1. The short version
In plain terms: Do not break Canadian law, do not harm other people or networks, do not spam. Everything else is fine.
Most customers never need to read past this section. Run your sites, write your code, send your newsletter to people who asked for it, and you will never hear from us about this policy.
This policy applies to every service we offer and to everyone who uses your account. It forms part of our Terms of service.
2. Illegal content and activity
In plain terms: Anything illegal in Canada is not allowed here.
You may not use our services to store, transmit, or facilitate anything that is illegal under Canadian federal or provincial law. That includes child sexual abuse material, content promoting terrorism or genocide, criminal harassment, fraud and phishing schemes, and the sale of goods or services you are not lawfully allowed to sell.
Child sexual abuse material is the one category where we do not contact you first. We suspend immediately and report to the National Child Exploitation Crime Centre.
3. Intellectual property
In plain terms: Host what you own or have the right to use.
Do not host material that infringes someone else’s copyright or trade-marks. If we receive a credible infringement notice we will forward it to you under Canada’s notice-and-notice regime; we do not take content down on the strength of an unproven claim.
4. Email and messaging
In plain terms: Only send to people who asked. CASL applies.
Commercial email sent from our network must comply with Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL). That means express or valid implied consent, clear identification of the sender, and a working unsubscribe honoured within 10 days.
- Do not send unsolicited bulk email, from our network or advertising a site hosted on it.
- Do not use purchased, scraped, or harvested address lists.
- Do not forge headers, envelope addresses, or relay through open proxies.
- Do not run mailing list software without confirmed opt-in.
Outbound port 25 is closed on new VPS servers by default. Ask support, tell us what you plan to send, and we will open it for accounts in good standing.
5. Network abuse and security
In plain terms: Do not attack anyone, and do not leave your server open to being used in an attack.
- No port scanning, vulnerability scanning, or penetration testing of systems you do not own or have written authorisation to test.
- No denial-of-service traffic, amplification or reflection attacks, or participation in a botnet.
- No distributing malware, running command-and-control infrastructure, or hosting phishing pages.
- No attempts to gain unauthorised access to any system, including ours.
- No open resolvers, open relays, or unsecured services that can be used to attack others.
Security research and CTF work are welcome on our platform, provided every target is yours or you have documented permission. If you are unsure, ask us first.
6. Resource use
In plain terms: Shared hosting is shared. Use a VPS for heavy workloads.
“Unmetered” bandwidth means we do not meter or bill for normal website traffic. It does not mean a shared account can saturate a 10 Gbps port.
On shared hosting, do not run persistent background daemons, cryptocurrency mining, public file-distribution or streaming services, torrent trackers, or processes that consistently monopolise CPU, memory, or disk I/O for other customers on the machine.
If your account is affecting its neighbours we will email you, explain what we are seeing, and help you move to a plan or a VPS that fits. Throttling is a last resort and suspension is a very last resort.
7. Reporting abuse
In plain terms: Email abuse@polarhost.ca with evidence. We read every report.
Send reports to abuse@polarhost.ca with the domain or IP address, timestamps with a time zone, and relevant log excerpts or headers. Specific reports get acted on quickly; vague ones take longer because we have to reproduce them.
We acknowledge reports within one business day and act faster than that for active attacks, phishing, and malware.
8. What happens if we think you have breached this policy
In plain terms: We contact you first and give you a chance to fix it, except in genuine emergencies.
Our normal process is to email you, tell you exactly what we found, and give you a reasonable window to fix it — usually 48 hours, less if the problem is actively harming others.
We suspend without notice only where content is plainly illegal, where a compromised server is actively attacking other networks, or where a court or the law requires it. Even then we email you immediately afterwards explaining what we did and why.
Suspension is scoped as narrowly as we can manage: one site rather than the account, one server rather than the fleet. Repeated or deliberate breaches can end in termination under the Terms of service.
If you think we got it wrong, reply to the notice. A person will look at it again, and we do reverse our decisions when we are shown to be wrong.