Acceptable Use Policy

Unlawful Use

PCN services/website may only be used for lawful purposes and activities. We prohibit any use of our website/network including the transmission, storage and distribution of any material or content using our network that violates any law or regulation of the Republic. This includes:

• Any violation of local and international laws prohibiting child pornography; obscenity; discrimination (including racial, gender or religious slurs) and hate speech; or speech designed to incite violence or hatred, or threats to cause bodily harm.
• Any activity designed to defame, abuse, stalk, harass or physically threaten any individual in the Republic or beyond its borders; including any attempt to link to, post, transmit or otherwise distribute any inappropriate or defamatory material.
• Any violation of Intellectual Property laws including materials protected by local and international copyright, trademarks and trade secrets.
• Any violation of the individual right to privacy, including any effort to collect personal data of third parties without their consent.
• Any fraudulent activity whatsoever, including dubious financial practices, such as pyramid schemes; the impersonation of another subscriber without their consent.
• Any violation of the exchange control laws of the Republic.
• Any activity that results in the sale, transmission or distribution of pirated or illegal software.

Prohibited Activities

Threats to Network Security:

Any activity, which threatens the functioning, security and/or integrity of PCN's network is unacceptable. This includes:

• Any efforts to attempt to gain unlawful and unauthorized access to the network or circumvent any of the security measures established by PCN.
• Any effort to use PCN equipment to circumvent the user authentication of security of any host, network or account (cracking or hacking).
• Forging of any TCP-IP packet header (spoofing) or any part of the header information in an email or newsgroup posting.
• Any effort to breach or attempt to breach the security of another user or attempt to gain access to any other person's computer, software, or data without the knowledge and consent of such person.
• Any activity which threatens to disrupt the service offered by PCN through denial of service attacks, flooding of a network, or overloading a service.
• Any activity which in any way threatens the security of the network by knowingly posting, transmitting, linking to or otherwise distributing any information or software which contains a virus, trojan horse, worm, or any other harmful, destructive or disruptive component.

Mail and Spamming

Spam and unsolicited bulk mail are highly problematic practices. PCN will take swift and firm action against any user engaging in any of the following unacceptable practices:

• Sending unsolicited bulk mail for marketing or any other purposes (political, religious or commercial) to people who have not consented to receiving such mail;
• Operating or maintaining mailing lists without the express permission of all recipients listed;
• Failing to promptly remove from lists invalid or undeliverable addresses or addresses of unwilling recipients;
• Using PCN's service to collect responses from unsolicited e-mail sent from accounts on other Internet hosts;
• Including PCN's name in the header or by listing an IP address that belongs to PCN in any unsolicited email;
• Failure to secure a mail server against public relay as a protection to themselves and the broader Internet community.

Public Space and Third Party Content

In reading this AUP or in signing a service contract with PCN, you acknowledge that PCN has no power to control the content of the information passing over the Internet and its applications, including e-mail, chatrooms, news groups; or other similar fora, and that PCN cannot be held responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any of the above mentioned content.

Our services also offer access to numerous third party webpages. You acknowledge that we exercise absolutely no control over such third party content, or sites and in such cases, our network is merely a conduit or means of access and transmission.

Access to public Internet spaces, such as bulletin boards, Usenet groups, chat rooms and moderated forums is entirely voluntary and at your own risk. PCN employees do not moderate any of these services, or your communications, transmissions or use of these services.

Spam/Virus Filtering

PCN provides a spam and virus filtering system to protect customers from unsolicited mail and viruses. The customer acknowledges that this system might incorrectly identify a valid message as spam or as a virus and consequently this message might not be delivered to the customer.

The customer acknowledges and agrees that PCN shall without limitation have no responsibility for, or liability in respect of any data lost as a result of this system. Further, the customer acknowledges that although PCN seeks to use the most efficient spam and virus filtering systems available, PCN will not be liable for any failures on the part of the system which result in any data loss or system failures.

Protection of Minors

PCN prohibits customers from using PCN's service to harm or attempt to harm a minor, including, but not limited to, by hosting, possessing, disseminating, distributing or transmitting material that is unlawful, including child pornography.

User Responsibilities

Customers are responsible for any misuse of Company services that occurs through the customer's account. It is the customer's responsibility to ensure that unauthorized persons do not gain access to or misuse PCN's service.

PCN urges customers not to reply to unsolicited mail or "spam", not to click on any suggested links provided in the unsolicited mail. Doing so remains the sole responsibility of the customer and PCN cannot be held liable for the Customer being placed on any bulk mailing lists as a result.

Where the customer has authorized a minor to use any of the PCN services or access its websites, you accept that as the parent/legal guardian of that minor, you are fully responsible for: the online conduct of such minor; controlling the minor's access to and use of any services or websites; and the consequences of any misuse by the minor.

Complaints and Procedures

It is the customer's responsibility to familiarize himself or herself with the procedure set out below and report any cases of violation of this AUP to PCN's designated complaints handling agent.

In order for PCN to thoroughly investigate the complaint and take appropriate action, all complaints must be in writing, via e-mail to support@pcn.co.za and contain as much information as possible, including:

• The origin of abuse or offense, including the website, full mail headers, relevant logfile extracts etc;
• Any contact details for the source of the complaint;
• A brief explanation why the incident is considered to be an offence.

Service Specific Policies

Home Uncapped / Uncapped ADSL:

The available capacity and the performance of our network is evaluated regularly. If available capacity is under pressure we will manage customer's accounts where necessary in order to give all customers the best possible internet experience. Customers who have used more than the average user will be managed first by our Protocol Manager.

Uncapped Business:

This account is optimized for Business Users where high priority is given to business protocols (VOIP, Terminal Services, Web Browsing, Email). Peer to Peer, HTTP downloading and NNTP traffic is restricted as they are not typical business protocols.