This Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) applies to all OPTIMUMISP dial-up Internet subscribers, OPTIMUMISP business circuit customers, OPTIMUM NETWORKS INC. customers, other OPTIMUMISP web hosting customers and by extension, customers of business circuit or Web hosting customers in the third party, as well as all others transiting or using OPTIMUMISP's network or resources. OPTIMUMISP reserves the right to modify this AUP at any time, effective upon public posting of the modified AUP at http://www.optimumisp.com/aup.cfm.

Please read this entire page, as well as your contract or Terms and Conditions as applicable. If you have any questions, please send email to sales@optimumisp.com  or call our business office during regular business hours.

• IMPORTANT NOTE - OPTIMUMISP and Optimum Networks Inc, a OPTIMUMISP company, has the right to discontinue service, or deny access to anyone who violates our Policies or the terms and conditions shown on this page WITHOUT WARNING OR PRIOR NOTICE. OPTIMUMISP customers have agreed to this and other Terms and Conditions by signing our Account Set-up Form, or by using our service. If for any reason you do not agree with the Terms and Conditions or policies shown on this page, DISCONTINUE USE OF YOUR ACCOUNT OR SERVICE IMMEDIATELY and please contact OPTIMUMISP during regular business hours. 

Here is specific information on OPTIMUMISP's policy with respect to mass email mailings, multiple Usenet News postings and other mass unsolicited communications - these are all commonly known as SPAM.

The Internet user community does not welcome unsolicited email from any source. This "junk email" is commonly referred to as "SPAM". You can learn more about SPAM here. In addition to SPAM, multiple postings of the same information to many Usenet Newsgroups and advertising in most of the Usenet Newsgroups is also unwelcome. Here is good link for Usenet SPAM information. 

If you are receiving SPAM, you may be able to set up filters on your email or news reader that will help to minimize the unwanted SPAM. OPTIMUMISP's engineering and network operations center has attempted to minimize the quantity of SPAM being received by our email and news systems. Unfortunately, there is no way to totally eliminate SPAM technically, and the laws for junk email are only forming as of today. The best way to deal with SPAM is to simply delete the email or offending message and move on. Never retaliate against a SPAMMER destructively- this will only make the situation worse and your retaliation may be very illegal as it can cause damage to OPTIMUMISP networks and other networks or systems.

Specifically:

• OPTIMUMISP does not allow our network resources to be used by anyone to email or mass-email any user or groups of users especially those that have not indicated a willingness to receive such mailings.
• OPTIMUMISP does not allow our systems to be used for RELAY from non-OPTIMUMISP customers or networks. 
• OPTIMUMISP does not knowingly allow our systems to be used for any activity that is illegal. 
• OPTIMUMISP does not allow customers or other networks' connections to consume excessive resources from our systems.
• OPTIMUMISP does not allow our customers to use other providers' mail servers to relay any type of email without the express consent of that provider.

ALL OPTIMUMISP dial-up, direct connect Internet accounts and customer web pages cannot be used for mass emailing of any type. Mass emailing is defined as the sending of any number of messages to random email addresses, or the running of any mailing list, whether or not the list of recipients are willing to receive such mailings. If you wish to run a responsible mailing list of any type, please call OPTIMUMISP at 973-357-3700 ext 312 for information on that optional service.

If we find a violation of the above, OPTIMUMISP will immediately suspend that customer's account without prior notice or warning. 

GENERAL POLICIES

Censorship: OPTIMUMISP has a policy of no-censorship, either from or to our systems, UNLESS, the information transmitted is illegal or is clearly used for fraud. The "warez" and "crack" Usenet news groups are an example of this. (OPTIMUMISP does not carry the warez or crack groups). 

User Transmitted Content: You are solely responsible for the information you publish over the Internet, either via email, Netnews, your personal web pages, or other service. You must not infringe on any third party's copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret or other proprietary rights or rights of publicity or privacy. You must not violate any law, statue, ordinance, or regulation. You must not be defamatory, trade libelous, unlawfully threatening or unlawfully harassing. The information you transmit should not be obscene or contain child pornography or any otherwise illegal pornographic or indecent material. The information you transmit must not intentionally contain viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots, or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data, or personal information.

