Acceptable Use Policy

1. Purpose and Scope

This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") defines the permitted and prohibited uses of SimpleGo's public SMP relay server infrastructure, including all clearnet and Tor onion service endpoints operated by IT and More Systems.

This AUP supplements and is incorporated into the Terms of Service. In the event of a conflict between this AUP and the Terms of Service, the Terms of Service shall prevail.

By connecting to our SMP relay servers, you agree to comply with this AUP.

2. Our Philosophy on Acceptable Use

SimpleGo's SMP relay servers are neutral communications infrastructure, comparable to the postal system or the public internet backbone. We believe that privacy is a fundamental human right (Art. 12 UDHR, Art. 8 ECHR, Art. 7 EU Charter of Fundamental Rights) and that people should be able to communicate without surveillance as the default, not the exception.

We recognize that any private communication tool can potentially be misused. This reality is not unique to encrypted messaging: it applies equally to the telephone network, postal mail, the public internet, and in-person conversation. The existence of potential misuse does not justify eliminating privacy for everyone.

Our approach is grounded in three principles. First, architecture over surveillance: we build systems that structurally cannot collect user data, rather than collecting data and promising not to look at it. Second, transparency over trust: our software is open source, our policies are public, and our enforcement capabilities are documented honestly. Third, proportionality over absolutism: we cooperate with legitimate legal processes while refusing to build backdoors or implement mass surveillance capabilities.

3. Permitted Uses

Our SMP relay servers are available for any lawful communication purpose. The following are explicitly encouraged uses:

4. Prohibited Activities

The following activities constitute violations of this AUP. Because our servers cannot inspect message content by design, many of these prohibitions are enforceable only through legal process rather than technical monitoring. They nonetheless establish the terms under which we provide this service.

5. Technical Abuse

The following technical activities are prohibited regardless of the content being transmitted. Unlike content-based prohibitions, these are detectable and enforceable through technical means.

• Denial of Service (DoS/DDoS): Flooding our servers with excessive connections, requests, or data with the intent to degrade or disrupt service for other users.
• Resource exhaustion: Creating an excessive number of message queues, sending oversized or malformed packets, or engaging in patterns designed to exhaust server memory, storage, or bandwidth.
• Protocol abuse: Exploiting the SMP protocol in ways not intended by its specification to interfere with server operation or other users' communications.
• Unauthorized probing: Scanning, port-probing, or attempting to gain unauthorized access to server management interfaces, operating system services, or co-located infrastructure. Note: responsible security research with coordinated disclosure is welcomed and not considered unauthorized probing.
• Traffic amplification: Using our servers as amplifiers for reflected denial-of-service attacks against third parties.

Technical abuse is the primary category we can detect and act upon in real-time. We employ rate limiting, connection throttling, and automated blocking of abusive IP addresses. These measures operate at the network layer and do not inspect message content.

6. Enforcement Limitations

We believe in honest documentation of our capabilities and limitations. This section explains what we can and cannot enforce.

6.1 What we can enforce

We can detect and respond to technical abuse at the network and transport layer: excessive connection rates, abnormal queue creation patterns, protocol violations, and resource exhaustion attacks. We can block IP addresses or rate-limit connections that exhibit abusive patterns. For Tor users, our enforcement options are limited to rate-limiting Tor exit nodes or, in extreme cases, temporarily restricting onion service access.

6.2 What we cannot enforce

We cannot monitor, inspect, filter, or moderate the content of messages. All messages are encrypted end-to-end before reaching our servers, and we do not possess decryption keys. We cannot determine who is communicating with whom. We cannot verify the identity of any user. We cannot selectively block users - only IP addresses or connection patterns. We cannot prevent any specific type of communication from occurring on our infrastructure.

This is a deliberate architectural decision, not an oversight. A system that can selectively block specific types of communication requires the ability to inspect that communication, which is fundamentally incompatible with genuine end-to-end encryption.

6.3 Cooperation with legal process

When we receive valid German court orders relating to prohibited activities, we cooperate to the maximum extent technically possible. This cooperation is documented in detail in our Terms of Service (Section 9) and Privacy Policy (Section 12). The inherent limitations of our architecture apply equally to legal process: we can only provide data that we technically possess.

7. Reporting Abuse

If you believe our infrastructure is being used for prohibited activities, you may report this to: abuse@simplego.dev

For technical abuse reports (DoS attacks, resource exhaustion, unauthorized probing), please include: the IP address or server endpoint affected, the approximate time and duration of the abuse, a description of the observed abusive behavior, and any relevant log excerpts or packet captures.

For reports of criminal activity, we recommend contacting the appropriate law enforcement agency directly, as they have the legal authority to issue court orders that we can act upon. We cannot investigate criminal allegations independently, and we cannot provide user-identifying information without legal process.

For security vulnerabilities in our infrastructure, please contact security@simplego.dev. We welcome responsible disclosure and will acknowledge researchers who help us improve our security.

8. Consequences of Violation

Violations of this AUP may result in the following actions, proportionate to the severity and nature of the violation:

• Technical measures: Rate limiting, temporary IP blocking, or permanent IP banning for technical abuse. These measures are automated and apply to connection patterns, not message content.
• Queue deletion: In cases of court-ordered enforcement, deletion of specific message queues identified in the court order.
• Cooperation with authorities: Full cooperation with valid legal process as described in our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
• Public disclosure: In cases of significant abuse that affects other users, we may publish anonymized details of the incident and our response, consistent with our transparency commitments.

We do not maintain user accounts, so account suspension is not applicable. Our enforcement is necessarily limited to network-layer measures and cooperation with legal process.

9. Relationship to Other Policies

This AUP is part of a set of legal documents governing the use of SimpleGo's SMP relay servers. For complete information, please review our Terms of Service, our Privacy Policy, and our Disclaimer.

10. Contact

General inquiries: legal@simplego.dev
Abuse reports: abuse@simplego.dev
Security vulnerabilities: security@simplego.dev
Privacy inquiries: privacy@simplego.dev

IT and More Systems
Sascha Dämgen
Am Neumarkt 22
45663 Recklinghausen
Germany / EU