Sophos Community: Terms and Conditions of Use

Welcome to the Sophos Community user-to-user communities ("Sophos Community"), and thank you for your interest and for any contributions you make.

Important notices:

Using Your Best Judgment

Because the community is public and open, visitors should always use their best judgment as to whether to accept any advice given.

THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THE SOPHOS COMMUNITY ARE AT ALL TIMES THOSE OF THE INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTORS, AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT THE OPINIONS OF SOPHOS. See clause 4, below, for a list of disclaimers and limitations.

Inappropriate Content

Sophos encourages the sharing of constructive advice and criticism and the community forums are therefore as open and free from content control as possible. Nevertheless, Sophos reserves the right to remove inappropriate or abusive content (as defined below in clause 4) and/or to impose sanctions against visitors posting such content.

1. WHY ARE THERE TERMS AND CONDITIONS?

The Sophos Community forums are provided to enable visitors to exchange knowledge, comments, suggestions and requests about Sophos systems and services, about platform technologies, and about computer and data security in general. Anyone can read the forums but if you want to post content you must go through a lightweight registration process. We've provided these terms and conditions for users who register and contribute content to Sophos Community.

The terms and conditions explain the rules of acceptable behaviour and what may be contributed and what not. They also explain the role of the community moderators. Sophos Community usage best practice presents some recommendations as to the most effective ways of using the community.

By registering as a member of the Sophos Community, you agree to abide by both the Sophos website terms and conditions and these guidelines. In return, Sophos commits to abide by the terms of the Sophos privacy policy.

2. WHO MAY USE THE COMMUNITY?

Anyone may read the Sophos Community content, whether or not they are already a Sophos customer or affiliate. Writing to the forums is open to all visitors who register. Registered visitors may then post questions or comments, and rank the contribution of others. The use that Sophos may make of the registration information provided is explained in Sophos privacy policy.

In some cases, Sophos employees will contribute to the discussions. Sophos contributors are clearly identified by the icon. Similarly, moderators and system administrators are identified by their own icons. These community users are all required to abide by the terms and conditions set out here.

3. WHAT CAN YOU POST ON THE SOPHOS COMMUNITY FORUMS?

You can use the Sophos Community forums for any sort of communication with other visitors, including asking or giving advice on a technical issue, suggesting a new product feature, alerting us to an out of date knowledgebase article or user document, suggesting an improvement to these forums, and so on.

However, we ask you to use your judgment when posting content: "is this a post that should appear in a community dedicated to discussing Sophos products and services?". See clause 4 for an explanation of our policy on inappropriate information, which includes the advertising of third party products or services.

4. PROHIBITED INFORMATION AND RESTRICTIONS

SOPHOS DOES NOT HAVE ANY DUTY OR RESPONSIBILITY TO CHECK OR EDIT INFORMATION THAT YOU PROVIDE TO THIS SITE.

You shall therefore not post or otherwise provide any information that is unlawful or Sophos may regard to be inaccurate, false, fraudulent, obscene, offensive, defamatory or otherwise objectionable ("Prohibited Information").

Inappropriate Content

Without limitation, the following list of items may reasonably be considered 'inappropriate' and postings containing such items are strictly prohibited:

• Profanity (including sexual or blasphemous swear words). Please note that whilst substituting asterisks (or similar) for words may get past the Sophos Community in-built profanity filter, the moderators will still understand, and remove or edit the posting.

• Hateful language directed to (but not limited to) the following subject matter: race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, disability, religion and/or political beliefs.

• Obscene or pornographic imagery or other offensive materials, irrespective of format or form (including links).

• Personal attacks on other visitors, Sophos employees and/or affiliates or moderators.

• Personal or otherwise (including commercially) sensitive information about Sophos, its employees and affiliates, or other forum visitors that may have been obtained through other channels (meetings, phone calls, emails, and so on). This includes personal details as well as details of pricing, discounts, margins, product availability and product roadmaps.

• Trolling or other forms of discussion disruption. This includes postings with inflammatory content or titles, prolonged argument over moderator decisions, returning to discussions deemed closed, and so on, at the discretion of the site moderators.

• Vendetta postings, whether directed against forum visitors, or Sophos, its employees and affiliates. Comment directed at Sophos's competitors is expected to be expressed in a reasonable and lawful fashion. While it is acceptable to express disagreement over the direction taken by Sophos policies, products, services and/or procedures, use of the forums to incite such group actions as commercial boycotting, legal action or disruptive use of support channels is not. Sophos reserves the right to remove such content, to issue warnings and/or to ban users from further access in such cases.

• Incitement to engage in, or encouragement of, any of the above.

