Legal
Overview.

1. Geographic Restrictions

To maintain network quality and reduce abuse processing overhead, our services are strictly limited to registered users, citizens, and legal entities residing in Canada and the United States of America. By creating an account, you represent and warrant that you reside in one of these two jurisdictions. The Company reserves the right to request proof of identity and residency. Accounts found to be bypassing these restrictions via VPNs, proxies, or falsified billing information will be immediately terminated without refund.

2. Nature of Service: "Unmanaged" Infrastructure

COLD.HARD.SILICON. provides raw compute and unmanaged infrastructure.

• Our Responsibility: We are strictly responsible for maintaining physical hardware health, hypervisor stability, power, and network connectivity up to the node interface.
• Your Responsibility: You are 100% responsible for the operating system, application layer, software configurations, security patches, firewall management, and disaster recovery.

We do not provide software support, we do not teach server management, and we will not log into your instance to fix application-level errors.

3. Upstream Providers and Acceptable Use

Our infrastructure and backend systems rely on facilities, networks, and services provided by OVHcloud and Cyberri Technologies Inc. (collectively, "Upstream Providers"). By agreeing to this TOS, you also agree to not violate the Acceptable Use Policies (AUP) or General Terms of our Upstream Providers. You may review their respective legal policies here:

• OVHcloud Terms & Conditions (Canada): View Policy
• Cyberri Technologies Inc. AUP: View Policy

Any activity that threatens the integrity of our network or our standing with our Upstream Providers will result in immediate suspension or termination. All abuse reports are processed via abuse@coldhardsilicon.com.

4. Billing, Payments, and Refunds

• Currency: All prices are listed and billed in Canadian Dollars (CAD). Sales tax is applied based on your province, state, or territory of residence as required by Canadian and provincial tax authorities.
• Prepaid Service: All services are billed on a flat-rate, prepaid monthly basis.
• No Refunds: Due to the nature of dedicated computing resources and zero oversubscription, all sales are final. We do not offer prorated refunds for cancellations made mid-billing cycle or for accounts terminated due to AUP violations.
• Suspension & Deletion: Invoices are generated prior to the billing cycle. Failure to pay an invoice by the due date will result in immediate automated suspension. Data on suspended nodes is subject to permanent destruction after a brief grace period (typically 72 hours), at the sole discretion of the Company.

5. Data Retention, Snapshots, and Liability

You are solely responsible for your data. While the Company offers VirtFusion snapshot slots, Enhance backups, and automated backup add-ons, these are provided "as-is" for convenience. The Company does not guarantee the integrity, availability, or restorability of these snapshots or backups.

The Company shall not be held liable for any data loss, corruption, or business interruption, whether caused by hardware failure, network outage, user error, or malicious activity. You are strongly advised to maintain your own remote, off-site backups.

6. DDoS Mitigation and Network Actions

We provide unmetered L3/L4 DDoS mitigation via our Upstream Providers' global filtering networks. We do not charge transit fees for mitigated attack traffic. However, mitigation is not a guarantee of 100% uptime during extreme volumetric events.

If an attack exceeds filtering capacity or threatens the shared infrastructure and neighboring tenants, the Company reserves the right to temporarily "null-route" (blackhole) the targeted IP address as a last-resort failsafe until the attack subsides.

7. Copyright Infringement and "Notice and Notice"

As a Canadian entity, the Company complies with the Canadian Copyright Modernization Act and the "Notice and Notice" regime. Upon receiving a valid claim of copyright infringement, the Company will forward the notice to the offending Client. Failure to remove infringing content or repeated abuse may result in service suspension or termination.

8. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable Ontario and Canadian law, in no event shall ColdHardSilicon Systems Inc., its directors, employees, or affiliates be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, including but not limited to loss of profits, data, use, or goodwill, arising out of or in connection with your use of the services, whether based on warranty, contract, tort (including negligence), or any other legal theory.

Our total cumulative liability to you shall not exceed the total amount paid by you to the Company for the service giving rise to the claim during the one (1) month preceding the event.

9. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless ColdHardSilicon Systems Inc. and its affiliates from any claims, liabilities, damages, judgments, awards, losses, costs, expenses, or fees (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or relating to your violation of this TOS or your use of the Services, including, but not limited to, your data, applications, and any activity occurring under your account.

10. Changes to Terms

We reserve the right to modify this TOS at any time. We will notify active clients of material changes via the Core (core.coldhardsilicon.com) or email. Continued use of the Services after such notification constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.

