This Acceptable Use Policy governs what may be hosted on and done with VPS.org services. It applies to every customer, every server, and anyone you allow to use your service. It forms part of our Terms of Service.

1. Your responsibility

You are responsible for everything that happens on your server, including activity by your users, your customers and anyone who gains access through software you run. A compromised server is still your responsibility, and we may suspend it to protect the network while you regain control.

You must comply with the laws of your own jurisdiction, the jurisdiction of your users, and the United States, where VPS.org LLC operates.

2. Prohibited outright

The following will result in immediate suspension without notice, and where the law requires it, a report to the relevant authorities:

Child sexual abuse material (CSAM), or any sexual content involving minors, real or synthetic.
Non-consensual intimate imagery, or material obtained by deception or coercion.
Content depicting or promoting sexual violence, or that incites violence, terrorism or genocide.
Malware, ransomware, botnet command-and-control, phishing kits, credential-stuffing tooling and carding operations.
Fraud, including fake stores, advance-fee schemes and impersonation of a person, business or government body.
Trafficking in people, weapons, or controlled substances.

3. Adult content

Adult content is permitted, provided it is lawful in your jurisdiction and in the jurisdictions you serve, it is properly age-gated, and it involves only consenting adults.

You are responsible for age verification and for keeping the performer records the law requires of you, including 18 U.S.C. 2257 record-keeping or its local equivalent. The absolute prohibitions in section 2 apply without exception, and we will act on them immediately.

4. Network and security abuse

You must not use a VPS.org server to attack, probe or interfere with any system you do not own or have written permission to test. That includes:

Denial-of-service attacks of any kind, including participating in or hosting a booter or stresser service.
Port scanning, vulnerability scanning or brute-force attempts against third parties.
IP or DNS spoofing, or forging packet headers and mail headers.
Running open relays, open resolvers or open proxies that can be abused for amplification.
Unauthorised access to, or interception of, data belonging to anyone else.

5. Email

Bulk or commercial email must go only to recipients who asked for it, must identify the sender, and must offer a working unsubscribe. Purchased, harvested or scraped lists are not permitted.

Sending spam damages the reputation of address space shared with other customers, so we treat it as a network issue as well as a policy one, and may rate-limit or block outbound mail from a server generating complaints.

6. Fair use of shared resources

Your server shares physical hardware and network capacity with other customers. Sustained load that measurably degrades service for neighbours may be throttled, and we will contact you about moving to a plan sized for the workload before taking any other action.

This is a capacity rule, not a rule about what your workload is for.

7. Copyright and takedown

You must hold the rights to what you host. Our full notice-and-takedown procedure, including where to send a notice and what it must contain, is on the DMCA page.

We forward valid notices to the customer and expect them to respond promptly.

8. How we enforce this

Wherever we reasonably can, we contact you first and give you a chance to fix the problem. We suspend without notice only where the law requires it, where a server is actively harming others, or for the absolute prohibitions in section 2.

We would rather work with a customer than terminate one. If you think we have made a mistake, reply to the notice and a person will read it.

9. Reporting abuse

Report anything on this page to abuse@vps.org. Include IP addresses, timestamps with time zone, and log excerpts where you have them - it is what lets us act quickly.

10. Changes

We may update this policy as the service and the law change. Continued use of VPS.org after an update means you accept the revised policy.