Connect Fibre gives you a broadband or mobile connection to the Internet, and as such you can use it to run a great range of applications and use many new and interesting services.

We provide our service to the customer, generally the person who pays the bill. It is the responsibility of you, our customer, to make sure that anyone using the Connect Fibre service complies with this Acceptable Use Policy.

We differentiate between business use and personal use and different tariffs apply to each. You may only use our service for commercial or business purposes if you have purchased one of our business packages. If we believe that you are using your services for business purposes without our permission, we have the right to suspend your account.

Unless we have agreed otherwise with you, Connect Fibre accounts do not have a usage cap, nor do we apply ‘traffic management caps’ on our customer’s use of the Internet.

When using Connect Fibre’s services or website, this can result in you, the user, crossing networks or using other website(s) and or services that Connect Fibre do not own or operate. In this instance, you must follow the acceptable use policies and other terms and conditions set by the operators of those network’s websites and services. We aren’t responsible or liable for the content of any other person’s website, platform, apps or services, even if there’s a link to them from our website.

Most applications will download and upload data, and you may use applications that provide services to third parties through the Internet. That’s what we expect. However, you are responsible for the way the services are used and you are responsible for ensuring that your use of the services is within the law.

You must not use the services, or allow anyone else to use the services to carry out any of the following acts:

1. Send a message or communication that is offensive, abusive, defamatory (damages someone’s reputation), obscene, menacing or illegal;

2. Cause annoyance, nuisance, inconvenience or needless worry to, or interfere with the rights of, any other person;

3. Perform any illegal activity;

4. Break, or try to break, the security of anyone else’s equipment, hardware or software;

5. Deliberately receive, use, own, post, transmit or publish obscene material (including, but not limited to, child pornography);

6. Upload, post, publish or transmit any information or software that is protected by copyright or other ownership rights without the permission of its owner;

7. Copy or distribute any software that we provide (but you may make a backup copy of any software that we provide for your personal use);

8. Use any Internet Protocol (IP) address that Connect Fibre as part of our Broadband service has not assigned to you, our customer. You may not use our Broadband or Mobile internet Services we provide to harm the service of another internet user or impersonate another user, whether on our network or external to our network. You acknowledge that we may change your Internet Protocol (IP) address from time to time without giving notice unless you have purchased a fixed IP address from us;

9. Use the services in a way that (a) risks degradation of service levels to other customers, (b) puts Connect Fibre’s systems at risk or (c) interfere with or attempt to interfere with the operation of any of Connect Fibre’s equipment or services or the Internet;

10. You must not reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell or re-sell any part of our website, network or services; access without our permission, interfere with, damage or disrupt: a) any part of our code and or website, the Connect Fibre network and equipment; c) any software used in providing Connect Fibre services or website; or d) any equipment, network or software owned or used by someone else, if this is outside what we’d expect of someone using either our services under a residential or business contract (whichever applies to you) or our website; · do anything that may disrupt or interfere with our website, network or services or which causes our website or network, or any computer or other device connected to our network, to crash;

11. let people, who don’t live or who aren’t at your premises, access your services without your consent;

12. make excessive use of, or overload, our network; if this is outside of what we’d expect of someone using either our services under a residential and small business service and not a service designed for leased line style business use or other such activities which may persistently flood the network;

13. avoid the user authentication or security process of a network or a computer or device connected to a network;

14. give false information on our on-line forms. This would include (but isn’t limited to) giving wrong or fraudulent details or information (i) about direct debits, bank accounts or credit card numbers or (ii) in relation to a wayleave or other permission to install our services at your premises. If you do this, we can immediately end your agreement for our services. By doing this you may also have criminal or other liability under law.

15. Knowingly transmit any data, send or upload any material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time-bombs, keystroke loggers, spyware, adware or any other harmful programs or similar computer code designed to adversely affect the operation of any computer software or hardware;

16. Run open mail relays or open web proxies or similar services that can allow unknown third parties to use your connection for (possibly) commit unlawful acts without your knowledge or control;

17. Modify identifying network header information in order to deceive or mislead;

18. to monitor or record the actions (i) of any person, who’s allowed to be at your premises, without their knowledge or (ii) of any person or thing outside your premises including, among other things, any public highway or roadway or another person’s home or business premises..

Interactive Services

You may and can from time to time provide interactive services on our website, for example, support chat conversations, social media and customer forums (“Interactive Services”). Where we provide any Interactive Services, Connect Fibre will give you clear information about the kind of service offered, whether it’s moderated and, if it is, the sort of moderation that’s being used (e.g. whether it’s human or automated).

We will do our best to work out any possible risks for users (especially for children) from other people when they use any Interactive Services, and will decide in each case whether to use moderation (and what kind this should be). However, we don’t have a duty to keep an eye on or moderate any Interactive Services. We also accept no responsibility for any loss or damage caused by someone who uses an Interactive Services but doesn’t follow the “Content Standards” section below (whether the Interactive Service is moderated or not).

A child can only use an Interactive Service if their parent or guardian agrees to this. Connect Fibre both advise parents and guardians who allow their children to use an Interactive Service to talk to their children about the risks involved with this and about staying safe online.

Content Standards

Content rules apply to all material you send, receive, communicate, publish, post, contribute, distribute, disseminate, collect, access, encourage the receipt of, use or re-use, upload, download, record, review or stream using our network, services or website and to any Interactive Services (as mentioned in the above section). Connect Fibre call these “contributions”.