11. Governing Law, Jurisdiction, and Dispute Resolution

• Governing Law: This TOS, and any dispute, controversy, proceedings, or claim of whatever nature arising out of or in any way relating to this TOS or its formation, shall be governed by and construed exclusively in accordance with the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable therein, without regard to its conflict of law principles. The application of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods is expressly excluded.
• Exclusive Venue: You irrevocably agree that the courts located in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, shall have exclusive jurisdiction to hear and resolve any suit, action, or proceedings arising out of or in connection with this TOS. You hereby waive any objection to such jurisdiction or venue, including any defense of forum non conveniens.
• Waiver of Class Action: To the extent permitted by law, any dispute resolution proceedings will be conducted only on an individual basis and not in a class, consolidated, or representative action.

12. Miscellaneous

• Severability: If any provision of this TOS is held to be invalid or unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction, the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.
• Force Majeure: The Company shall not be liable for any failure or delay in performance due to circumstances beyond our reasonable control, including acts of God, natural disasters, cyber warfare, upstream transit failures, or governmental actions.
• Entire Agreement: This TOS, together with the Acceptable Use Policy, Service Level Agreement, and Privacy Policy, constitutes the entire agreement between you and the Company regarding your use of the Services, superseding any prior agreements.

1. Data Sovereignty

ColdHardSilicon Systems Inc. is a registered Canadian federal corporation. The physical servers, hypervisors, and storage arrays that comprise our infrastructure are located entirely within Canada. By using our services, you acknowledge and consent to the transfer, storage, and processing of your data within Canadian borders.

2. Information We Collect

To provide our unmanaged infrastructure services, we must collect and process certain types of personal and technical information.

• Personal Identity Information: When you register for an account via our billing and management portal, we collect your full name, physical address, email address, phone number, and company name (if applicable). This is required to verify that you meet our geographic residency requirements (Canada and the United States).
• Financial Information: We collect billing details necessary to process your monthly payments. Please note that full credit card numbers are processed directly by our secure, PCI-compliant third-party payment gateways (e.g., Stripe, PayPal) and are not stored directly on our local servers.
• Technical and Telemetry Data: We collect network access logs, IP addresses, browser types, and operating system types when you interact with our web portals. For our infrastructure, we monitor node-level telemetry (CPU, RAM, bandwidth usage) to calculate billing and ensure network stability.
• Customer Content (Application Data): Because we provide "unmanaged" infrastructure, you maintain complete control over the data, applications, and databases hosted on your compute nodes. We do not monitor, access, or inspect the contents of your virtual machines or shared hosting containers unless legally compelled to do so by a valid court order.

3. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

We use cookies and similar tracking technologies on our website and Client Portal to maintain active sessions, enhance user experience, and analyze site traffic. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies; however, disabling cookies will prevent you from authenticating and logging into our management portals.

4. How We Use Your Information

We use the collected information strictly for legitimate business purposes, including:

• / Provisioning, operating, and maintaining your compute nodes and hosting environments.
• / Processing transactions, generating invoices, and managing billing disputes.
• / Enforcing our Terms of Service (TOS) and Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).
• / Mitigating network abuse, DDoS attacks, and fraudulent sign-ups.
• / Sending critical administrative communications, such as maintenance alerts, SLA updates, and billing notices.

5. Third-Party Data Sharing

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to third parties. We only share your data under the following strict circumstances:

• Upstream Infrastructure Providers: We utilize OVHcloud and Cyberri Technologies Inc. for physical datacenter space and network transit. We may share network-level telemetry (such as IP addresses involved in an attack) with these providers strictly for the purposes of DDoS mitigation and routing enforcement.
• Service Providers: We share necessary data with trusted third-party vendors who assist us in operating our business, such as payment processors, fraud-prevention services, and secure administrative platforms.
• Legal Compliance and Law Enforcement: We will disclose personal information if compelled by law, subpoena, or a valid court order originating from Canadian courts. In cases of severe AUP violations involving illegal activities (such as the hosting of CSAM), we will proactively report the activity and share relevant account details with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, and appropriate international authorities.

6. Data Security

We implement robust, industry-standard administrative, technical, and physical security measures to protect your personal information within our billing and management portals.

However, under our unmanaged infrastructure model, you are solely responsible for securing the data residing on your deployed servers. The Company is not responsible for data breaches, unauthorized access, or data loss occurring at the application or operating system layer of your deployed instances.

7. Data Retention and Secure Archival

We retain personal information only for as long as is necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by Canadian law (for example, tax and accounting regulations require us to keep billing records for up to seven years).

