The easyDNS Terms of Service

(Now in Plain English) 

(Last modified Aug 13, 2024)

It is important to understand that this is an agreement between easyDNS and its customers. What constitutes a violation of this Agreement is at the sole discretion of easyDNS.

Breach of these terms can (and usually does) result in the following:

• Termination of services
• Closure of the account
• Discovery and closure of any "related" accounts ("Guilt-by-association")
• Forfeiture of any fees paid

Busy bodies take note: third parties (people who are not our customers) cannot come to us, point to these terms and expect to successfully compel us to do anything. See our takedown policy - the short version is if you want to compel us to do anything, you'll need a court order.

easyDNS reserves the right to publicly post any takedown request we receive. Any legal or public documents involving easyDNS may be (and often are) posted to our blog.

You can report network abuse to abuse@easydns.com

For easyDNS members, these are the basic rules of the system:

1. Most fees are paid in advance: domain registration, domain renewal, website hosting are examples of this. easyDNS won't register a domain until it's been paid for. This means if you send a cheque, we wait until we receive cheque until we register it (we don't wait for it clear, we assume it won't bounce.) If you pay via Bitcoin we wait for 2 confirmations.
2. Each service level comes with a base DNS usage quota (97% of users are always safely below quota). You can view these quotas on our DNS comparison chart. If you go over the quota in a given month, you start getting billed for overages. We send out multiple warning emails starting at 80% of quota so you'll always be aware. Invoices are calculated and issued 7 days after the end of a monthly billing period. DNS usage fees are due within 30 days after an invoice is issued. Upgrading to a higher service level before an invoice is issued will reduce or eliminate any charges that are accrued during that billing period. If you have an "outlier" month due to an unforeseen circumstance, you can open a ticket with our support team who will review, and determine if those overage charges will be waived, reduced, or upheld depending on the circumstance. This means you shouldn't be penalized for "outlier" months (like you got /.-ed or something). Please Note: We have exceptional DDOS prevention layers in front of our nameservers, which means filtered DDOS traffic is never counted as usage.
3. Unpaid fees: results in things like the following happening:
   • New domains don't get registered, leaving them open to somebody else grabbing them.
   • Existing domains don't get renewed, leading to domains expiring as per the Domain Expiration Cycle (see below)
   • Your DNS gets cut off, in the case of DNS usage fees or what we call "Service Only" domains - that means a domain for which we are only the DNS host, not the Registrar. (Most of the time we are not overly rigid about this, but ignoring our emails or phone calls about your outstanding bills tends to ratchet up our impatience in these matters and lowers our empathy levels toward your cause.)
4. Automatic rebilling / auto-renewals: When automatic rebilling is enabled we will auto-bill the credit card on file when your domains or other services come up for renewal. You can specify certain domains and services to not rebill automatically, you can also select domains that you no longer want to "allow expire”.You can turn off auto-rebills in your billing preferences.You can decline to enable automatic rebills by unchecking that option in the payment page (many companies don't even let you do that).The "enable automatic billing" checkbox defaults to "ON", why? We had to decide whether we wanted to get yelled at for "rebilling cards automatically" or whether we wanted to get yelled at "for letting my domain expire". We decided it's better to get yelled at for auto-billing a card. We can always refund those, we can't always get an expired domain back.
5. Your domains and websites are your problem. You assume responsibility for all repercussions your domains, websites and content have "out there" in the world. If any of it becomes our problem (i.e. we are named in a lawsuit because of something you did) you either have to do your utmost to get us off the hook or we will act independently to save ourselves. What this means is this: if you get us in trouble we will throw you under a bus.
6. Having said that: We are typically vigorous advocates for our clients. We require a valid legal basis under Ontario law, such as a court order, a judicial finding, subpoena or warrant to take down your domains or websites or produce documents. We will notify of you of any attempts to take down your domains or websites or obtain your data (unless we are legally barred from doing so).
7. Exceptions to takedown policy and data sharing: We are fascists when it comes to net abuse and we know it when we see it. easyDNS is not a refuge for criminal or abusive activity, and we co-operate with Law Enforcement Agencies when we find net abuse on our system.
   Domains found to be engaged in any of the following:
   • spam
   • phishing
   • C&C nodes, botnets
   • DDoS attacks of any kind
   • net abuse of any kind

   will have all services terminated and we will share everything we know about you with LEA, security researchers or other abuse desks.

