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Gecko Designs, LLC
1905 Alvina Drive
Missoula, MT 59801

Phone:
(541) 912-9300

Fax:
(636) 552-7504

Gecko Designs, LLC - 1905 Alvina Drive, Missoula, MT 59802 - Phone (541) 912-9300, Fax (636) 552-7504

Terms of Service

Last Updated: September 4th, 2010

Introduction

This document sets forth the principles, guidelines and requirements of the Terms of Service of Gecko Designs ("Company") governing the use by the Customer ("Customer") of the Company's services and products ("Services and Products"). The Purpose of the Gecko Designs' Terms Of Service, hereinafter referred to as the TOS, is to comply with all federal, state, and local laws coupled with protecting the network security, network availability, physical security, Customer privacy, and other factors affecting the services provided by Gecko Designs.

Gecko Designs reserves the right to impose reasonable rules and regulations regarding the use of its services provided to all Customers and such rules and regulations are subject to change. Such rules and regulations are located on the Internet at http://www.geckodesigns.com/tos.php. The TOS is not an all-inclusive or exhaustive list and Gecko Designs reserves the right to modify the TOSs at any time as needed, effective upon either the posting of the modified TOS to http://www.geckodesigns.com/ or notification to the Customer via email. Any violation of the TOSs may result in the suspension or termination of your account or such other action as Gecko Designs deems appropriate. No credits will be issued for any interruption in service resulting from policy violations.

VIOLATION OF ANY SECTION OF THE TOS IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED AND MAY RESULT IN THE IMMEDIATE TERMINATION OR SUSPENSION OF THE SERVICES YOU RECEIVE FROM GECKO DESIGNS.

This Agreement shall be construed in all respect in accordance with the laws of the state of Montana, County of Missoula applicable to contracts enforceable in that state. Venue will be Missoula County, Montana.

Any questions or comments regarding the TOS should be directed to Gecko Designs.

Compliance with Law

Customer shall not post, transmit, re-transmit or store material on or through any of Company's Services or Products which, in the sole judgment of the Company (i) is in violation of any local, state, federal or non-United States law or regulation, (ii) threatening, obscene, indecent, defamatory or that otherwise could adversely affect any individual, group or entity (collectively, "Persons") or (iii) violates the rights of any person, including rights protected by copyright, trade secret, patent or other intellectual property or similar laws or regulations including, but not limited to, the installation or distribution of "pirated" or other software products that are not appropriately licensed for use by Customer. Customer shall be responsible for determining what laws or regulations are applicable to its use of the Services and Products.

Customer Security Obligation

Each Customer must use reasonable care in keeping the software they run on the Gecko Designs' servers up-to-date and patched with the latest security updates. Failure to use reasonable care to protect your account may result in a security compromise by outside sources. A compromised account/server/VPS will result in Customer notification and the account will be suspended immediately so as to not directly affect other Customers. No service credits will be issued for outages resulting from disconnection due to breached server security. The Customer is solely responsible for any breaches of security under Customer control affecting servers. If a Customer intentionally creates a security breach, the cost to resolve any damage to Customer's account or other servers will be charged directly to the Customer. The labor used to resolve such damage is categorized as Emergency Security Breach Recovery and is currently charged at $200 USD per hour.

System and Network Security

Violations of system or network security are strictly prohibited, and may result in criminal and civil liability. Gecko Designs investigates all incidents involving such violations and will cooperate with law enforcement if criminal violation is suspected.

