Comply with all federal, state, and local laws

The Internet is part of real life; all the usual laws apply.

Take care to respect copyrighted material. In the US and many other places no special mark or registration is needed to copyright material; the copyright automatically belongs to the creator of the work.

Unauthorized access to a computer may be considered trespass; copying information from such a system may be considered theft, while changing information may be considered vandalism or worse.

Follow 'Appropriate Use Policies' for services you access

Each service you access is hosted by a computer which belongs to some person or organization. Follow the rules that govern access of these systems.

Most systems display a banner which will tell you about restrictions on access. Some software, such as windows based ftp programs, may not show you this information unless you request it; take a moment to do so. The system you wish to access may only be for use during certain hours, or by certain people, or for certain purposes. You may need to request permission or notify administrators before use.

Refrain from trying to defeat security mechanisms

Do not use your Prado account to try to obtain unauthorized access to any computer system.

You are responsible for all activity on your account

Prado has created a password for your account so that only you can access it. Do not share your password with anyone.

If you allow someone to use your account you will be responsible for anything that person does, exactly as if you had done it yourself.

Do not allow children to use your account unsupervised

Your Prado account provides uncensored access to the global Internet. Some of the material that can be accessed through this account is not suitable for children. For this reason Prado opens accounts only for adults.

You as the account holder are responsible for ensuring that the account is not used in a way that will allow children access to inappropriate material.

Do not engage in activities which create denial-of-service

It is possible for an Internet user to create a situation where a resource is so heavily used that other users are unable to access that, or other, resources. This is called denial of service.

Some types of denial of service are completely intentional. Bombarding a person with quantities of unwanted email, or pounding a system with an unreasonable number of service requests are two examples. This is expressly forbidden.

Some denial of service incidents are unintentional; a piece of software may misbehave in a way that sends unacceptable amounts of information or repeated requests for service. Cooperate with Prado personnel in locating the source of such problems and refrain from using the software again until the problem has been fixed.

Some denial of service incidents occur through a user's ignorance of the natural consequences of certain actions. To avoid such ignorance we specifically warn you of four actions that are forbidden under Prado's rules:

• Do not send unsolicited bulk email;
• Do not post multiple copies of essentially the same message to different Usenet newsgroups;
• Do not post "off-topic" messages to mailing lists or Usenet newsgroups;
• Do not advertise in forums which forbid it.

Depending on how large a number of people receive and object to your inappropriate communication, this could be merely an inconvenience or it could have much more serious consequences. Under excessive load, mail disks can become full, servers can crash, and network connections can become unusable. In some especially bad cases providers have been knocked off-line for several days.

If faced with such a deluge, Prado will spend much time and money in an effort to continue providing services to our customers. You will be billed for time and expenses which result from a violation of these rules.

Stay within the limitations of your account type

Disk space for this account is limited to 5 megabytes in home directory, and 3 megabytes in mail, unless other arrangements have been made.

Make only one dial-up connection at any time.

Close the connection when you are not actively sending or receiving information. (A 10 minute timeout is acceptable.)

You may run server software while your connection is also being used to transfer information. You may not run server software when the server is the only reason for the connection.

You may arrange for automatic collection of mail, but no more often than every 15 minutes.

When using Usenet news, start by downloading headers for the groups you are interested in. Use the headers to select articles which you wish to download and read.

Exercise caution

While we try to keep our systems available to you at all times, there will still be equipment failures and occasional outages. Because of this, you must not rely on Prado's service, or the Internet, in a situation where someone's health or safety is at risk. You should think twice before relying on the Internet for critical business applications.

Keep backup copies of the files you place on our server.

Do not believe everything you read. There is bad information out there. Anybody can put up a web page. Email and Usenet news posts can be forged.

Be careful about giving out personal or credit card information. Never give out your account password. Do not use the same password for access to different systems.

Email is not secure; it's like sending a postcard. If privacy and accuracy are especially important to you, consider encryption, which is more like putting your mail in an envelope.

Be careful about software that you download from the net. Computer viruses do exist. Well known, well managed, ftp sites are safer than running something you got from somebody you never heard of before; but still be cautious.

Pay your bill on time.

Prado does not currently mail bills to customers. You will receive an email reminder one week before payment is due. You will receive another reminder if payment has not been received by the due date. One week later your account will stop working and files may be deleted. At this point reinstating your account is equivalent to opening a new account; you will have to pay an account setup fee and the first month's charges.