Acceptable Use Policy
Guidelines for acceptable behavior and prohibited activity on SharkCluster servers and services.
Effective Date: August 26, 2026
Last Updated: August 26, 2026
1. Upstream Provider Pass-Through Enforcement
Servers are provisioned across third-party infrastructure (currently DigitalOcean, Contabo, and OVHcloud). Every restriction the relevant upstream Provider enforces automatically binds your server, whether or not it's repeated here. You must comply with both this AUP and the official Provider policies:
- DigitalOcean: Acceptable Use Policy
- Contabo: Abuse and Server Rules
- OVHcloud: Service Terms & Abuse Conditions
This list, and this AUP's provider-linked sections, will be updated to include Vultr and Hetzner once those integrations go live — this clause governs whatever Providers are actually active on your account at any given time, not only the ones named here.
If an upstream Provider issues an abuse notice or takedown for your server, SharkCluster may isolate, suspend, or terminate the instance without liability, to remain compliant with that Provider's terms.
2. Strictly Prohibited
Illegal content & exploitation: child sexual abuse material or any exploitation of minors (zero-tolerance — immediate account termination and mandatory reporting to law enforcement); unlawful sale of weapons, drugs, or controlled substances; non-consensual material; terrorist or violent-extremist content.
Network abuse: launching or facilitating DDoS attacks; unauthorized vulnerability scanning, port probing, or brute-force attempts against third-party systems; operating open proxies, open DNS resolvers, or open mail relays; distributing malware, ransomware, or phishing infrastructure.
Email & spam: unsolicited bulk email in violation of applicable anti-spam law; email harvesting or use of non-consented mailing lists; causing your server's IP to be listed on spam databases through abusive sending behavior.
Resource-intensive misuse:
- Cryptocurrency mining requires prior written consent from SharkCluster and must be permitted under the selected Provider's own terms — many Providers prohibit it outright regardless of our consent, so check the specific Provider's policy before assuming it's available to you.
- Aggressive scraping/crawling that ignores target-site robots.txt rules or degrades shared upstream network capacity.
3. Resource Fair Use
If your server generates traffic or load that threatens shared node stability or triggers Provider-side throttling, SharkCluster or the Provider may throttle, reboot, or suspend the instance.
4. Enforcement
SharkCluster determines, at its discretion, whether an activity violates this AUP. Critical violations (active malware, phishing, CSAM, outbound DDoS) may result in immediate suspension without prior warning. Non-critical issues (a single copyright notice, a resource spike) get 24 hours to resolve before suspension follows.
5. Reporting Abuse
[email protected] — include the affected IP, timestamp with timezone, and supporting evidence (logs, URLs).
Last updated: August 2026. Questions about this policy? Contact us.
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