Bruce Municipal Telephone System (Bruce Telecom) is an Internet Service Provider, and use of Bruce Telecom's facilities by any Customer must be consistent with Bruce Telecom's Acceptable Use Policy. The ultimate responsibility for network traffic that does not conform to this policy lies with the individual end-user who originates that traffic and all consequences lie with this individual. Bruce Telecom does not assume any responsibility for information transmitted by anyone other than an owner, agent or employee of this company.

The Customer agrees to abide by the local, provincial and Canadian federal laws, and the guidelines set forth.

1. General Conduct

Individual dial-up accounts are intended for use by an individual. Shared accounts and/or multiple logins are prohibited.

Bruce Telecom services may be used for lawful purposes only. Transmission, distribution, or storage of any information, data or material that is violation of International regulations,. Canadian Federal laws, or provincial law is strictly prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to material protected by copyright, trademark, trade secret or any other statue. Bruce Telecom reserves the right to discard any such illegal material which may be stored on its servers.

The Customer is prohibited from transmitting on or through any of Bruce Telecom services any material that is, in Bruce Telecom sole discretion, unlawful, obscene, threatening, abusive, hateful, libelous, or that would encourage conduct that constitutes a criminal offense, or would otherwise violate any provincial, federal or international law.

The resale of Bruce Telecom products and services is not permitted, unless permission is specifically granted and documented in a written agreement.

Bruce Telecom reserves the right to cancel or put any Customer service on hold for non-payment or violation of its Acceptable Use Policy.

2. Network Security

Users who violate systems or network security may incur criminal prosecution under Canadian federal laws or international laws. Bruce Telecom will fully cooperate with investigations with respect to security violations within this site or other sites, including full cooperation with law enforcement agencies in the investigation of suspected criminal activities.

Customers are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of their network access codes (usernames and passwords). Customers are discouraged from sharing such information with others.

Password security is the responsibility of the individual user. Good passwords should be a minimum of six characters long, contain a least one number or symbol and not be based on any dictionary word or common name.

Customers may not attempt to circumvent user authentication, or security of any host, network, or account. This includes, but is not limited to accessing data not intended for the Customer, logging into an account or server which the Customer is not expressly authorized to access, or probing the security of other networks such as running scanning software such as SATAN or ISS.

Customers may not attempt to interfere with the service to any user, host or network (i.e. denial of service attacks). This includes, but is not limited to, ping flooding of networks, or deliberate attempts to overload or impede a service or attempts to crash a host.

Customers may not attempt to impersonate others or use IRC or WebChat anonymously by disguising their hostname or username.

Customers are prohibited from running any software program or application that will interfere with or deny service to other users on any server or host.

Bruce Telecom may restrict service or terminate any subscriber who employs applications which unreasonably jeopardizes the technical security and performance of the system, operates applications intended to circumvent idle connection avoidance programs or precipitates actions or threats of actions by other domains due to intolerable activities on other host sites. Bruce Telecom reserves the right to decide if any of the above violations apply to a given personal account. Repeated abuse will result in an e-mail notification to a user. Subsequent abuses will result in forced disconnection followed by denial of re-connection. Bruce Telecom reserves the right to suspend or terminate a subscription, without specifying cause, immediately upon notice to any subscriber. If you have information regarding inappropriate or potentially illegal use of the Bruce Telecom systems, please contact support@bmts.com

E-mail

Electronic mail passes through multiple mail servers on the Internet. Bruce Telecom does not guarantee privacy for the Customer's e-mail. Customers requiring privacy are therefore notified to use encryption technology to render their messages unreadable by potential eavesdroppers.

With respect to Bruce Telecom e-mail servers, Bruce Telecom places a high value on user privacy and will only examine a user's e-mail when absolutely required, for example during troubleshooting procedures or in cooperation with law enforcement authorities upon presentation of a search warrant of information.

Harassment, whether through language, frequency, or size of messages is prohibited.

Customers are explicity prohibited from sending unsolicited bulk e-mail messages ("junk mail" or "spam"). Such material can only be sent to those who have explicitly requested it. If a recipient asks to stop receiving e-mail, the Customer must not send that person any further e-mail.

Customers may not forward or otherwise propagate chain letters, whether or not the recipient wishes to receive such e-mail.

Malicious e-mail, including but not limited to "e-mail bombing" (flooding a user or site with numerous large messages) is prohibited.

Forging e-mail headers information is prohibited.

Posting to USEnet Newsgroups must comply with the written charters or FAQs for those newsgroups. Advertisements should only be posted to newsgroups whose charter/FAQs explicitly permit such traffic.

1. Posting a single article or substantially similar articles to an excessive number of newsgroups or continued posting of articles which are off-topic (e.g., off-topic according to the newsgroup charter or the article provokes complaints from the regular readers of the newsgroup for being off-topic).

2. Sending unsolicited mass e-mail which provoke complaints from the recipients.

3. Mail bombing: Sending large volumes of unsolicited e-mail to individuals or to individual business accounts with the intent or result of limiting usability of the account or system in question.

4. Engaging in either (1) or (2) from a provider other then Bruce Telecom and using an account on Bruce Telecom as a mail drop for responses, or to draw attention to a website housed within Bruce Telecom’s networks.

5. Continued harassment of other individuals on the Internet after being asked to stop by those individuals and/or by Bruce Telecom.

6. Impersonating other users or otherwise falsifying one’s user name in e-mail, Usenet postings, on Internet Relay Chat(IRC), or any other Internet service. (This does not preclude the use of nicknames in IRC).

7. Network unfriendly activity: Attempts to interfere with regular workings of Bruce Telecom’s systems or network connections or related computers, systems, servers or networks or which adversely affect the ability of other people or systems to use Bruce Telecom services or the Internet, including, but not limited to:

I. Any unauthorized attempts by a user to gain root access or access to any account not belonging to that user on this or any other Bruce Telecom system;

II. Any use of this or any other Bruce Telecom system as a staging ground to disable other systems.

8. Privacy violations: Attempts, whether successful or not, to gain access to any other system or users’ private data without express consent of the user.

9. Use of IRC bots or clonebots on Bruce Telecom, whether on IRC servers controlled by Bruce Telecom or by other parties.

10. Any use of unauthorized robots or spiders from, through or against Bruce Telecom computers, systems, servers or networks.
Web Services

Bruce Telecom provides web services to its Customers. Web pages reside on Bruce Telecom owned computer equipment giving Bruce Telecom some ethical responsibility for the content of such pages. Bruce Telecom reserves the right (and the Customers agrees under this AUP), under its sole discretion, to remove any web content that it deems inappropriate. This includes, but not limited to, downloadable virus code or obscenity.