Acceptable use

1. Scope

This Acceptable use policy (“AUP”) applies to all products and services offered by Horváth Digital Solutions™ (“HDS”, “we”), including Managed Hosting, Email & Presence, HDS DNS™, HDS Sentinel™, HDS Verify™, related platform features, the customer portal, and any APIs or tooling we provide (together, the “Services”). It also covers misuse of our marketing websites and brand resources.

Horváth Digital Solutions™ Owner: Semjon Horváth Eichborndamm 90B 13403 Berlin Germany

Email: info@horvath-digital.solutions
Phone: +49 30 81451947-0
Fax: +49 30 81451947-3

Further provider details are in our legal notice. Privacy processing is described in our privacy policy. For general enquiries use our contact page.

2. Role of this document

This AUP sets out permitted and prohibited use of the Services and how we enforce those rules. Commercial terms (including payment, term, and liability) are in the Terms and Conditions. The right of withdrawal is in the right of withdrawal. Service levels are in the Service Level Agreement. Processing as processor under Art. 28 GDPR is governed by the data processing agreement.

Privacy is described in the privacy policy. Where a contract for Services exists between you and HDS, this AUP forms part of that contractual relationship by reference, unless the written contract expressly provides otherwise.

The German text is authoritative (§9).

3. Permitted use

You may use the Services for lawful purposes within the plan limits, technical documentation, and fair-use expectations described in this AUP and in your order or portal configuration.

You must be at least 18 years old (or the age of legal capacity in your jurisdiction, if higher) to enter into a contract for the Services or to administer a customer account. Business customers remain responsible for ensuring that end users of their content comply with this AUP where applicable.

4. Prohibited uses

Email & Presence is not sold as a customer mass-mail, newsletter, or bulk-outbound product. Outbound sending is rate-limited per plan (messages per minute) to protect deliverability and shared reputation. Bulk, automated, or newsletter-style sending outside those limits, or in breach of applicable anti-spam law, is prohibited.

You must not use the Services — and must not allow others to use them through your account — for any of the following:

• (a) Any activity that is illegal under applicable law, including fraud, money laundering facilitation, or other criminal offences.
• (b) Unsolicited bulk or commercial email (spam), phishing, smishing, or similar deceptive messaging.
• (c) Distributing, hosting, or commanding malware, ransomware, botnets, exploit kits, or other harmful code.
• (d) Network abuse: denial-of-service attacks, reflection/amplification, port scanning, credential stuffing, or deliberate disruption of third-party systems — except authorised security research reported through our security page.
• (e) Unauthorised access to systems, accounts, or data; bypassing authentication or access controls.
• (f) Infringement of intellectual property or related rights, including copyright infringement or unauthorised distribution of copyrighted works.
• (g) Child sexual abuse material or any content that sexualises minors; we report such material to competent authorities as required.
• (h) Content or activity that promotes terrorism, violent extremism, punishable hate speech, or Volksverhetzung-equivalent incitement to hatred within the meaning of applicable law.
• (i) Cryptocurrency mining or similar resource-intensive workloads that degrade shared infrastructure, unless expressly authorised in writing for a dedicated plan.
• (j) Reselling, sub-licensing, or white-labelling the Services without our prior written consent, or misrepresenting affiliation with HDS.
• (k) Operating TOR exit nodes, open proxies, or open relays intended to anonymise third-party abuse traffic.
• (l) Hosting or distributing “warez”, cracked licence keys, or piracy indices as a primary purpose of the service.

5. Content responsibility

You are responsible for content you store, process, publish, or transmit through the Services, and for the conduct of end users you enable. You must have a lawful basis and the rights needed for that content.

Where we are a hosting or intermediary service provider, we may act on notices of illegal content in line with applicable law (including the EU Digital Services Act where it applies): we may remove or disable access to content, restrict features, or suspend accounts after assessing a notice, and we may inform the notifier and the affected customer where appropriate and legally permitted.

Nothing in this section obliges us to monitor all content proactively beyond what the law requires.

6. Resources and fair use

Shared infrastructure must remain usable for all customers. You must not run workloads that unreasonably degrade CPU, memory, disk I/O, network, mail reputation, or DNS capacity for others.

Managed Hosting includes plan bandwidth; sustained traffic far above typical website use, or patterns consistent with abuse, may trigger fair-use review, rate limits, or a move to a more suitable plan. Excess transfer may be charged as stated in the product offering.

HDS Verify™ and HDS Sentinel™ include plan caps (for example verification volume or monitor/status limits). Exceeding caps may result in throttling, soft blocks, or upgrade prompts. Circumventing metering or sharing credentials to evade limits is prohibited.

7. Security and reports

Report network or email abuse via our abuse page. Report security vulnerabilities via our security page. Do not use those channels for sales or general product questions — use our contact page instead.

We may investigate reports, request information from the account holder, and take the enforcement steps in §8. Good-faith reporters acting within our security policy are not treated as attackers solely for reporting.

8. Enforcement

If we reasonably believe this AUP has been breached — or that continued use poses risk to us, other customers, or third parties — we may, depending on severity and urgency: warn you; impose or tighten rate limits; quarantine content; suspend Services in whole or in part; terminate the contract; and/or notify competent authorities.

Where legally allowed, fees already paid are not refundable solely because of suspension or termination for AUP breach. We may preserve logs and evidence as needed for security, abuse handling, and legal defence, consistent with our privacy policy.

9. Changes and language

We may update this AUP from time to time. The current version appears on this page. For material changes, HDS notifies registered Customers at least 14 days before the change takes effect, via a notice in the customer portal and by email from legal@horvath-digital.solutions. The Customer may object or raise questions by reply to that address.

This policy is provided in German and English. In case of conflict or ambiguity, the German text prevails. The English text is a convenience translation.