This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") sets out the activities that are not permitted on the hosting, infrastructure, email, storage, and related services provided by Decipher Media Solutions LTD ("Decipher", "we", "us", "our"). It protects our clients, our network, and the reliability of the service for everyone.
The AUP applies to everyone using a Decipher service, including account holders, their staff, their contractors, their end users, and anyone to whom an account holder grants access. Account holders are responsible for the use of their account by others.
This policy is also encoded in the Decipher Hosting Service Addendum §H7 and is incorporated by reference into every hosting engagement. Where this AUP is stricter than the Hosting Addendum, this AUP applies.
1. Who this applies to
This AUP applies to all users of Decipher Hosting (Starter, Business, Pro, or any other tier), Decipher-managed VPS, domain services, email services we resell or operate, and any Decipher infrastructure. It applies whether the service is paid, discounted, or complimentary.
2. Illegal and harmful content
You may not use a Decipher service to host, send, store, distribute, link to, or otherwise make available any content that:
- Violates any law applicable in Nigeria, or in a jurisdiction that the content is directed at.
- Contains, depicts, or promotes the sexual abuse or exploitation of children. This is a zero-tolerance item: any such content triggers immediate suspension and a report to the Nigeria Police Force and, where applicable, international bodies.
- Infringes the copyright, trademark, trade secret, or other intellectual property of any person, including pirated software, unauthorised streaming, and counterfeit goods.
- Contains malware, ransomware, viruses, rootkits, remote access trojans, cryptominers installed without user consent, or any code designed to damage or compromise other systems.
- Is used to commit or facilitate fraud, including phishing sites, fake login pages, credential harvesters, investment scams, "419" schemes, or advance-fee fraud.
- Violates personal data protection laws, including the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 and equivalent foreign laws where applicable.
- Promotes terrorism, incites violence, or glorifies mass harm.
- Is obscene or defamatory under Nigerian law.
3. Abuse of others
You may not use a Decipher service to:
- Harass, threaten, stalk, or doxx another person.
- Impersonate Decipher, our staff, any of our clients, any government agency, or any other person or organisation.
- Host non-consensual intimate images of any person.
- Operate forums, comment systems, or community features without reasonable moderation against the above.
4. Security violations
You may not use a Decipher service to attack, probe, or otherwise compromise the security of any system, whether ours, a third party's, or your own when that activity risks our network. Specifically, you must not:
- Attempt unauthorised access to any account, system, or network.
- Scan or probe third-party networks or systems without documented permission.
- Operate denial-of-service attacks, amplification attacks, or botnet command-and-control infrastructure.
- Distribute exploit kits, "stresser"/"booter" services, brute-force tools targeted at third parties, or stolen credential packs.
- Interfere with the authentication, integrity, or availability of our services.
- Circumvent resource limits, rate limits, or access controls we apply to your account.
Security research conducted against our own systems is addressed in our responsible disclosure process; contact us first before running any scan against Decipher infrastructure.
5. Resource abuse
Shared hosting is exactly that: shared. Consistent abuse of CPU, memory, I/O, bandwidth, inode count, or concurrent connection limits degrades service for other accounts on the same node. You must not:
- Run workloads that consistently exceed the limits of your tier. If your needs outgrow the tier, upgrade or move to a dedicated plan.
- Use shared hosting as a general-purpose compute or storage backend (video transcoding farms, ML training, chain nodes, torrent seed nodes, file-sharing lockers, backup dumping grounds for unrelated systems).
- Run public proxy servers, anonymising gateways, or VPN exit nodes on shared hosting.
- Chain cron jobs or scheduled tasks in a way that consumes disproportionate resources.
- Maintain extremely large numbers of files (high inode counts) that degrade backup and filesystem performance.
6. Email and messaging
We do not allow the use of Decipher mail services to send unsolicited bulk email or "cold" marketing at volume. Specifically, you may not:
- Send unsolicited commercial email (spam), including to scraped or purchased lists.
- Run outbound email campaigns without verifiable opt-in and a working unsubscribe mechanism.
- Forge email headers or use deceptive return-paths.
- Operate mail-relays that third parties can abuse to send through your account.
- Send messages that deliver malware, credential-phishing content, or scam schemes.
- Bypass the anti-spam, reputation, and deliverability controls we apply to protect the service for other account holders.
If you need to send transactional email at volume, use a reputable dedicated email provider (Zoho, SendGrid, Postmark, Mailgun) rather than shared hosting SMTP.
7. Content responsibility
You are solely responsible for the content you host, store, and transmit using Decipher services, including content uploaded by your users and generated by third-party software you deploy. We do not monitor customer content routinely and do not pre-screen what you publish. However, we may act on content we become aware of through credible complaints, legal notices, or automated abuse detection.
8. How we enforce
Where we become aware of a suspected AUP violation, our response scales with the severity and imminence of harm:
- Notice and remediation window. For non-critical violations, we contact you by email and WhatsApp with a description of the issue and a reasonable window to remediate (typically 24 to 72 hours depending on the issue).
- Immediate suspension. For active security incidents, active fraud, child safety violations, malware distribution, ongoing abuse that affects other tenants, or any situation where continued hosting creates imminent harm to third parties, we will suspend service immediately and notify you afterwards.
- Termination. For repeated, serious, or wilful violations, we may terminate your hosting engagement in accordance with the termination provisions of the Master Services Agreement and the Hosting Service Addendum.
- Disclosure to authorities. Where the law requires us to report an incident, we will. Where the law permits it, we will notify you before disclosure unless doing so would obstruct an investigation or endanger any person.
We maintain the right to preserve logs and evidence relating to suspected violations for as long as reasonably necessary for investigation and legal process.
9. Report a violation
If you believe a Decipher-hosted site or service is violating this AUP, please tell us. Include the URL or service, a description of the issue, and any evidence you have:
For child safety content, contact us immediately. We will act on credible reports within hours, not days.
10. Changes to this policy
We may update this AUP to reflect new abuse patterns, regulatory requirements, or operational realities. The version number and effective date at the top of this page reflect the current version. Material changes are notified to active hosting accounts by email at least 14 days before they take effect, unless the change is required immediately by law or to address an active threat.
For questions about this policy:
