Acceptable use / terms

Last updated 2026-09-07. These terms apply to services from KIRE, LLC d.b.a. KIRE.NET (“Provider,” “we”). Using the service is acceptance. Review this page; it changes.

1. Scope and acceptance

These terms cover Linux shells, Eggdrop and Limnoria hosting, ZNC and psyBNC, IRCD shells, vanity vhosts, identd, @kire.net mail, and related access we provide. They apply to the customer on the invoice and to anyone who uses the login.

You must be eighteen years of age or older to hold an account. If you let a minor use it, you take the consequences. The internet still contains material you may find offensive. We are not a filter for the rest of the net.

Privacy practices are on privacy.php. This page is the acceptable use policy and the terms of service, including refunds. It is not a contract that we indemnify you.

2. You are responsible for the account

One login, one customer. The account is single-user. Everything that runs under it is yours: bots, bouncers, screens, tunnels, cron, mail, IRCD, the forgotten process from 2019.

You pick a password that is not a dictionary word. You keep it. We do not store a recoverable copy of the live SSH password. Forgot it: we issue a new one after we verify you (last four of the card on file, last check number, or mail to the address on the account). sales@kirenet.com or +1 (877) KIRE-NET.

If the password leaks, the account is still yours for the purpose of this page. We are not liable for what a stranger did with your nickserv. You may be liable to us and to others. Tell us when you know it is compromised.

3. Lawful use only

Use the service for lawful purposes. Illegal use is grounds for immediate termination. You indemnify and hold KIRE harmless against claims that arise from your use of the account.

Trying to steal passwords, keys, or access — on our machines or anyone else’s — is termination, and we will report it when it is a crime. “I was only looking” is still looking.

4. Prohibited content and traffic

Do not store, send, or traffic in:

• child sexual abuse material, trafficking, or similar illegal content — prohibited, reportable, terminate
• stolen intellectual property (warez, cracked binaries, other people’s media libraries as a dump)
• fraud, phishing, carding, credential shops
• malware, exploit kits, or a drop box for the same
• botnet command-and-control, drone infrastructure, stressers / booters / flood services

The shell is not a backup disk for the rest of your life and not a pornography warehouse. Configs, scripts, and the bot’s userfile are expected. A media library, a warez closet, and “personal backups” of things you do not have rights to are not.

We may remove material we judge objectionable, illegal, or harmful to the service. You get mail when we do, unless sending mail would make the problem worse. Portrayal of that material on our servers is grounds for termination.

5. Network and system abuse

Do not scan other people. Do not attack other people. Do not flood, spoof, or otherwise use our addresses as a weapon. Do not run an open proxy, open relay, public SOCKS, or “VPN for the channel.” Do not get our IPs listed for being the origin of that mess.

SSH tunnels (-L / -R / -D), a TCP/SSL proxy, and WireGuard as a process are allowed as tools on the account. They are not a product we sell, not an exit node for the household, and not a residential proxy farm. If the rest of the internet can use it without logging into your account, you have built an open proxy. Kill it before we do.

Do not point the world’s spam, crawlers, or miners at the uplink. If you have to ask whether a mass-crawler counts, it counts.

6. Resource abuse and plan limits

Shared shells share a box. Stay inside the plan: processes, disk, memory, ports, and a use of CPU and bandwidth that is not a joke at the neighbor’s expense. Starter is small on purpose. Heavy is not “the rest of the datacenter.”

We are the sole judge of what is adverse to system performance. We may kill a process, refuse a bind, or tell you to take it off. Game servers, streaming farms, and other “I needed a cheap VPS” workloads are not why this network exists.

IRCD packages follow the IRCD plan: dedicated IPv4 and IPv6, the ports we said, DDoS in front. An IRC server (Unreal, InspIRCd, services) does not belong on a Linux shell plan, including Heavy. That is an IRCD Shell. Brochure: /ircd.php.

Fair use is not unlimited. A WireGuard full-tunnel for the house, a public relay, or a bandwidth story will get a conversation and then a kill.

7. IRC-specific rules

Bots and bouncers are the point. Eggdrop, Limnoria, ZNC, psyBNC, irssi, weechat, screen/tmux: that is the product. Using the service as drone infrastructure, a floodnet, or a rented army is not.

Follow the rules of the networks you connect to. Connection limits are theirs. Access to third-party IRC servers is not promised and is not part of the service agreement. If a network bans the IP, that is their network.

Do not use us to run a war against another network, a channel you do not own, or a host you do not operate. Channel takeovers, holding a channel by sitting on a stolen ops bot, and linking into a botnet so someone else can do it from your shell: you own the outcome. If you link to a botnet, you take responsibility for what the other owners do with that link.

