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Acceptable Use Guidelines for NetZero Services and the NetZero Site

PLEASE READ THESE ACCEPTABLE USE GUIDELINES ("GUIDELINES"), THE NETZERO SERVICES TERMS OF SERVICE ("TERMS OF SERVICE"), NETZERO SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENTS AND ANY APPLICABLE END USER LICENSE AGREEMENTS ("LICENSE AGREEMENTS") AND THE NETZERO PRIVACY POLICY ("PRIVACY POLICY"), WHICH ARE REFERRED TO COLLECTIVELY AS THE "RULES." FOR SUBSCRIBERS TO THE NETZERO MOBILE BROADBAND OR HOME WIRELESS BROADBAND AND VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORK ("VPN") SERVICES, YOUR AGREEMENT IS WITH NETZERO WIRELESS, INC. FOR SUBSCRIBERS TO OTHER NETZERO SERVICES, YOUR AGREEMENT IS WITH NETZERO, INC. COLLECTIVELY, NETZERO WIRELESS, INC. AND NETZERO, INC. ARE "NETZERO" AS THAT TERM IS USED IN THIS AGREEMENT.

The Terms of Service, License Agreement, Acceptable Use Guidelines and Privacy Policy may be found at https://www.netzero.net/ (the "NetZero Site").

If at any time after activation of your account for NetZero Services, you do not agree to be bound by the Rules you should immediately end your use of the NetZero Services and return or destroy all copies of software provided by NetZero, including third party software distributed by NetZero. NetZero may change these Rules at any time. Such changes will be posted on the NetZero Site and such posting will constitute notice to you. You agree to review changes to the Rules prior to any use of the NetZero Services and if any change is not acceptable to you, you agree to terminate your use of the NetZero Services. Your continued use of the NetZero Services or NetZero Site after the posting of any such change constitutes acceptance of all of the changes.

1.0 General
While NetZero encourages and supports the free flow of information and ideas over the Internet, we expect that our subscribers and users will act legally, responsibly and be considerate of others. NetZero reserves the right, but does not bear the responsibility, to prohibit or delete any conduct, communication or content which NetZero, in its sole discretion determines to be unlawful or harmful to others. When you are using the NetZero Services, you are subject to the Rules. If you use third party software or connect to third party servers, websites, networks or systems, then you are responsible for complying with the policies and restrictions of those third parties. NetZero may terminate your NetZero Services if it determines that you have failed to comply with the Rules.

As NetZero does not monitor in advance the conduct of subscribers and users nor communication or content distributed through the NetZero Services, you acknowledge NetZero is unlikely to be aware of violations of law or these Rules or other misconduct by subscribers and users occurring through the NetZero Services. As the sender of e-mail or poster to a newsgroup, you bear full responsibility for the material you send. As the recipient of e-mail or newsgroup postings, you are responsible for using reasonable efforts to screen unwanted material and reporting any offensive or illegal communications to NetZero.

Mobile broadband service can suffer from congestion and reduced performance when usage by some individuals exceeds the usage of typical individual consumers, thereby having a negative impact on the entire network. NetZero's mobile broadband ("Mobile Broadband") service is intended for reasonable, non-continuous use by a person using devices authorized by NetZero, consistent with the type of use made by a typical individual consumer of our Internet services. Typical uses include activities such as surfing the web, sending and receiving email either through the NetZero email service or other third party email providers, sending and receiving photographs, occasional online gaming, and the occasional streaming of videos and downloading files.

These Acceptable Use Guidelines are intended to protect the overall NetZero Services and to ensure the expected use for consumers.

2.0 Prohibited Uses of NetZero Services.
NetZero reserves the right to terminate a subscriber or user's session or access to the NetZero Services at any time without notice if such subscriber or user engages in the following prohibited activities.

A. Unlawful Purposes. Transmission, distribution or storage of material or conduct in violation of any applicable local, state, federal or foreign law or regulation is prohibited, including without limitation:
  • Any unauthorized use of material protected by patent, copyright, trademark or other intellectual property right or material that is obscene, constitutes an illegal threat or harassment, or violates export control laws, or is used to commit fraud or any other activity that is prohibited by criminal or civil law;
  • Transmission, dissemination or storage of illegal images or URLs containing child pornography;
  • Material that posts or discloses personal identifiable information or private information of individuals under the age of 13 or in connection with materials directed towards children under the age of 13 without verifiable parental consent;
  • Material that exploits children under the age of 18;
  • Material that provides, sells or offers to sell the following: controlled substances, illegal drugs and drug contraband, alcohol, weapons, pirated materials, pornography or sexual products, programs to attack others, illegal goods or services, escort services, instructions on making, assembling or obtaining illegal goods or weapons, information used to break, copyright, violate the trademark of or to destroy others' property or information used to illegally harm any people or animals;
  • Material that takes part in, or allows any third party to take part in, the following: reverse engineering, reverse compiling or otherwise deriving the underlying source code, structure or sequence of the technology, altering copyright notices and attributes (unless you have written permission by the legal owner); or
  • Material or conduct which NetZero believes to be unlawful, offensive or harmful.
B. Objectionable Materials. Transmission, distribution or storage of unwanted materials, offensive content and disabling code is prohibited, including without limitation:
  • Viruses, Trojan horse programs, logic bombs, worms, messages which include character sequences intended to control the recipient's computer or display screen, make-money fast schemes, pyramid or chain letters, fraudulent offers, threats, harassment, defamation, postings to a newsgroup in violation of its rules, charter or FAQ and unsolicited advertising (whether commercial or informational);
  • Material that includes or contains links to nudity, pornography or foul language;
  • Material that is obscene, lewd, lascivious, excessively violent or otherwise objectionable;
  • Material that is racist or otherwise offensive to NetZero's network and community, including material which aggravates, harasses, threatens, defames or abuses others such as bigotry, prejudice, racism or hatred and promotion, assistance or information of any type related to violence against governments, groups, organizations or individuals;
  • Storage of log files or non-HTML content unless expressly allowed as part of the NetZero Service;
  • Password-only, hidden, or restricted access pages unless expressly allowed as part of the Service; or
  • Any material, content, code, transmission or other use of the Service that would violate NetZero's Rules.
C. Violations of E-mail Policy. You may not use the NetZero Services to violate any applicable law or regulation including violation of the CAN-SPAM Act, any other anti-spam law or any rule, policy or procedure of NetZero including, without limitation:
  • Sending any form of unsolicited commercial or bulk online communication (including, without limitation, the use of another Internet service to send SPAM to divert visitors to your site hosted on or through NetZero Services, whether or not the messages are originated by you, under your direction, or by or under the direction of a third party);
  • Facilitating spam or collecting responses from spam;
  • Sending large volumes of unsolicited e-mail to individuals;
  • Incorporating a false subject line, false return address or false transmission path into an online communication;
  • Incorporating a third party's trademark within an e-mail address without the permission of the trademark owner;
  • Cross-posting excessive messages to newsgroups;
  • Sending chain letters;
  • Using e-mails to facilitate a pyramid scheme;
  • Sending a mail bomb (mail bombing is defined as the sending of numerous and/or unusually large files or messages to one or more recipients with malicious intent);
  • Sending threatening or harassing e-mails (harassment is defined as the sending of e-mails that are intended to interfere with an other's enjoyment of the Internet);
  • Using your account as a substitute for storage devices or for any other use other than bone fide e-mail use;
  • Leaving excess amounts of unopened e-mail in your account;
  • Using any automatic process for sending or receiving e-mail;
  • Use your account for illegal peer-to-peer file sharing;
  • Using your account as a dropbox or repository for responses for unsolicited advertisements (including, but not limited to, inquiries, complaints, unsubscribes or bounced messages); or
  • Any other use of your account that would violate the Rules.
Subscribers may be fined US $200.00 for each day this provision is violated. Full payment of fines will not prevent NetZero from terminating the offending account or seeking legal remedies against the responsible subscribe, including damages or an injunction.

To report a case of spamming, please e-mail the address set forth on the NetZero Site.

D. Extended Use and Inactivity of Dial-Up Services. Use of NetZero dial-up Internet access Services on a standby or inactive basis in order to maintain a connection is prohibited. This includes, without limitation, taking any action to defeat NetZero's idle timeout or similar mechanism.

E. NetZero Services and NetZero Site Functionality. Any action to defeat or disable, or conduct that facilitates defeating or disabling, any functionality of the NetZero Services or alters the look, feel or functionality of the NetZero Site or user interface is prohibited. This includes, without limitation, altering or blocking the display of any advertisement, banner or other promotional materials appearing on the NetZero Site or through the use of NetZero Services.

