There's been come confusion recently about how our Policy Enforcement department handles complaints against us, our clients, and our clients' clients. To counteract this they've composed a quick statement saying how they work, who you should talk to to get a complaint resolved, and how to get that complaint resolved as quickly as possible.

Please PM me if you have any questions and I'll try to clarify as best as I can. After reading this check out our Legal page which explains our Acceptable Use Policy, Terms of Service, and other rules for using our network, hardware, and services.

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Reports made to the Policy Enforcement team must be submitted via email for automated processing. Reports via other methods, particularly the telephone, do not facilitate such prioritization and do not provide substantiating evidence to facilitate investigation.

In most cases, reports sent via email to abuse@theplanet.com are not replied to. Correspondence is made by Policy Enforcement personnel on an as-needed basis to request further information such as logs or to clear black-listings. Complaints of our auto-responder being turned on far outweigh the complaints of the auto-responder being turned off. The Planet has elected to leave the auto-responder for the abuse@theplanet.com address turned off.

Reports of and correspondence regarding illegal content, copyright infringement, and other legal matters are handled exclusively by The Planet's Legal Team. Copyright violations may be reported directly to copyright@theplanet.com. Issues concerning all other legal matters may be reported directly to legal@theplanet.com. Copyright violation reports must be reported in the proper format as deemed by the Procedure for Making Claims of Copyright Infringement for Purposes of Title 17, Section 512, of The United States Code, located conveniently at this URL: http://www.theplanet.com/legal/copyright.html

Reports made to the Policy Enforcement team via abuse@theplanet.com are prioritized according to the severity of the issue and processed in order of priority, followed by order of receipt. The severity of the issue is determined by the type and quantity of the abuse, legal ramifications for all parties, and other factors based on the judgment of the Policy Enforcement and Security personnel. The Policy Enforcement team investigates the issues according to the established priorities by opening a ticket to the customer(s) that contains a description of the report, troubleshooting information that may be available, and any substantiating evidence of the activity. A deadline is assigned for action that is appropriate for the possible infringement, requiring within the deadline that the customer investigate, resolve the issue, and respond to the ticket with the results of their investigation and the steps taken to resolve the root cause. Extensions of the deadline may be granted by Policy Enforcement to provide additional time for the customer.

AUP violation fines and/or service interruption may occur in cases where no contact is made by the customer in response to the multiple ticket updates and telephone calls made by Policy Enforcement personnel. No administrative action is taken without the following: prior advance notification to the customer via the ticketing system, verification the customer has not responded to the ticket and attempted contact at the telephone numbers that the customer has provided to The Planet.

Should a customer repeatedly permit AUP violations to occur in unreasonable quantities, the customer may be charged an AUP fine upon initial ticketing for each violation; warnings that this will take place are given to the customer well in advance to allow the customer ample opportunity to resolve outstanding issues with their security or business operations. This action is a last resort prior to management review of the account for possible termination to protect the reputation of The Planet's network, and therefore, The Planet's other AUP-abiding customers.