Account Policies
This document describes the policies governing your account with GreeleyNet. Most of the policies are standard Internet policy or are laws governing the Internet in this country and others (the Internet is a global resource). These policies boil down to: play nice and be considerate.
Connecting
Your account may only be used by you; sharing of accounts violates this policy. Additional accounts are only for individuals in the same household or office. Unlimited time, as it applies to dialup accounts on GreeleyNet, is not the same dedicated. You may connect for as long as you want, whenever you want, as long as you are actively doing things on the Internet. Simply writing a script to transmit tiny amounts of data at regular intervals with the purpose of keeping your connection alive is not permitted.
Passwords
In order to ensure the integrity of our system, your password must be secure. Your password is your means of protecting the integrity and content of your account and GreeleyNet's service. Allowing someone else access to your password compromises the security of your account, system access, and violates this policy. The quickest way for your account to be terminated is to compromise the security of service. You should use a random sequence of characters and numbers for your passsword, including both upper and lower case. Specifically, you should not use a password that is a single word from a dictionary or everyday usage; anything personal easily guessed (license plate number, birth date, significant other's name, social security number, etc.); or any of the above with a single leading or trailing number. In addition, you should change your password on a regular basis; about once per month is appropriate.
GreeleyNet considers your email box to contain confidential material. However, sending of offensive, obsene, or otherwise illegal material may result in account termination and/or prosecution. Routine maintenance on the mail server may result in the contents being seen by our system administrators. In addition, incoming mail and outgoing mail is routed though other providers where GreeleyNet can not assure confidentiality of the message.
There are several things you should not do with your email. First, spamming - sending the same or similar mail to an individual many times, or sending the same or similar mail to a large number of individuals is frowned on. Some of those users will inevitably send irritated mail to our system administrators, who will take action. Harrassing another individual via email is illegal; chain letters and get-rich-quick shemes may also be illegal. Finally, using email to distribute copyrighted materials is illegal under international copyright law.
USENET
Newsgroups fall under many of the same rules as email - no spamming, including sending the same message to more than 3 groups, no harrasment, no copyrighted material, and no chain letters and get-rich-quick schemes. To make sure you're posting an appropriate article, you should always read a the group's charter and the group itself for a few weeks to understand its dynamics. If you post inappropriate articles to a group, our system administrators will hear about it and will take immediate and appropriate action.
Home pages
The contents of your web pages follow the same rules as email and newsgroups. We want you to have popular home pages, unless they cause a serious drain on our resources. If you create one of the most popular sites on the web, you may drain everyone else's resources and other arrangements may be be needed.
©1996 GreeleyNet Online