8. Fraud. Do we need to say it? If you pay with a stolen credit card, or cracked paypal account, rubber cheque, etc. We terminate everything we can lay our hands on that belongs to you and we give all data we have on you over to the police.
9. Guilt-by-Association: not only do we terminate any domains or websites which violate our policies, we ferret out every other domain you have on the system under different names, accounts, etc and we terminate those too (don't worry, we can tell). There is no appeal.
10. Department of Pre-crime & De-risk: we reserve the right, and have been known to exercise it, to summarily terminate services to domains and websites based on suspicion alone, before anything happens. Example: if you try to register: paypal-login-reset.support we're going to take one look at that and we're going to nuke it. So don't bother.
    Further: easyDNS reserves the right to refuse or revoke services if we, at our sole discretion, deem your activities to pose a threat to the system or increase the risk profile of our staff, systems, shareholders or clients. Any refunds under this policy will be net of our incurred costs.
11. Provide valid contact data. If you don't want your details published in the whois database, then use whois privacy, but fake contact data in your account is a violation of our Terms of Service not to mention the ICANN and CIRA policies on providing valid whois data. easyDNS reserves the right to request proof of identity and address on demand. Failure to comply with this request in a manner satisfactory to easyDNS is grounds for account termination.
12. Keep Your Account Data Up-To-Date! We use that to contact you in the event of a problem, if we can't contact you, we make decisions without your input. This can go so far to include account termination.
13. Payment terms for monthly billed services: For services that bill monthly you must enabled auto-rebilling for those services. We use Stripe for credit card processing so we still do not store your credit card details locally or anywhere within our network. If you’re using Paypal we setup a PayPal subscription. For crypto payments you’ll need to pre-fund your account with a balance we can draw down on.
14. Data retention: In general, we will delete your account and associated data three years after you cease being a client. That means three years after your last paid service has ended. The following gets deleted sooner (much sooner): Your websites, your email AND your backed up data (including easyBackup) can be deleted as soon as 45 days of being past due. We’re less militant about this for web and email than we are for easyBackup. For easyBackup, we pay our partner for your data. If you stop paying us, it becomes our data because we’re now paying for it. The most useful thing we can then do with our data is to delete it.The account past-due notification cycle for easyBackup will be so over-the-top and annoying you will either bring your account current or cancel the service just to make it stop:
    • Automated emails every frickin' day in the run up to data deletion
    • One or two cracks at a phone call when we get down to the wire
    • We may even put in some auto-faxes or SMSs

    The upshot is if anybody gives us the “I had no idea my easy backup account was past due” we’re going to shrug it off. We tried.

15. Yes, we will send you email. Some of it optional, others not. We absolutely will send you:
    • renewal notices
    • invoices
    • system status communications (usually only if it's an urgent situation, otherwise, [check the status blog]
    • important network event situation reports (think heartbleed, WWIII, etc)
    • Stuff we are contractually obligated to send like: ICANN WDRP and WAP notices (whois data reminders)

    Other stuff we will send you which can be modified in your mail preferences:

    • occasional product or service announcements - and we really do mean occasional
    • the #AxisOfEasy weekly update - fear not, they're actually pretty interesting.
16. Contracts of Adhesion. Because of our Status as an ICANN Accredited Registrar, part of our contract with ICANN makes it a requirement that we bind you to ICANN through the following contracts of adhesion (sorry)
    • the ICANN udrp (Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy)
    • for domains under which easyDNS is acting as a Tucows Reseller (the new gTLDs and country codes outside of .CA), the OpenSRS Master Registration Agreement
17. Designated Agent: Registrant explicitly authorizes easyDNS Technologies Inc to act as their Designated Agent, as stipulated by the ICANN Transfer Policy, to approve a Change of Registrant on their behalf.
18. Don't Break The Law! Things like HYIPs and ponzis are expressly prohibited here.
19. Do not violate the Non-Aggression Principle. The "NAP" (read more about it) is what makes it ok for us to shut down child porn sites, Nazis, the KKK or anything else that makes normal, sane people puke in their own mouths. If your actions or content violate the NAP - you're gone. (No, you don't have to sign up with us if you don't like it - that's what makes voluntaryism such an amazing leap forward in human civilization).
20. Free speech zone. Following on the above point, free speech means the freedom to tell the truth, not spew nonsensical filth. We will put our asses on the line to defend the former, we will not lift a finger for the latter. Yes, we can pick and choose because the latter always violates the NAP and the former doesn't.
21. Are you a service provider? Do you publish user contributed content? If you run infrastructure for downstream users, then you need to action any abuse complaints your users generate within 24 hours of us notifying you of them. Having said that We Are NOT Your Abuse Desk! If people are complaining to us because you don't answer the phone or reply to emails then we're going to get fed up pretty quick and solve the problem by terminating your service. Staff your abuse desk and take care of problems before we have to take care of them for you. If we have to do it, you probably won't like it.
22. Filesharing or Bittorrent sites? You need to action all copyright removal requests. If they start piling up here because you do not reply to these requests, we will terminate your service. In case we haven't mentioned it already, we are not your abuse desk.If we have to deal with your abuse and takedown requests, we will begin levying abuse handling fees against your account. We will lock up your domains until you pay them. These fees will get larger until the economic incentives are such that you get in front of your own abuse issues or you leave.If we terminate your domain because of excessive abuse and legal hassles we reserve the right to park, monetize, sell, datamine or sinkhole the traffic. If there are any outstanding fees, invoices, fines or any legal costs incurred on our part by your domains, we will not release your domain(s) until you settle up your outstanding balance via an irrevocable medium.
23. Online Pharmacies: Any website / domain shipping drugs over the internet must fulfill at least one of the following conditions:
    1. possess a valid pharmacy license on demand for any country they are shipping to, OR
    2. be approved by PharmacyChecker
    3. be approved by LegitScript
    4. be approved by the Canadian International Pharmacy Association
24. We are NOT a DDoS Mitigation Service. Yes, we have a lot of DDoS mitigation in place. No, this isn't here so that you can get cheap DDoS mitigation. Contact us first if you are, have been or think you may be the direct target of a DDoS attack. If we can't handle your situation then we can refer you to somebody who can. If you come on this system knowingly bringing a DDoS on your heels we may shut down your service immediately.
25. Service Level Guarantees (SLAs): There are two SLA's here:
    1. Guaranteed Satisfaction or Money Back: for yearly billed DNS services (DNS Hosting, DNS Pro), easyPress and easyWEB - if you are dissatisfied you can ask for a full refund, any time, any reason. For a yearly service you get a refund of the year, for monthly service we will refund you 3-months fees.
    2. Enterprise DNS 100% DNS Uptime: If you experience any amount of DNS non-availability throughout the month, the month is free. You decide if an event has occurred, not us. Please note, it has to be actual DNS unavailability - a monitoring service saying "DNS blip" is not the same thing as your DNS actually being unavailable to actual users. Contact us if you want clarification on this.
26. Domain Expiration Cycle: Your rights to any domain name lapse on the date the domain expires in the registry. After expiry there is a "grace period" (30 to 45 days) during which you can still renew the domain at the regular price, during this period the domain may also be direct transferred to another party who is willing to take over the registration.At the end of the grace period, it goes into another state called "redemption period". It can still be renewed for another 40 - 45 days but now it costs more. The registry charges a lot more to pull a domain out of redemption than to renew it during the grace period - that's why redemption fees typically run over $100 per domain [.CA domains are exempt from redemption fees]. After redemption period, it goes "pending-delete" for 5 days. Then it's too late. Nothing can pull the domain back, it's going to get dropped by the registry and if it has any marginal value whatsoever, the "drop catchers" are going to grab it in about a millisecond after it becomes available again.Never, ever let a domain you care about "expire" in the hopes of grabbing it back again later, you almost always get screwed trying that. Keep your account info current, you can also setup an iCal feed with your domain expirations.
27. Zombie Domains: easyDNS reserves the right to redirect traffic, park domains, blackhole traffic or otherwise shape, mine or resell traffic in any manner for domains that have been deemed "abandoned" on system nameservers."Abandoned" includes:
    1. 1. domains that are not associated with any user account but delegated to our nameservers,
       2. domains within an account that are past due on services
       3. domains delegated to a vanity nameserver record that ultimately resolves back to our nameservers but is otherwise defunct
       4. domains terminated for abuse or otherwise violating these terms
28. Crypto-payments: Unless specifically exempted at the discretion of easyDNS, any payment made via crypto currency that results in a refund for any reason will be done so via a cheque for the transaction amount in fiat currency, made out to the account holder of record, which will be mailed to the postal address in the member profile.
29. Non-Disparagement. In an effort to ensure fair and honest public feedback, and to prevent the publishing of libelous content in any form, your acceptance of these terms prohibits you from taking any action that negatively impacts easyDNS, its reputation, products, services, management or employees. You accept these terms by reading them.
30. Just kidding! If you feel compelled to complain about our service, please let us know your grievances too. We can't fix it if we don't know about it.
31. Generic Catch-All CYA: We are not responsible for anything, you indemnify us against everything, use at your own risk, no warranties express nor implied, remove cellophane before eating.