Restrictions (including without limitation):

• You shall not use the Sophos Community Applications to spam, send unsolicited e-mail, or conceal the identity of an e-mail sender. Further, you shall not use the Sophos Community as a service bureau or for the benefit of any third party other than as provided for herein, whether on a paid or unpaid basis.

• You shall not store, distribute or transmit through the Sophos Community any material that is illegal, unlawful or otherwise unethical including but not limited to postings that could lead to soliciting or offering passwords, financial details, and/or details of how to subvert security systems.

• You agree to fully comply with all provisions of applicable data protection and privacy legislation.

• You shall not post any material that infringes any intellectual property rights (including but not limited to the following: copyright, trademarks, patent information, know-how, database rights, design rights and/or confidential information), and will not allow or authorize anyone to do any of the foregoing.

• You shall not to disclose or solicit the private information of any person, and you agree that you are fully responsible and liable for the use by third parties of any personal information that you disclose (whether or not such disclosure was permitted).

• Soliciting the purchase or sale of items related or unrelated to Sophos products, services or related technologies, is not acceptable.

Where Prohibited Information or other inappropriate content is brought to our attention, Sophos reserves the right to remove or correct it, but offers no guarantee that all such content will always be identified and removed.

Sophos further reserves the right to issue warnings, restrict access to content or features, and/or ban forum users completely.

Sophos relies on the help of community visitors to spot inappropriate content. Any visitor may alert the moderators to offensive material. Abuse of the alert system may also be grounds for a warning or for banning from future access.

The decisions of Sophos under this clause 4 are final.

5. INDEMNITY

You shall fully and effectively indemnify Sophos and any of its licensors for any claim or action that may arise as a result of your breach of clause 4 (Prohibited Information and Restrictions) including but not limited to: posting inappropriate material, breaching Intellectual Property rights, disclosure of personally or commercially sensitive information and/or solicitation for or use such material.

6. MULTIPLE IDS

The use of multiple IDs (email addresses) within the forums is discouraged. Multiple IDs can be used to give a false impression of how widely an opinion is held within the community. Use of a single, consistent ID also allows the forum system to build a user's online reputation.

7. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES AND LIMITATION OF LIABILITY

THE INFORMATION ON THIS SITE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS' AND IN NO EVENT WILL SOPHOS BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE OF ANY KIND (EXCEPT PERSONAL INJURY OR DEATH RESULTING FROM SOPHOS'S NEGLIGENCE) ARISING FROM YOUR USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE INFORMATION, OR FROM FAULTS OR DEFECTS IN THE INFORMATION CAUSED BY NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE.

Sophos shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential damage, whether in contract, tort or otherwise, arising out of any use of the Information.

Sophos gives no warranties, representations, conditions, undertakings or other obligations, whether express or implied by common law, trade usage, course of dealing or otherwise including any implied warranties of satisfactory quality or fitness for a particular purpose or any warranty that the Information will be complete or error-free or that such errors will be corrected are given, all of which are hereby excluded to the fullest extent permitted by law.

8. FEEDBACK

By submitting any suggestions, comments, ideas, concepts, know-how, techniques or other feedback to Sophos regarding Sophos's products, services, plans or similar (“Feedback”), you acknowledge that such Feedback will become the exclusive property of Sophos Limited, and that Sophos may use (or not use) any such Feedback in any manner and for any purpose, without compensation to you and without implying or creating any interest on your part in any of our products or services that may be based on such Feedback. By providing such Feedback, You hereby irrevocably assign to Sophos all right, title, and interest in any Feedback you provide and all related patents, copyrights, trade secrets or other intellectual property rights in any Feedback.

You agree not to submit any confidential or proprietary materials to which you do not have the necessary rights to effect the above assignment and agree to indemnify and hold Sophos harmless from and against any claim, proceeding, loss, liability, cost or damage suffered or incurred by Sophos resulting from or related to Sophos’s use of such Feedback or any other violation by you of these terms and conditions.

These terms and conditions are governed by the laws of England and the courts of England shall have non-exclusive jurisdiction to determine any dispute arising hereunder.

 9. Data retention

We retain personal data we collect from you for as long as necessary for the purposes for which the personal data was collected or where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, to provide you with a product or service you have requested, to ensure that transactions can be processed, settled, refunded, charged back, or to identify fraud), or to comply with applicable legal, tax, or regulatory requirements. Even if you close your account, we will retain certain information in order to meet our obligations.

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal data, we will either securely destroy, erase, delete or anonymise it, or if this is not possible (for example, because your personal data has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal data and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

See also Getting Started Guide