Examples of system or network security violations include, without limitation, the following:

  1. Introduction of malicious programs into the network or server (example: viruses, worms, Trojan Horses and other executables intended to inflict harm).
  2. Effecting security breaches or disruptions of Internet communication and/or connectivity. Security breaches include, but are not limited to, accessing data of which the Customer is not an intended recipient or logging into a server or account that the Customer is not expressly authorized to access. For purposes of this section, "disruption" includes, but is not limited to port scans, flood pings, Email-bombing, packet spoofing, IP spoofing and forged routing information.
  3. Executing any form of network activity that will intercept data not intended for the Customer's account.
  4. Circumventing user authentication or security of any host, network or account.
  5. Interfering with or denying service to any user other than the Customer's account (example: denial of service attack or distributed denial of service attack).
  6. Using any program script/command, or sending messages of any kind, designed to interfere with or to disable, a user's terminal session, via any means, locally or via the Internet.
  7. Failing to comply with the Company's procedure relating to the activities of Customers on the Company's premises. Violators of the policy are responsible, without limitations, for the cost of labor to correct all damage done to the operation of the network and business operations supported by the network. Such labor is categorized as Emergency Security Breach Recovery and is currently charged at $200 USD per hour required. Network interference by any Customers that may cause or is currently causing network interference with another Customer will be disconnected immediately. No service credits will be issued to Customers disconnected for network violations.
  8. Transmission, distribution or storage of any material in violation of any applicable law or regulation is prohibited. This includes, without limitation, material protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret or other intellectual property right used without proper authorization, and material that is obscene, defamatory, constitutes an illegal threat, or violates export control laws.
  9. Sending Unsolicited Bulk Email ("UBE", "spam"). The sending of any form of Unsolicited Bulk Email through Gecko Designs' servers is prohibited. Likewise, the sending of UBE from another service provider advertizing a web site, Email address or utilizing any resource hosted on Gecko Designs' servers is prohibited. Gecko Designs accounts or services may not be used to solicit customers from, or collect replies to, messages sent from another Internet Service Provider where those messages violate either this Policy or that of the other provider.
  10. Running Unconfirmed Mailing Lists. Subscribing email addresses to any mailing list without the express and verifiable permission of the Email address owner is prohibited. All mailing lists run by Gecko Designs customers must be Double Opt-in and confirmed. The subscription confirmation message received from each address owner must be kept on file for the duration of the existence of the mailing list. Purchasing lists of Email addresses from 3rd parties for mailing to or from any Gecko Designs-hosted domain, or referencing any Gecko Designs account, is prohibited.
  11. Running chat servers or clients, including (but not limited to) IRC servers, IRC clients, Instant Messaging proxies, and web-based chat programs.
  12. Running game servers or clients, including (but not limited to) web-based games, interactive shell games, and play-by-email games that require a process running on Company's server.
  13. Advertising, transmitting, or otherwise making available any software, program, product, or service that is designed to violate this TOS or the TOS of any other Internet Service Provider, which includes, but is not limited to, the facilitation of the means to send Unsolicited Bulk Email, initiation of pinging, flooding, mail-bombing, denial of service attacks.
  14. Unauthorized attempts by a user to gain access to any account or computer resource not belonging to that user (e.g., "cracking").
  15. Obtaining or attempting to obtain service by any means or device with intent to avoid payment.
  16. Accessing or attempting to access your account or other Gecko Designs services after you (or Company) have cancelled Customer's account.
  17. Unauthorized access, alteration, destruction, or any attempt thereof, of any information of any Gecko Designs customers or end-users by any means or device, including the use of "sudo" or other privileged operating system commands.
  18. Knowingly engage in any activities designed to harass, or that will cause a denial-of-service (e.g., synchronized number sequence attacks) to any other user whether on the Gecko Designs network or on another provider's network.
  19. Using Gecko Designs's Services to interfere with the use of Gecko Designs network by other customers or authorized users.

System and Network Resource Usage

Gecko Designs's servers and networks are carefully maintained to provide optimum performance for certain types of usage; namely, serving content on the Internet. Customers are expected to operate their accounts in such a manner as to maintain system and network performance and stability. Gecko Designs monitors its servers and networks very closely, and failure to comply with the following restrictions could result in the termination of service and fees assessed against your account:

  1. Excessive Network Utilization While Customers are allocated a certain amount of bandwidth per month, Gecko Designs does not to cap Customer's bandwidth. To this end, Customers using an excessive amount of bandwidth in a short period of time will, at Gecko Designs' discretion, be throttled or have their site and/or account otherwise rendered unusable until the Customer is able to resolve their usage.
  2. Terminal/Shell Access As a service to Customers, to make managing their account easier, Gecko Designs makes available server access via SSH (i.e.: shell accounts). Customers are prohibited from using this method of account access to attempt to access other Customers or Gecko Designs' accounts or information.
  3. Spam/UCE Processing As a service to Customers, Gecko Designs makes available a spam-processing service to reduce the amount of incoming spam or Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE). Customers have access to tools that can further refine the spam/UCE processing Gecko Designs does, but this refinement comes at the cost of increased resource utilization. Any spam/UCE processing that excessively utilizes server or network resources will be stopped.
  4. Database Access Database resources, including MySQL and PostgreSQL, are closely monitored by Gecko Designs. Access to databases is restricted to within individual servers. Gecko Designs allows Customers the ability to "tunnel" into a server via VPN for an additional fee.
  5. Resolution of Problems All problems found by Gecko Designs that are within the Customer's control and that result in excessive server or network utilization are the responsibility of the Customer to fix. Gecko Designs may, from time to time, assist Customer in researching and repairing the problem; this is done as a courtesy and does not imply that Gecko Designs has taken responsibility for fixing this problem. Gecko Designs may, at its discretion, remove access to the services impacted until the Customer resolves the problem.

Gecko Designs reserves the right to remove access to any service or feature that it feels is being abused, even if through negligence or ignorance, by the Customer.

Backups

Gecko Designs performs a minimum of daily thirty day backup rotation. We perform backups of the file system and any databases located on the instance. The backups are stored off server. These backups are for internal use first; server failures, compromised accounts, or data corruption. While we do our best to ensure our backups occur and contain valid data, Gecko Designs is in NO WAY responsible for any loss of data, income or revenue from any data that's unrecoverable. The customer must have their own backup procedure to ensure their data is safe and secure. Our backups should always be used as a last resort.

Internet Etiquette

Each Customer is expected to execute reasonable Internet etiquette. The Customer will comply with the rules appropriate to any network to which Gecko Designs may provide access. The Customer should not post, transmit, or permit Internet access to information the Customer desires to keep confidential. The Customer is not permitted to post any material that is illegal, libelous, and tortuous, indecently depicts children or is likely to result in retaliation against Gecko Designs by offended users. Gecko Designs reserves the right to refuse or terminate service at any time for violation of this section. This includes advertising services or sites via IRC or USENET in clear violation of the policies of the IRC channel or USENET group.

Child Pornography

Gecko Designs will cooperate fully with any criminal investigation into a Customer's violation of the Child Protection Act of 1984 concerning child pornography.

According to the Child Protection Act, child pornography includes photographs, films, video or any other type of visual presentation that shows a person who is or is depicted as being under the age of eighteen years and is engaged in or is depicted as engaged in explicit sexual activity, or any written material or visual representation that advocates or counsels sexual activity with a person under the age of eighteen years.

Email Policy

Mass Mailings: Gecko Designs has a zero tolerance policy on SPAM, Junk Email or UCE. Spam, Junk-mail and UCE are defined as: the sending of the same, or substantially similar, unsolicited electronic mail messages, whether commercial or not, to more than one recipient. A message is considered unsolicited if it is posted in violation of a newsgroup charter or if it is sent to a recipient who has not requested or invited the message. UCE also includes Email with forged headers, compromised mail server relays, and false contact information. This prohibition extends to the sending of unsolicited mass mailings from another service, which in any way implicates the use of Gecko Designs whether or not the message actually originated from our servers.

Mailing Lists: Gecko Designs' mass mailing rules also apply to mailing lists, or mailing services you may contract with. The policy is stated as follows: An acceptable mailing list will be focused at a targeted audience that has voluntarily signed up for your Email information or that has made their Email address available for distribution of information from you. The list must also allow for automatic removal by all end Customers with non-distribution in the future.