As with unacceptable use, the list provided does not set out every single standard which we can or may apply to your contributions. It is provided to help you understand what your contributions can and cannot contain. The standards apply to each part of any contribution, as well as to the whole contribution.

Contributions must:

  • be accurate (where they give facts);
  • be genuinely held (where they give opinions); and
  • follow the laws and regulations of the UK (and of any country that apply to them).

Contributions must not:

  • contain false statements that harm anyone’s reputation;
  • contain any material which is indecent, obscene, offensive, hateful or meant to stir up anger;
  • promote sexually explicit material;
  • encourage violence;
  • encourage discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age;
  • infringe any copyright, database right, intellectual property right or trade mark of any other person.
  • be likely to deceive any person;
  • be made by breaking a legal duty owed to another person (like a duty under a contract or a duty to keep material secret);
  • encourage any illegal activity;
  • be threatening, abuse or invade someone else’s privacy, or cause annoyance, trouble or unnecessary stress;
  • be likely to trouble, upset, embarrass, alarm, scare or annoy any other person;
  • be used to impersonate any person, or be dishonest about your identity or connection to any person;
  • give the impression that they come from us, if this isn’t true; or
  • encourage or help an unlawful act, like (as an example only) copyright infringement or computer misuse.
We can't and don't look at all material or content available on the internet or other people's activities. We're not responsible for any content or material belonging to other people or companies which you might be able to access through our services. Therefore, we can't guarantee to protect you from seeing things you might be offended by.

Security 

You are responsible for protecting your Connect Fibre customer identification and associated password(s) you use to access our services and your account with Connect Fibre. You’re also responsible for any use of your password.

You should not disclose your customer Connect Fibre identification or password(s) to anyone else. If you do, you are responsible for their use of your account. If your customer identification or password are disclosed or used without your permission, you must tell us immediately. You must not use your customer identification or password(s) to use our network or website, in a way that we find unacceptable. Nor should you use them to access or try to access other parts of our network, services or website where we have not given you permission to do so.

You are responsible for taking all reasonable steps necessary to stop someone else accessing our network through your account, where you’ve not given them permission to do this.

You must protect your computer from viruses, adware, malware and spyware by installing and updating suitable antivirus and security software. We’re not responsible for security problems with your computer, its files, or its applications.

You must keep copies of your own data. We’re not responsible for any loss of or corruption of your files or data.

You must tell us immediately if you think that any part of this “Security” section has been breached.

Parental controls

You must decide whether any content or communications you access using our services is appropriate for children or others at your premises to view or use.

You are responsible for setting parental controls or any other controls available for our services and keeping them up to date. When parental controls are on:

  • we limit access to websites we (or our supplier) believe should be blocked because they may be unsafe or unsuitable for you to view or access based on the choices you've made; and
  • websites are sorted for blocking by our supplier. We aren't responsible for categorising websites or for you always being able to go to websites which aren't barred.

Along with the other communications providers, we block attempts to access child sexual abuse images. We don't decide which images to block. That's done by the Internet Watch Foundation (iwf.org.uk). If they wrongly label an image, you can appeal the decision by following the appeal process on the IWF website.

How we deal with breaches

Connect Fibre has various methods that allow us to see if you are following this Policy. When you use Connect Fibre services and or our website, you give us (or our agents or subcontractors) permission to do this by checking your networks and/or equipment and your use of our network, website and/or services.

If we think you have not followed this Policy, Connect Fibre will investigate this. We will act reasonably and fairly when and if we do. If we decide that you haven’t followed this Policy, we can take any action (as set out in the next paragraph) that Connect Fibre thinks is appropriate. If Connect Fibre finds that you have not followed this Policy, you would also have broken your Residential Terms of Service, Business Terms of Service and/or our Website Terms and Conditions.

This will mean Connect Fibre can either deal with the matter under whichever of these documents applies to you or take any of the following actions (with or without notice):

  • the issue of a warning to you;
  • immediate, temporary or permanent suspension or ending of your services;
  • the termination of our Contract with you;
  • immediate, temporary or permanent removal of any posting or material uploaded by you to the internet using our services or to our website whether or not using our services;
  • restricting your access to any illegal material or data;
  • the issue of legal proceedings against you to fully compensate us for all costs to us (including reasonable administrative and legal costs) resulting from you not following this Policy;
  • the taking of further legal action against you; and
  • the disclosure of any information to law enforcement or other appropriate authorities or regulators that we reasonably think is necessary.

We also may receive a complaint about your use of the Internet. If it comes through a formal legal process (e.g. a Court Order) then we will follow the appropriate legal steps. However, we may receive an informal complaint about your use of the Internet that indicates you may not be following this Acceptable Use Policy. We will contact you to investigate, but where we are required by law or to protect Connect Fibre’s interests or the interests of a 3rd party or you are not able to satisfy our investigation, then we reserve the right to suspend or terminate your service immediately.

We aren’t limited to the actions we’ve just set out – we can take any other action we think is reasonably appropriate, at any time, at our sole discretion. We don’t accept any liability resulting from actions we take because of you not following this Policy.

Applicable law

Your Agreement with Connect Fibre is made under English and Welsh law. If a dispute arises that we cannot settle between us, despite following our Complaints Code of Practice, it will be decided in the English and Welsh courts.

Changes to this Policy

Connect Fibre may and can update or change this Policy at any time. If we make such changes, we will update the relevant terms on our website.