Putting a bot on a server that forbids bots, or running more than that network allows from our addresses, is grounds for suspension or deletion after we look.

identd is on. Do not disable it to be clever. Change the IRC “real name” field if you do not want the default showing up in /whois.

8. Mail

We do not read mail for entertainment. We may inspect mail flow and mailboxes when the volume, the queue, or a complaint says the account is harming the service or someone else. We will not hand your mail to a random third party unless a court order, subpoena, or other legal process says so, or reporting obligations leave no useful choice.

We may move, shrink, or delete a mailbox that is large enough to hurt the box. We may kill mail processes. We are the judge of “hurt.”

This is not a bulk-mail host. Outbound spam, harvested lists, and surprise MX on the shell are termination territory.

9. Resale, sharing, transfers

Do not resell the service, share the login as a product, or run a public shell-out of an account we sold you as one customer. Do not clone our copy, our site, or our marks and pretend you are us.

Account transfers happen through us, not through a channel handshake. Unauthorized transfer is not recognized. We can refuse.

10. Security of your own processes

A compromised Eggdrop is your problem until you tell us. Same for Limnoria, ZNC, a stolen SSH key, and a botnet that found your listen port. We may notice first. We may kill first. You still own the cleanup of your configs.

We are not responsible for holes in software you run. Backups of the machines are a courtesy against disk death. They are not version control. Keep your own copy of configs and userfiles.

Information on the internet is not confidential by default. We respect privacy as described in privacy.php. We do not guarantee it on the wire, in IRC, or in a ticket you forwarded to a friend.

11. Inspect, suspend, kill, terminate

We may inspect processes, connections, logs, and — when the box or the network is on fire, when abuse is alleged, or when the law requires it — the account itself. We may suspend, kill processes, reallocate a vhost, or terminate the account, with or without notice.

Notice is a courtesy when there is time. There is not always time. Abusive action can be immediate termination without warning.

We may terminate any account for any reason or for no reason. That sentence was already in the old terms. It is still here. Prepaid charges are not refundable when we terminate for abuse or for breach of this page.

After termination, do not expect to retrieve data. If you needed the userfile, you should have had a copy.

We make no warranty of service, uptime, or fitness. Maintenance happens. Disks die. Third-party IRC networks are not ours. We may remove a feature that is harming the systems. You are responsible for losses from service failure, including when we were careless, except for willful misconduct. You indemnify KIRE against liabilities that arise from failure of our services, equipment, or software, except our willful misconduct.

If we have to clean up after a violation, you can be billed the cost of that cleanup.

12. Reporting

We report when the law requires it, including the material in section 4 that is reportable. We may notify an IRC operator, an upstream, a target of an attack, or law enforcement when an account is being used to attack them. We do not publish a play-by-play of how we decide.

13. Abuse contact

abuse@kire.net is live. A human reads it. Use it for abuse, copyright complaints, and “your IP just did X.” Include logs, times (UTC), source/destination, and the username if you have it. A screenshot of a nick argument is not a log.

We do not have a designated DMCA agent on file at the Copyright Office. Send the complaint to abuse@ anyway. That mailbox is the desk, not a statutory safe-harbor filing.

Privacy requests: privacy@kire.net (also live, also a human). Ordinary support: support@kire.net, +1 (877) KIRE-NET, contact.php, or a ticket in the client area.

14. Billing, refunds, and what a breach costs

Breach of this AUP can cancel the account. Fees already paid are not a debate on an abuse termination. That was the old rule. It is the current rule.

Cards

Card billing is recurring until you cancel. We may charge up to three days before the renewal date. To stop the next cycle, tell us at least twenty-four hours before renewal. Exceptions to that billing method are not made. Cancel, and the login dies when the paid time runs out — unless we killed it sooner for cause.

Mail-in

We still take cash, check, or money order. It is rare. Ask first; do not assume a stamp is faster than a card. The cycle starts the day we receive the first payment (and activate the account). We invoice by email about a week before due. Pay on or before the due date. If we do not, the account can sit on hold up to one week. After that, the account and its contents can be deleted for nonpayment.

Refunds

You may cancel during a term. Refunds of unused service exist only if you ask within twenty-four (24) hours of the transaction. After that, cancellation is at the end of the paid cycle — unless we terminate earlier under this page, in which case prepaid amounts stay prepaid.

Delinquent accounts may be terminated. No retrieval right after that.

Governing law

The law of the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States, governs these terms. State-law issues: Circuit Court of the City of Virginia Beach, Virginia. Federal issues: the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. You agree those courts can hear it. We did not pick a third courthouse.

Changes to these terms

We may change this page. The new text is posted here. You are responsible for reading it. Using the service after a change is agreement to the new text. This page can be updated. It is not a contract of indemnity.