Account Usage: Your account is for your exclusive and individual use only; multiple concurrent logins of the same account are not allowed. Beyond the fact that allowing others to use your account is prohibited, consider that you become responsible for the charges incurred by someone else that you have allowed to use your account. For this reason you must protect your account and password as you would any other personal resource such as your telephone or credit card number.

Resource Usage: No communications system has unlimited resources, and we expect you to act responsibly when consuming resources on our system. The Resource Usage policy applies to any and all OPTIMUMISP resources used by our Customers, including the size of your email box. Further, Customers using OPTIMUMISP Personal "On-Demand" dial-up analog modem or ISDN accounts may not run any servers, such as HTTP, FTP or MAIL, IRC, QUAKE or GAME servers. Excessive concurrent processes or processes which continue after you have logged off are prohibited. Our servers automatically end long idle calls, and during peak times you can expect minimum allowed idle time of at least 15 minutes. Users that stay connected for more than 6 (six) continuous hours may be subject to automatic disconnection. If this should occur while you are still on-line and interactively using the Internet, simply re-dial and login again. No connection may be used for more than 12 continuous hours - this is called "hanging" and OPTIMUMISP considers this an excessive use of our resources. If you consume excessive resources on our system we may suspend your access at any time without prior notice. 

email Storage: It is the responsibility of the Customer to permanently store, save or retain any email messages that are desirable to save and keep. The size of your incoming email temporary storage at OPTIMUMISP is very liberal but not unlimited in size. Most Customers will never exceed the limits under normal use. However, excessively large temporary email boxes create a Resource Usage problem and violate our AUP. To avoid this, Customers may not use OPTIMUMISP's email servers for permanent or long-term storage. Customer Support at OPTIMUMISP will assist you in configuring your email client NOT to store messages on OPTIMUMISP's servers; instead to store those message locally on your computer. Please call Customer Support at 973-357-3700 ext 311 for more information. If you begin to have an email box that is too large, you will receive an automatic message that asks you to clean-up (move or delete old mail) your email box. Again OPTIMUMISP's Customer Service can help you with this simple procedure. If you ignore the warning message, OPTIMUMISP's mail server will stop delivering email to your account until you reduce the size of your email box.

• How much storage is allowed? At least 5 Mb per email account which is plenty for all normal uses. The email system is purposely designed to occasionally allow you to temporarily exceed this limit for short periods of time. As long as you cleanup your email box regularly, you'll never have a storage problem.

PLEASE NOTE: the size of your email box is a resource that falls under the Resource Usage policy, above.

Security: OPTIMUMISP actively and automatically monitors all of our systems for attempts at breaching our security or the security of our customers, or attempts to access systems or resources that are not available for customers to use or access. This is commonly known as "hacking". Any attempt to access or modify unauthorized computer system information or to interfere with normal system operations, whether on the equipment of OPTIMUMISP or of any computer system or network that is accessed by our services, will result in immediate and permanent cancellation of your account and may also lead to other legal proceedings against you.

• ANYONE FOUND ACCESSING OR ATTEMPTING TO ACCESS UNAUTHORIZED OPTIMUMISP OR OPTIMUMISP CUSTOMER EQUIPMENT WILL HAVE THEIR ACCOUNT IMMEDIATELY TERMINATED AND THE INCIDENT REPORTED TO THE ALLENTOWN BUREAU OF THE FBI. 

Examples of security actions that will trigger security alarms at OPTIMUMISP's 24 hour / 7 day staffed network operations center are, but are not limited to:

• Satan or port scans, full, half, fin or stealth
• Vulnerability probing of any kind on any machines or devices.
• Ping scans and Ping Floods and ICMP abuses
• SNMP attempts
• Mail host relay use or hi-jacking
• Telnet, FTP, Rcommands, etc. to internal systems
• Attempts to access privileged or private TCP or UDP ports
• HTTP access without the use of a Web browser
• Multiple and frequent Finger attempts
• Excessive resource utilization
• Source route spoofing
• Smurf attacks
• IP number spoofing or masquerading
• Forging TCP packets or email header information
• Syn Floods
• OOB attacks
• Password cracking or guessing schemes
• Excessive email postings (SPAM)

OPTIMUMISP records the complete session of security breach attempts such as those mentioned above, and will forward this information on to the authorities during our investigations. OPTIMUMISP takes security very seriously; this way you and all of our customers can enjoy a safe and productive Internet environment.

