligations, the Customer must not under any circumstances use the Services (or allow any other person to use make use of the Services):
3. 2.2.1 in any way that breaches any applicable local, national or international law or regulation;
4. 2.2.2 in any way that is unlawful or fraudulent or has any unlawful or fraudulent purpose or effect;
5. 2.2.3 to engage in or encourage any criminal activity;
6. 2.2.4 to circumvent the security of third party machines or systems or to attempt unauthorised or illegal access to computers, networks or accounts not belonging to the Customer or to interfere with the services of another user or network or for any other act relating to the circumvention of security measures;
7. 2.2.5 for the purpose of harming or attempting to harm minors in any way or in a way which does or could harm minors even if that is not the intended purpose;
8. 2.2.6 to send, knowingly receive, upload, download, use or re-use any data, information, material or Customer Data which does not comply with the requirements and standards for Customer Data in this AUP;
9. 2.2.7 to transmit, send or procure or permit the transmission or sending of any unauthorised advertising or promotional material (including in a way which is in breach of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (or any replacement legislation or equivalent regulations in any other jurisdiction)), unsolicited bulk messaging or any other form of similar solicitation (spam);
10. 2.2.8 to knowingly transmit, send or upload any material that contains viruses, trojan horses, worms, time-bombs, keystroke loggers, spyware, adware or any other harmful programs or similar computer code designed to adversely affect the operation of any computer software, hardware or system;
11. 2.2.9 in any way which may harm Signstix’s own network or that of its other customers;
12. 2.2.10 in any way to attempt to use or gain unauthorised access to data, accounts, hosts, systems or networks of Signstix or any of its customers, suppliers or any other party;
13. 2.2.11 to attempt to probe, scan or test the vulnerability of a system or network of Signstix, any Signstix product or service or any system, network, product or service of any of its customers, suppliers or those of any other party;
14. 2.2.12 to forge any TCP/IP packet header or any part of the header information in an e-mail or otherwise;
15. 2.2.13 to interfere, or in any way attempt to interfere with services to any user, host or network including mail-bombing, denial of service attacks, flooding or deliberately attempting to overload any system;
16. 2.2.14 in a way that does not comply with reasonable instructions given by Signstix, its Resellers or contractors.
17. 2.3 Customers shall not engage in any activity that interferes with or disrupts the Services, services to any other customers of Signstix or the servers and networks which are connected to any of them.
18. 2.4 Customers shall not exceed any restrictions on capacity which apply to use of the Services without prior express, written permission.
19. 2.5 Customers should note that a misuse of the Services including (but not limited to) in connection with certain activity as prohibited in accordance with this AUP or in connection with the transmission, receipt or storage of certain types of files, may also be governed by criminal legislation and may, in some cases, result in criminal prosecution. Customers shall be entirely responsible for compliance with the law and ensuring that they do not use the Services in any way for any illegal activity.
20. 2.6 The Customer is responsible for the conduct of all Users of its account whether those Users are authorised by the Customer or not.

3. CUSTOMER DATA STANDARDS

1. 3.1 The Customer acknowledges and agrees that all information, data, text, software, music, sound, photographs, recordings, graphics, images, video, messages and all other materials whether posted, transmitted, created, uploaded or sent (in each case whether publicly or privately) or in any other way used in connection with the Services (Customer Data), are its sole responsibility. This means that the Customer is entirely responsible for all Customer Data that it uses in any way with the Services and the consequences of such use and Signstix shall not be liable for the same in any way.
2. 3.2 All Customer Data must:
3. 3.2.1 be accurate (in the case of fact) or be genuinely held (in the case of opinion);
4. 3.2.2 comply with all applicable law (including in any country in which such Customer Data is created, from which it is posted or is otherwise derived);
5. 3.2.3 not under any circumstances be or contain any element which;
6. 3.2.3.1 is defamatory of any person;
7. 3.2.3.2 is obscene, indecent, offensive, hateful or inflammatory;
8. 3.2.3.3 includes or promotes sexually explicit material, child pornography, sexual or other exploitation, violence or discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age;
9. 3.2.3.4 is intended to or is likely to deceive any person;
10. 3.2.3.5 promotes any illegal activity or promotes or incites terrorist activity;
11. 3.2.3.6 is threatening, abusive or invades another’s privacy or causes annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety or is likely to harass, upset, embarrass or alarm any other person;
12. 3.2.3.7 advocates, promotes or assists any unlawful act such as copyright infringement or computer misuse;
13. 3.2.4 not be copied or otherwise infringe the Intellectual Property Rights or other proprietary rights of any other person (by way of example, sharing without permission of the copyright owner, protected material such as a music or video file);
14. 3.2.5 comply in all respects with all applicable data protection legislation;
15. 3.2.6 not be used in breach of any legal duty owed to a third party including a contractual duty or a duty of confidence.
16. 3.3 The Customer is responsible for all Customer Data used in connection with the Services. It is the sole responsibility of the Customer to ensure that Customer Data is protected by a robust backup strategy and system and Signstix accepts no liability for any Customer Data loss suffered by the Customer as a result of a failure to do so or for any other reason.
17. 3.4 The standards and requirements as set out in this AUP apply to each part of Customer Data as well as to its whole.

4. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

1. 4.1 Customers must not under any circumstances use the Services or any Customer Data in connection with the Services, in any which infringes or is likely to infringe the Intellectual Property Rights or other proprietary rights of a third party. Infringing another person’s Intellectual Property Rights can lead to claims or allegations of claims by those rights owners and in some circumstances, infringement of certain Intellectual Property Rights can also constitute an offence.
2. 4.2 The Customer shall be responsible for obtaining all permissions, licences and consents as necessary for the use of Customer Data in connection with the Services.
3. 4.3 Signstix may assist any rights holders in the enforcement of their Intellectual Property Rights and shall not in any way be responsible or liable to the Customer as a result of any such action.
4. 4.4 Without in any way affecting its other rights under the Agreement, Signstix may terminate or suspend the Services in the event that there is a claim or allegation of a claim of infringement of any Intellectual Property Rights of a third party or if Signstix otherwise has reasonable grounds to believe that there is the risk of a claim or allegation of a claim.

5. FURTHER OBLIGATIONS ON THE CUSTOMER

1. 5.1 Customers must comply with the spirit of the standards in this AUP as well as the letter of them.
2. 5.2 The Customer shall not under any circumstances, access without authority, interfere with, damage or disrupt:
3. 5.2.1 Signstix’s Service portal or any part of it or any equipment or network on which the Service portal is stored;
4. 5.2.2 any software used in the provision of the Services;
5. 5.2.3 any other elements of Signstix’s equipment or network; or
6. 5.2.4 any equipment, the network or software owned or used by any third party.

6. USE OF CUSTOMER ACCOUNTS AND UNAUTHORISED ACCESS

1. 6.1 The Customer must not itself and shall ensure that its account Users do not, use a Signstix account for the purpose of obtaining unauthorised access to the Service. The Customer is responsible at all times for use of the Passcode, whether itself or through third parties. Customers must not by any means, attempt to avoid any restrictions which may be imposed by Signstix.
2. 6.2 In order to access the Services, the Customer may be required to provide information as part of the Service access or as part of the continued use of the Services or to gain or use a Passcode. The Customer agrees that any registration information will always be accurate, correct and up to date. If the Customer provides any information that is untrue, inaccurate, not current or incomplete or if Signstix has reasonable grounds to suspect that that is the case, Signstix may suspend or terminate the Customer account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Services (or any portion thereof).
3. 6.3 The Customer shall be responsible for bringing this AUP to the attention of its Users and ensuring that those Users adhere to the standards contained in it.

7. BREACH of AUP, Suspension and Termination

1. 7.1 Failure to comply with this AUP constitutes a material breach of the licence and may result in Signstix taking all or any of the following actions:
2. 7.1.1 immediate, temporary or permanent withdrawal of the Service;
3. 7.1.2 immediate, temporary or permanent removal of any Customer Data;
4. 7.1.3 issue of a warning to the Customer and/or to its Reseller;
5. 7.1.4 legal proceedings against the Customer;
6. 7.1.5 other legal action against the Customer;
7. 7.1.6 disclosure of such information to law enforcement authorities as Signstix reasonably deems necessary.
8. 7.2 Without in any way affecting its rights referred to above which it may choose to exercise at any time, Signstix reserves the right (but shall not be obliged) to require that a Customer takes corrective action if it is found not to be acting in compliance with this AUP.Signstix may also impose timescales for such actions.
9. 7.3 Any breaches of this AUP should be reported to Signstix and when relevant, Customer Data, together with the full headers, should be forwarded. Although it is not always possible to respond to each report, complaints will be investigated. Signstix excludes liability for any action taken or inaction in response to breaches of, or assertions of breach of, this AUP. The responses described in this policy are not exhaustive and Signstix may take any other action as it reasonably deems appropriate.

8. Changes TO THIS ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY

Signstix may change this Acceptable Use Policy at any time. Customers are expected to check the AUP as included on the SignStix Service portal from time to time to take notice of any changes. Some of the provisions contained in this AUP may be superseded by provisions included elsewhere.