Acceptable Use Policy

1. PROHIBITED CONTENT AND TRAFFIC

• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM): creating, transmitting, storing, soliciting, distributing, or facilitating access to any content that sexually exploits or abuses a child or that would constitute CSAM under the laws of New Zealand or any other applicable jurisdiction.
• Copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property infringement: using the Service to obtain, distribute, host, or transmit any material that infringes a third party's intellectual property rights, trade secrets, or publicity rights. Copyright matters are handled under our DMCA & Copyright Policy.
• Defamation, harassment, threats, and violent content: transmitting any material that is defamatory, threatening, harassing, obscene, or that incites violence against any person or group.
• Content illegal in New Zealand or in the jurisdiction of origination or destination: including content banned under the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 (NZ), objectionable publications under the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993 (NZ), and equivalent foreign laws.

2. PROHIBITED NETWORK ACTIVITY

• Unauthorised access attempts: port scanning, vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, brute-force authentication, or any other attempt to access systems you do not own or have written permission to test.
• Denial-of-service: originating, participating in, or relaying any form of denial-of-service or distributed denial-of-service attack, or traffic whose volume or pattern is designed to degrade the availability of any target.
• Malware distribution: distributing malware, ransomware, spyware, stalkerware, Trojans, worms, or any other malicious code; operating command-and-control infrastructure for a botnet.
• Phishing and credential theft: hosting, operating, or supporting any phishing, credential-harvesting, or social-engineering operation.
• Open proxies, open mail relays, open recursive DNS: operating any network service in an open configuration that permits unauthenticated use by third parties.
• Network abuse against third parties: any activity that causes the Service's address space to be listed on a reputation blocklist, that triggers upstream carrier complaints, or that is the subject of valid abuse reports from third parties.
• BGP hijacking, IP squatting, and fraudulent BYOIP: announcing, advertising, or claiming ownership of IP ranges or ASNs you do not lawfully hold.

3. PROHIBITED COMMUNICATIONS

• Unsolicited bulk email (spam): sending bulk commercial or non-commercial email in violation of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 (NZ), CAN-SPAM (US), CASL (Canada), the ePrivacy Directive (EU/UK), Australia's Spam Act 2003, or any equivalent law.
• Bulk automated voice or SMS calls (robocalling): originating or relaying bulk automated voice, SMS, or VoIP calls to unconsenting recipients.
• Address or data harvesting: automated collection of email addresses, phone numbers, or personal information from public sources for unsolicited outreach.

4. PROHIBITED USES OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE

• Reselling the Service: offering, reselling, or sublicensing access to the Service to third parties, or operating a commercial VPN or tunnel service built on top of the Service, without a prior written reseller agreement with us.
• Reverse engineering: decompiling, disassembling, or reverse engineering any part of the Service, except to the extent expressly permitted by applicable law.
• Excessive resource consumption: sustained traffic patterns that materially exceed the documented or published limits of your subscription tier.
• Interference with the Service: probing, scanning, or testing the vulnerability of the Service (other than your own assigned resources), or circumventing rate limiting, authentication, or other protective measures.
• Circumventing security features: disabling, interfering with, or attempting to bypass any security feature of the Services or any limitation on the use of the Services.
• Automated account abuse: creating accounts by automated means or under false pretences, impersonating another user, or making improper use of our support services (including submitting false abuse reports).

5. SANCTIONS AND EXPORT CONTROL

You may not use the Service in, from, or on behalf of any country, region, person, or entity subject to comprehensive sanctions by the United Nations, New Zealand, the European Union, the United Kingdom, or the United States (including OFAC Specially Designated Nationals and sectoral sanctions targets). You represent and warrant that you are not located in, ordinarily resident in, or acting on behalf of any such jurisdiction or person.

6. YOUR RESPONSIBILITY FOR CUSTOMER TRAFFIC

You are solely and exclusively responsible for the content and nature of all data transmitted to or from the IP address(es) assigned to you ("Customer Traffic"). You acknowledge that we do not inspect, filter, or monitor the content of Customer Traffic except as necessary to investigate abuse reports, comply with lawful process, or protect the Service. You agree that all Customer Traffic complies with this Acceptable Use Policy, our Terms of Service, and all applicable laws of the jurisdictions in which it originates and in which it is received.

7. ENFORCEMENT

We may in our discretion suspend, rate-limit, null-route, rotate, or terminate the Service (including reclamation of your assigned IP address) on receipt of credible reports of activity that violates this Acceptable Use Policy, without prior notice where the nature of the abuse requires it. We will use reasonable efforts to notify you of the action and the grounds as soon as practicable. Repeated or egregious violations result in permanent termination and loss of all fees paid.

Enforcement actions under this policy are separate from, and in addition to, any other remedies available to us under the Terms of Service or at law.

8. REPORTING ABUSE

If you believe another user is violating this Acceptable Use Policy, please email abuse@getpublicip.com with as much detail as possible. We acknowledge abuse reports within one (1) business day.

Category-specific contacts and guidance on what to include are available on our Report Abuse page.