If your actions have caused Gecko Designs mail servers or Gecko Designs IP address ranges to be placed on blackhole lists and other mail filtering software systems used by companies on the internet, you will be assessed a $500 charge to your account and $200 per hour for administrative charges incurred to remove and protect mail servers and IP ranges.

Violation of the above terms will result in one or all of the following:

  • A warning via Email.
  • A temporary suspension of your account.
  • A cancelation of your account.

Repeat violation of the above terms will result in the following actions:

  • Immediate disconnection of service with no re-connection.
  • $500 fee assessed to your account for violation.

Copyright Infringement

Gecko Designs services may only be used for lawful purposes. Transmission, distribution, or storage of any information, data or material in violation of United States or state regulation or law, or by the common law, is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to, material protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret, or other intellectual property rights.

Utilizing or distributing unauthorized copies of software constitutes a violation of federal and state law. If you copy, distribute or install the software in ways that the license does not allow, you are violating federal copyright law. Gecko Designs will cooperate with all law enforcement agencies in relation to alleged copyright infringement housed on our servers.

IP Allocation

Customers shall NOT use IP addresses that were not assigned to them by Gecko Designs. Any account utilizing IP addresses outside of those assigned to it will be suspended from network access until such time as the IP addresses overlap can be corrected. Use of an unauthorized IP address will result in a charge of $25 per IP. Use of an unauthorized IP address creating a third party Customer outage will result in a $500 charge and termination of service until the IP allocation is resolved.

Resellers

Resellers are responsible for the conduct of their Customers and by agreeing with this TOS, agree that their Customers will adhere to Gecko Designs' TOS. Resellers should make their perspective Customers aware of the TOS and the consequences for violation.

Billing

Customer agrees to pay for all purchases charged to their account. Invoices constitute the official bill of sale. Payment is due on date shown on invoice. Accounts with unpaid balances at due date shall be considered delinquent. Delinquent accounts will be charged a $50.00 late fee each month they remain unpaid. Accounts that are 30 days past due may be suspended. Account reactivation will cost $100.00 in addition to any late fees and original invoice total. Accounts that are 60 days past due may be deleted and/or removed from the hosting server. A $50.00 fee for returned checks regardless of check amount or reason for return will be assessed to cover administrative costs and bank charges. In the event that services are rendered but payment is not made in a timely manner, customer agrees to pay all attorney's fees and court or other collection costs as permitted by law as actually incurred by Gecko Designs.

Suspension and Cancellation

Gecko Designs reserves the right to suspend service to any Customer located on our servers for violation of the TOS. Gecko Designs will use reasonable care in notifying the Customer and in resolving the problem in a method resulting in the least amount of service interference as reasonably possible. For any violations of the TOS or, at Gecko Designs' discretion, to prevent a violation of the TOS, Gecko Designs reserves the right to:

  1. Terminate service without notice for single or for continued and repeated violations of the TOS.
  2. Limit Customer access to services or implement service and resource usage restrictions.
  3. Ask the Customer to upgrade to a higher service plan.

Gecko Designs shall be the sole determiner of which of the above actions are to be taken, and can reverse or revise its decision at any time. Continued violations of the TOS resulting in cancellation of services will also result in a fee in the amount of US $500 and contract acceleration for all amounts outstanding under the contract term.

Limitation of Liability

YOU EXPRESSLY UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT COMPANY SHALL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF PROFITS, GOODWILL, USE, DATA OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES RESULTING FROM: (I) THE USE OR THE INABILITY TO USE COMPANY SERVICES; (II) UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO OR ALTERATION OF YOUR TRANSMISSIONS OR DATA; OR (III) ANY OTHER MATTER RELATING TO COMPANY SERVICES. YOU EXPRESSLY UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT COMPANY SHALL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY DIRECT DAMAGES GREATER THAN THE SUM OF ONE MONTH TOTAL SERVICES.

Contact Us

If you would like to contact us for any reason regarding our privacy practices, please call, write, or E-mail us at the following address:

Gecko Designs
1905 Alvina Dr
Missoula, MT 59802
telephone: (541) 912-9300
fax: (636) 552-7504