Immutable Storage Locks: To ensure the integrity of our administrative infrastructure and to protect against ransomware or catastrophic failures, our internal disaster recovery systems utilize immutable object storage locks. Consequently, when account data is scheduled for deletion, it may remain in our secure, encrypted archival backups for up to thirty (30) days before being permanently and irreversibly purged from all systems.

8. Your Privacy Rights

Under PIPEDA, you have the right to:

• / Request access to the personal information we hold about you.
• / Request corrections to inaccurate or incomplete personal data.
• / Request the deletion or anonymization of your personal data, subject to our legal and contractual retention obligations. (Note: Due to our immutable backup architecture as detailed in Section 7, full propagation of data deletion requests across all secure archival tiers may take up to 30 days).

To exercise these rights, please submit a written request to privacy@coldhardsilicon.com. We will respond to your request within thirty (30) days in accordance with applicable laws.

9. Data Breach Notification

In the event of a security breach involving your personal data that poses a real risk of significant harm as defined by PIPEDA, we will notify you and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as soon as feasible. We will provide information regarding the nature of the breach and the steps we are taking to mitigate any potential harm.

10. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to update this Privacy Policy at any time. Any changes will be posted on this page with an updated "Effective Date." We will notify active clients of material changes via the Client Portal or email. Your continued use of our services following the posting of changes constitutes your acceptance of such changes.

1. Upstream Provider Compliance

Our infrastructure relies on upstream networks provided by OVHcloud and Cyberri Technologies Inc. ("Upstream Providers"). You are strictly prohibited from engaging in any activity that violates the Acceptable Use Policies or General Terms of our Upstream Providers. You may review their respective policies here:

• OVHcloud Terms & Conditions (Canada): View Policy
• Cyberri Technologies Inc. AUP: View Policy

• / Any action that results in our IP space being blacklisted, null-routed, or sanctioned by our Upstream Providers is a direct violation of this AUP.
• / In the event of a conflict between this AUP and an Upstream Provider's AUP, the more restrictive policy shall apply.

2. Network Abuse & Security Violations

You may not use our infrastructure to engage in, foster, or promote malicious network activity. Prohibited activities include, but are not limited to:

• DDoS Attacks: Initiating or acting as a participant in Denial of Service (DoS) or Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
• Network Probing: Unauthorized port scanning, vulnerability scanning, packet sniffing, or ping-flooding of third-party networks.
• Spoofing: Forging IP packet headers, email headers, or engaging in ARP spoofing.
• Intrusion Attempts: Attempting to bypass the security mechanisms of any host, network, or account (e.g., brute-forcing, password cracking).
• Malicious Proxies: Operating open proxies, open DNS resolvers, or open mail relays that can be leveraged for reflection attacks.

3. Zero-Tolerance Spam & Mailing Policy

COLD.HARD.SILICON. maintains a strict zero-tolerance policy against Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) and spam.

• Port 25 Restrictions: Outbound Port 25 is heavily monitored and may be restricted by default to protect our IP reputation.
• Bulk Mailing: Operating bulk mailing services, newsletter blasters, or spam syndicates is strictly prohibited.
• Regulatory Compliance: Any permitted email communications must strictly comply with the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) and the US CAN-SPAM Act.
• Blacklisting: If your node causes our IP space to be listed on any major DNSBL (e.g., Spamhaus, Barracuda), your service will be terminated immediately.

4. Illegal & Harmful Content

Our services are physically hosted in Canada and must be used for lawful purposes only. You may not host, transmit, or distribute content that is illegal under Canadian federal law or the laws of the Province of Ontario. Prohibited content includes:

• Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM): We will immediately report any instances of CSAM to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, the RCMP, and appropriate US authorities (e.g., NCMEC), and terminate the account permanently.
• Malware & Phishing: Hosting or distributing malicious software, viruses, rootkits, exploit kits, or operating phishing sites designed to steal credentials.
• Fraudulent Sites: Hosting ponzi schemes, carding forums, stolen credit card dumps, or participating in financial fraud.
• Terrorism: Content that promotes, encourages, or facilitates terrorism or violent extremism.

5. Copyright Infringement

As a Canadian entity, we process copyright complaints in accordance with the Copyright Modernization Act and the "Notice and Notice" regime.

• / Upon receiving a valid notice of infringement from a copyright holder, we will forward the notice to you.
• / You are required to take immediate action to resolve the claim.
• / Failure to address copyright notices, or operating services designed primarily to facilitate mass copyright infringement (e.g., public torrent trackers, piracy streaming hubs), will result in suspension or termination.

6. Resource Degradation

While we provide raw compute with 1:1 pinned vCores, you may not engage in activities that intentionally degrade the physical integrity of our hardware.

• Cryptocurrency Mining: Proof-of-Work (PoW) cryptocurrency mining (e.g., Bitcoin, Monero) is strictly prohibited. These workloads cause unnecessary thermal stress and degradation to our hardware.
• Abusive I/O: Running scripts or applications specifically designed to continuously max out disk I/O, leading to premature NVMe degradation, is prohibited.

7. Incident Response & Enforcement

The Company reserves the right to monitor network traffic (but not your application data) to ensure compliance with this AUP.

• Sole Discretion: The Company reserves the right, in its sole and absolute discretion, to determine what constitutes a violation of this AUP.
• Investigation: We reserve the right to investigate suspected violations and may suspend your service temporarily during an investigation.
• Remedies: Violations may result in warnings, temporary null-routing of IPs, suspension of services, or permanent termination of your account.
• No Refunds: If your service is terminated for an AUP violation, you will forfeit any remaining account balance, and no refunds will be issued.
• Law Enforcement: We will cooperate fully with Canadian and US law enforcement agencies regarding illegal activities originating from our infrastructure.

8. Reporting Abuse

All reports of abuse, including network attacks, phishing, malware, or spam, must be directed to abuse@coldhardsilicon.com. We aim to review and process all abuse reports within 24-48 hours.

1. The Guarantee: 99.9% Uptime

COLD.HARD.SILICON. guarantees a 99.9% monthly network and hardware uptime for our Compute Nodes, Shared Capacity, and Reseller Blocks.

As the Company operates exclusively on an "Unmanaged Infrastructure" model, this guarantee applies exclusively to the physical hardware (CPU, RAM, NVMe array), the hypervisor layer, and network reachability to the node's external interface.

2. Definition of Downtime

"Downtime" is defined as a period during which your service is entirely inaccessible due to a failure in our physical infrastructure, hypervisor stack, or local network routing.

Downtime is measured exclusively by our internal monitoring systems and third-party upstream monitoring. Client-provided monitoring data (e.g., Uptime Robot, Pingdom) may be submitted as supporting evidence but does not supersede our internal telemetry.

3. SLA Exclusions

The Company’s liability is strictly limited to infrastructural and network availability under our direct administrative control. We issue credits solely for verified hardware or network failures originating from our facilities. The following scenarios are explicitly excluded from Downtime calculations and are not eligible for SLA credits:

• Software & Application Errors: OS kernel panics, misconfigured firewalls (e.g., UFW/iptables), crashed web servers, improper database migrations, or any other user-inflicted application-layer failures.
• Upstream Force Majeure: Mass network outages, fiber cuts, facility power losses, or catastrophic hardware failures at our upstream providers (OVHcloud or Cyberri Technologies Inc.) that affect the wider geographic region.
• DDoS Mitigation Routing: Periods where your assigned IP address is temporarily null-routed (blackholed) by our automated filtering systems due to a volumetric attack exceeding filtering capacity.
• Scheduled Maintenance: Planned maintenance windows that have been announced via the Client Portal (Core) or email at least 48 hours in advance.
• Emergency Maintenance: Critical, zero-day security patching of hypervisors or routing equipment requiring immediate reboot.
• Suspension: Any period where your service is suspended or inaccessible due to billing arrears, Terms of Service violations, or Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) enforcement.

4. SLA Remedies & Service Credits

In the event the Company fails to meet the 99.9% uptime guarantee in a given calendar month, you are eligible to request a Service Credit. Credits are calculated as a percentage of your monthly base service fee for the affected service only (excluding add-ons, licenses, or setup fees).

Maximum Compensation: The maximum total credit issued in any single calendar month shall not exceed 25% of the base monthly recurring cost of the affected service. Credits have no cash value, cannot be withdrawn, and are applied exclusively to future invoices.

5. Sole and Exclusive Remedy

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the issuance of Service Credits as described in this SLA constitutes your sole and exclusive remedy, and the Company's entire liability, for any failure by the Company to meet the uptime guarantee or for any other downtime, unavailability, or degradation of the Services.

6. Claim Procedure

To request an SLA credit, you must submit a ticket via the Client Portal (core.coldhardsilicon.com) directed to the Billing Department.

• / The claim must be submitted within seven (7) days following the end of the month in which the Downtime occurred.
• / The ticket must include: The affected Service ID/IP Address, the exact dates and times of the Downtime, and any relevant traceroutes or error logs demonstrating a network/hardware failure.
• / SLA credits are issued at the sole discretion of ColdHardSilicon Systems Inc. following a review of the infrastructure telemetry.