F. System and Network Security. You may not do anything that may violate NetZero's system or network security. Security violations include, without limitation:
  • Attempts to compromise the security of any website;
  • Altering the header information of e-mail or Usenet postings or other activity that conceals your e-mail address or prevents recipients from responding to e-mail messages you send;
  • Interference with service to any user, hosting or network provider (including, without limitation, mail-bombing or news-bombing, flooding, overloading a system, broadcast attacks, disrupting Internet relay chat channels or Usenet newsgroups or placing false bids on auction sites);
  • Use or distribution of tools designed to compromise security of any computer system or network (including, without limitation, cracking tools, banner blockers, network probing tools, password or credit card probes and decryption devices and other guessing programs);
  • Transferring excessive amounts of data through NetZero's network;
  • Misuse or abuse of account access and passwords;
  • Any attempt to use an account in any manner that would violate, harm or compromise NetZero's network or the NetZero Services; or
  • Reselling any aspect of the NetZero Services or NetZero Site
G. Continuous Use of Mobile Broadband Service. Uses of NetZero's Mobile Broadband services that are not considered to be typical uses and are prohibited include:
  • Continuous unattended streaming, downloading or uploading of videos or other files;
  • Maintaining an unattended or continuous uninterrupted connection to the Internet, such as through a web camera or machine to machine connections that do not involve active participation by a person;
  • Operating an Internet hosting service including web hosting or gaming hosting; or
  • Using the Service in a manner that impairs or interferes the user experience of others, or otherwise impairs or interferes network performance.
H. Excessive Use. NetZero reserves the right to monitor individual resource consumption and overall network performance to determine if any user is consuming a disproportionate amount of resources such that in NetZero's opinion there is the potential to disrupt or degrade the NetZero Services or use of the NetZero Services by others.

I. Miscellaneous.
  • You also agree that you will not use our network to measure the performance of our NetZero Services, or publish information about our network's performance.
  • Unless otherwise specified, the NetZero Services are provided for your personal, consumer use only, and are not intended for commercial or business use and commercial or business use is prohibited.


3.0 Enforcement and Network Management.
In order for NetZero to comply with applicable laws, including without limitation the Electronic Communications Privacy Act 18 U.S.C. 2701 et seq., to comply with appropriate government requests, to operate NetZero's systems properly, or to protect NetZero or its customers, NetZero may access and disclose any information, including, without limitation, the personal identifying information of NetZero account holders, the contents of any personal electronic communications passing through its network, and any other information it considers necessary or appropriate without notice to you. NetZero will cooperate with law enforcement authorities in investigating suspected violations of the Rules and any other illegal activity. NetZero reserves the right to report to law enforcement authorities any suspected illegal activity of which it becomes aware.

If NetZero receives a complaint or otherwise becomes aware of any possible violation of the Rules, NetZero may, in its sole discretion, initiate an investigation. This investigation may include gathering information from and about NetZero account holders and examining the content of personal electronic communications or other information on NetZero's servers. During any investigation, NetZero may suspend NetZero Services and access to the NetZero Site and/or remove materials from its servers. You agree to cooperate with any such investigation.

If NetZero determines, in its sole discretion, that a violation of the Rules has occurred, NetZero may, but will not be obligated, to take any or all of the following actions in addition to legal remedies it may have available: temporarily or permanently remove material from NetZero servers, discontinue access to Usenet newsgroups, cancel newsgroup postings, move posts to a more appropriate forum (if any), warn the account holder(s) involved, remove e-mail sent by you, suspend or terminate account(s), remove or deny access to the NetZero Service, Site or servers, publicly disclose the originating address, subject matter and/or URL of the website or other account information associated with a prohibited transmission and to charge a handling fee associated with taking such action and take other responsive action at any time and for any reason. If NetZero believes that you have used the services to commit trademark or copyright infringement, it will terminate your account privileges. Violations of the Rules could also subject you to criminal or civil liability.

NetZero reserves the right to engage in reasonable network management to protect the overall Mobile Broadband network, including analyzing traffic patterns and preventing the distribution of viruses or other malicious code. During periods of congestion, NetZero uses various network management techniques, such as reducing the data rate of individual bandwidth intensive users whose use is negatively impacting other users. This temporarily limits the amount of bandwidth available to the bandwidth intensive users until the congestion has diminished, at which point NetZero will endeavor to lift any limits it may have imposed on bandwidth intensive users during the period of congestion. NetZero may also consider historical usage patterns when temporarily reducing the data rate of bandwidth intensive users during periods of congestion. When feasible, upon observation of an excessive use pattern, NetZero will attempt to contact you by telephone (at the telephone number you gave to us) or otherwise alert you to your excessive use of bandwidth and to help you determine the cause. NetZero representatives also are available to explain these Acceptable Use Guidelines and to help you avoid excessive use incidents. If you are unavailable or do not respond to NetZero's attempt to contact you regarding excessive use, or if excessive use is ongoing or recurring and repeatedly having negative effects on other subscribers of the Service, then NetZero reserves the right to immediately restrict, suspend or terminate your Service without further notice in order to protect the network and minimize congestion caused by the excessive use. While the determination of what constitutes excessive use depends on the specific state of the network at any given time, excessive use is determined by resource consumption relative to that of a typical individual user of the Mobile Broadband service and not by the use of any particular application.

4.0 How to Contact Us
A list of ways to contact NetZero is also available at https://www.netzero.net/support/support.html

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