NONE OF THE ABOVE-MENTIONED SECURITY PROBLEMS ARE EVER ACCIDENTAL, AND NORMAL USE OF INTERNET SOFTWARE SUCH AS BROWSERS AND EMAIL PROGRAMS WILL NEVER CAUSE A PROBLEM. ALL OF THE ABOVE ACTIONS ARE DELIBERATE AND INTENTIONAL AND IN MANY CASES REQUIRE SOPHISTICATED PROGRAMS AND KNOWLEDGE.

Usage - Using OPTIMUMISP's network to advertise, transmit, store, post, display, or otherwise encourage illegal activity is prohibited. OPTIMUMISP will cooperate fully with law enforcement agencies in these matters. OPTIMUMISP does not allow sites that contain pornographic material or sites that link to pornographic material. OPTIMUMISP does not permit spamming from our network.

Unlawful Usage: OPTIMUMISP's network of information services may only be used for lawful purposes. Transmission of any material in violation of any federal, state or local regulation is prohibited. This includes copyrighted material, material judged to be threatening or obscene, or material protected by trade secret.

Content of hosted websites: OPTIMUMISP has a policy of not knowingly hosting any web site, collocation server or device on our collocation network that contains what is commonly referred to as "adult content". This includes but is not limited to content that depicts sexual situations, erotic images or content that encourages users to visit a site for commerce of such content. OPTIMUMISP reserves the right to deny service to anyone or any corporation based on our sole assessment that the content proposed or published violates our AUP. Further, OPTIMUMISP reserves the right to cancel or suspend any account, without notice, that we judge has violated our AUP in any fashion. OPTIMUMISP has concluded that "Children are Watching" and it is our responsibility to conduct business in a manner indicative of that statement.

Privacy: While every attempt is made to keep all information passing to and from our systems, and to and from our customers private, you must assume that any information that you transmit or receive may not be private. OPTIMUMISP does not monitor or record normal usage of our systems. However, OPTIMUMISP will fully cooperate with any authority in investigation of illegal activity and may turn over logs and records upon receipt of proper orders or subpoenas. The Electronic Communications Act of 1986 and the Telecommunications Act of 1998 contains important privacy and confidentiality information. For more information, please read OPTIMUMISP's Privacy Statement.

Selling of Customer information: OPTIMUMISP does not and will not sell or transfer any information about our customer base to any third party for the purpose of using that information for marketing or direct sales. OPTIMUMISP does cooperate with other Internet and communications service providers and may release customer information to those parties in the event of security or credit-related problems.

Responsible Usage: We exercise no control over the content of the information passing through our systems; we only provide access. You must take responsibility for your actions on our system and the systems you access through us. You must comply with whatever rules or Acceptable Usage Policies that are appropriate for the systems you access. If you are offended by information you find on any system, it is your responsibility to avoid whatever you find offensive. You must take responsibility for the statements you make in email, chat, discussion forums, and Usenet newsgroups. If you violate any of OPTIMUMISP's usage policies or your actions, whether intentional or unintentional, endanger our systems or another network's systems from another provider, company or individual, OPTIMUMISP may suspend your access at any time, without prior notice. OPTIMUMISP management is the final and sole judge of whether any abuse or violations has occurred.

Customer Connected Networks: Customers who are connected to OPTIMUMISP through digital connections directly attached to their network (direct connect customers) are asked to make appropriate policy for the users of your network. In all cases, OPTIMUMISP reserves the right to disconnect any customer connection that is using excessive resources of the OPTIMUMISP network. OPTIMUMISP's security and abuse department abuse@optimumisp.com will work with all customers to help ensure that proper procedures are employed that limit the possibility of resource abuse.

OPTIMUMISP cooperates fully with local, state, and federal enforcement officials investigating unlawful behavior on our systems or the systems of others, and has a working relationship with both the Pennsylvania FBI office in Allentown, PA. and the Computer Crime Squad division of the FBI in Washington, DC.