Acceptable Use Policy

By using and/or paying for the Your Freedom service you accept the following terms and conditions. If you do not agree with them then do not use the service; once you have started to use the service we feel no longer obliged to any reimbursement of payments already made.

We reserve the right to modify or extend these terms and conditions at any time and without notice other than publication on our web server, and to disable or void your account if you are in violation of these terms and conditions. It is your responsibility to verify from time to time that your actions are not in violation of these terms and conditions in their latest version.

We will not refund any fees already paid for the use of our service if your account is voided because you are in violation of these terms of conditions.

Date of last modification: October 3, 2012.

1. Good conduct

We are very much in favor of free speech and freedom of information, and one of the driving factors for providing this service was to enable people to express their opinions freely and access information that would otherwise be barred from them. However we will not tolerate:

• insulting, racist, sexist, or otherwise offending behavior
• non-consenting indecency (i.e. sexual harassment)
• indecent approaches towards minors, consenting or not
• identity theft (i.e. masquerading as someone else)
• vandalism or break-ins, or any hacking or cracking attempts
• spreading of worms or viruses
• mass emailing of any kind, or email forgery (i.e. not using your proper email address as the sender)

This list is by no means complete. Please use your common sense.

2. Email abuse

You are welcome to use this service to send and receive email. However we impose a very strict, zero tolerance no-spam policy. If you use this service to send bulk email, solicited or not, and we receive sufficient proof of such action, your account will be voided and no questions will be asked or answered. The same is true if you do not use your proper email address as the sender address.

We reserve the right to technically limit the amount of outbound mail sent through the service to protect the Internet community from spam -- and our servers from appearing on blacklists. Be advised that sending unsolicited bulk email is now a criminal act in many countries.

3. Privacy

We do our best to protect your privacy by not storing any more details on our servers than technically or legally required -- and permitted. In fact, the servers themselves do not keep any logs that could be of interest to anyone but the developers and operators; all logs containing user details are instead kept on a server in Germany. However we will cooperate with legal authorities to the extent required to protect us from having to take responsibility for your actions. This means that we may unveil your account and payment details as well as the source IP address used to connect to our servers if we are forced to do so.

We do not log what you access on the Internet; German telecommunications laws do not even permit this. We do log the fact that you have used our service, from where you have logged in to our service, the lowest 16 bit of IP addresses you have connected to (but not the full address!) and statistical data about your usage needed for accounting and quality assurance. This information is typically held on file for only a few days and no longer than 4 weeks. We do not use this information in any other way except for statistical, debugging and accounting purposes and for combating violations of these terms, unless required by legal authorities.

Our servers are located in different countries around the world; the Your Freedom client will tell you on its status panel where the server you are currently using is located. Be aware that we may be required to cooperate with legal authorities of this country and Germany -- but certainly not other countries.

4. Intellectual rights, copyrights and patents

You may not use our service to infringe on other pepole's rights. It is your responsibility to ensure that by publishing or acquiring information or data through this service you are not violating intellectual rights or copyrights, patents or trade secrets. If we receive sufficient proof that your actions are in violation of other people's intellectual rights, copyrights or patents, your account may be voided. Also be aware that we may be required to cooperate with legal authorities on such matters.

We strictly condemn copyright violations. Downloading or uploading data in violation of the copyright holder's terms is just another way of stealing. If this is what you intend to do, please do not become our customer.

5. Denial of Service attacks, vandalism and hacking attempts

Our service must not be used to cause harm or nuisance to us or our servers, or to other Internet users, equipment or installations. We will therefore not tolerate any kind of Denial of Service attacks or hacking attempts (successful or not), vandalism, or the use of scripted or otherwise automated chat tools. If you harm others your account will be voided and your details may be revealed to legal authorities on their request.

It is your liability to ensure that your PC is not part of a "bot net" and is not infected by a virus or worm. Please check that you have suitable protection software installed before using our service. We do not care if malicious action has been performed willingly by you or unwillingly by some malware on your system. There is good protection software available for free and there is no excuse if you don't use it. Check our Download section for links.

6. Sexually explicit material

Your local mail service is not being held responsible for what you order and what is delivered to your home or workplace; neither are we. If you use this service to access "adult" content, that's fine in our book. However we reserve the right to stop you from providing sexually explicit content to others, simply to avoid discussions of what is acceptable and what is not. If you wish to host a porn web site, go rent a server of your own.

Be advised that we may be required to cooperate with legal authorities if you provide or acquire content that is deemed illegal in one of the countries involved. We do not cover child porn downloaders.

7. Protection of our service

We reserve the right to void your account if your use of our service provokes countermeasures such as our IPs being blocked or our servers being attacked, or if our providers are having kittens because of your actions. This is not only in our interest but also in the interest of our other customers who may be affected by such measures or conditions.

We also reserve the right to protect our service against over-utilization, be it intentional or unintentional. This means that we may technically enforce the limitations of your account profile and may disable or void your account if you are in violation of these limitations. We may also temporarily disable your account if your use of the service has serious impact on the service, whether intentionally or not, whether caused by a bug or your usage patterns or not, until such issues have been resolved.

It may be necessary to generally restrict the service in some way or another to comply with limitations imposed on us by our providers or by legal authorities. We try to avoid this but at times we may be left without a choice. This does not justify a refund, even if your intended use of the service is no longer possible because of such restrictions. By buying our packages and vouchers you agree that we may restrict the service at our discretion to meet requirements by our providers or legal requirements, and that this does not constitute a claim.

8. Service Availability and Liability

We try our very best to provide a service as good as possible. However we cannot guarantee that the service will be available at all times, to a full extend, and from everywhere. If the service is unavailable or seriously impacted for extended periods we will reimburse you (on request) by means of crediting your account with extra time. In the event that it is not possible for us to provide the service anymore, we will not refund any payments already made; instead, we will donate the money to charities if possible.

Under no circumstances will we be liable for any damage or loss caused by the service, your use of the service or the unavailability or malfunction of the service, or your installation and/or use of the client software.

By using our service, you accept these terms and conditions. If you cannot agree with them then don't use the service. Once you have started to use the service we do no longer feel obliged to any reimbursement of payments already made, other than set out in our refund policy.