Acceptable Use Policy
The Internet is an emerging communications technology where national and international standards of use, data protection conventions, direct marketing codes of practise and established commercial practises are still being defined. As a pragmatic "acceptable use policy"

  • We require you not to:
    modify, access or make available data stored on a computer or device which you have accessed through our network, when either the owner of the data, computer or device has taken steps to prevent you from doing this or the owner has expressed a wish that you not do this.
  • use our network in any way to send unsolicited commercial email or 'spam' - if you send mail that's unsolicited and commercial then Paston has the right to unilaterally remove your account. Furthermore we reserve the right to charge for the use of our resources and staff in dealing with the consequences of mass mailings conducted through our network in any way.

If you have any doubts about whether a particular email is 'spam' and therefore in breach of our acceptable use policy please send an email to support@paston.co.uk and we will advise you.

We require you to:

  • respect the privacy, feelings and resources of your fellow internet users

Paston retains the absolute right to disconnect any user from its Internet Access Service where Paston considers the user to be contravening its acceptable use policy or any other aspect of its terms and conditions listed below. Paston reserves the right to alter its Acceptable Use Policy without prior notification.

In regard to the above, we absolutely require that you follow the following basic security practices when you use any of our services, so that your computer/accounts cannot be used by malicious third parties to abuse our users, their privacy and resources.

Passwords

  • Should consist of at least 8 mixed alpha and numeric characters with case variations. You should not permit a common word (ie no dictionary words) to be used as a password. The password should not contain any part of the relevant account name. You must protect the confidentiality of your password, and you should change your password regularly.
  • Should always be changed within (at most) 7 days if you are given an automatically generated one by us or any other service.
  • Should be treated with common sense at all times - this is self-explanatory - they should be memorised if possible, stored with heavy encryption if necessary, and obviously never written on a piece of paper or taped to your desk.

Where possible you should use:

  • Anti-Virus software
  • Anti-Spyware software
  • Regular system updates
  • Sensible firewall software and/or rules
  • Caution with the software/packages you install

These things are requirements, and it is essential to the safety of our users (ie: you) and our resources (ie: the quality of service that you get) that everyone follows them.

  • The user will remain obligated to paying for the local telephone call charges at the rates publicised by the telephone operator with whom they make their local calls. The contract and charges for the telephony access to the Paston Internet Service lie between the user and their telephony service provider not Paston. The charges for the users calls will appear on the bill received from their telephony service provider.
  • Access will only be granted to those customers providing Caller ID information. The user will not be able to connect to our service if they dial 141 before the dial-in number, disabling CLI identification. This is a measure we are taking to prevent the abuse of our network by people sending un-solicited commercial email or "spam".
  • The users's phone number will not be made available to any third party for commercial purposes and will only be used internally to verify our service provision. Uploads to the user's web space will be limited to 5 Mb. More space will be made available on request for which a charge may be levied.

Liabilities

  • As the Internet Access Provider, Paston cannot be held responsible for the content of the users website, e-mails, news postings or any other material distributed through our service, or for information and material that is accessed by the user through our service.
  • The user is solely responsible for ensuring that any material transferred to or from their computer does not infringe the laws governing, but not exhaustively covering, copyright, trademarks, pornography, or any other material which is slanderous, defamatory or might cause offense in any other way.
  • Paston reserve the right to remove such information it deems in breach of the above without warning and/or to make available such information when requested to regulatory bodies or law enforcement organisations.
  • Paston will take every reasonable step possible to ensure a fast and reliable service. Paston cannot be held responsible for any disruption in service however caused, loss of or corruption of any information in transit, or loss of or corruption of information when downloaded onto computer systems.
  • The user agrees to indemnify Paston from any claims or legal proceedings arising from the use of the service which are brought or threatened against it.
  • Paston reserves the right to use the period between 10:00am and 12:00am every Friday for standalone, scheduled, weekly maintenance.
  • Responsibilities
  • Paston is responsible for providing the user with an Internet Access Service, including the specified email and web-space service. The user undertakes to use the service in a manner consistent with the terms and conditions.

Cancellation

Users wishing to cancel their internet services contract should provide notice in writing at least 7 days prior to the account renewal date in order to prevent repeat billing. No refunds will be made. (NB. Broadband cancellation notice periods will vary depending on contract).

Alteration to Terms & Conditions

Paston reserves the right to adjust the terms and conditions of service at any time and without prior notification.

Furthermore Paston reserves the right to send email information to its users concerning Paston products and services which Paston deems may be of interest to them.

Domain Names

When you register a .uk domain name you are also entering into a contract with Nominet and you agree to their terms and conditions. This is a separate contract to any you may have with a third party for the provision of Internet services. Please read before you register your domain name.

Domain names are registered for a 2 year period. You will be invoiced upon registration and thereafter approximately 6 weeks before the commencement of the next 2 year period. If you wish to cancel the renewal then please contact accounts@paston.co.uk before the renewal date.

Please note it is advisable to renew domain names promptly to avoid any risk of cancellation.

Broadband/ADSL

Paston Chase resells ADSL(Broadband) through the BT/KCOM network and is bound by the conditions they set.

ADSL is a contended service - in other words; the available bandwidth for ADSL services is shared amongst the users on the network at the time; this contention of bandwidth takes place on both the BT network and on KCOM's network. This is normal practice and works well for the majority of users as generally bandwidth available easily exceeds the bandwidth used.

However at certain peak business times, as a Business ISP, KCOM undertakes to give further headroom on our core ADSL network by limiting the bandwidth available to 'peer-to-peer' (P2P) programs and giving priority to business traffic. P2P traffic is typically sharing copyright material (e.g. films and music) to other users on the Internet. Only a tiny minority of customers will be affected by this action.

Some Broadband services have unmetered usage periods, during which the data you download is not counted towards your usage allowance.

Your Metered usage period is: Daily (9am - 11pm). Outside of these times you can download as much data as you wish without using your Usage allowance or incurring additional usage costs. Data you upload is unmetered at all times, and will not count towards your usage allowance.

Fair Use and Traffic Management policies may apply during both Metered and Unmetered usage periods – please click here for more information.

Customers who purchase uncontended DSL services from KCOM are unaffected by these changes. If you are using P2P services for your business, KCOM can provide uncontended DSL services that may provide better performance for these applications.

Also, please see our Terms & Conditions 

Paston reserves the right to charge the user for any additional services they may request.