Document release: 2026-09-18.6 · Effective: 2026-09-18

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Acceptable Use Policy

This policy is part of the Terms of Service for Free S3, operated by Backends. It applies to objects, metadata, API activity, portal activity, public access, sharing links and applications using the service in either visibility mode.

1. Permitted use

Use the free plan for lawful projects, testing, personal files and modest application storage that fit its capacity and risk profile. Own the content you upload or have the necessary permission. Respect other people's privacy, intellectual property and legal rights. Encrypt especially confidential material before upload where appropriate and keep your own recovery copies.

2. Content and activities we prohibit

Do not use the service to store, create, obtain, distribute or facilitate:

• Child sexual abuse or exploitation material, grooming, trafficking or other sexual exploitation; illegal terrorist material; or unlawful encouragement or assistance of serious violence.
• Non-consensual intimate images, voyeuristic content, unlawful threats, stalking, doxxing, harassment or unlawful discriminatory abuse.
• Copyright-infringing copies, stolen databases, unlawfully obtained personal information, trade secrets you have no right to use, or other material whose possession or use is unlawful.
• Phishing pages, scams, credential theft, botnet command-and-control, ransomware operations, malware delivery or attacks against other systems. Legitimate security work must not expose other people to malicious files or unauthorised access; seek written permission before any activity likely to trigger these restrictions.
• Pornographic hosting or services primarily intended to distribute sexually explicit adult material. This is a free-tier service restriction and does not imply that all adult material is illegal.

Do not attempt to bypass authorisation, guess other customers' bucket names or credentials for intrusion, exploit vulnerabilities, disrupt the service, overload it deliberately or conceal abuse behind proxies or shared keys. Responsible reporting of a vulnerability without exploitation or unnecessary data access is welcome at security@backends.co.uk. Permission to report is not blanket permission to penetration-test production systems.

3. Fair use and limits

Do not create multiple accounts, use false identities or repeatedly re-register to evade an allowance, suspension or termination. Do not resell the free service or offer an unrestricted public file-hosting/CDN service on it without our written agreement.

Respect the storage and transfer allowances, respond reasonably to capacity warnings, avoid wasteful request loops and clear abandoned multipart uploads. A temporarily unblocked upload or delayed usage counter is not permission to exceed a limit deliberately. We may apply proportionate rate or access restrictions to protect service availability.

There is no promise of a hard object-count cap or a real-time bandwidth cap in this release. We assess excessive requests or unusually resource-intensive use by their actual impact, not by an unpublished automatic billing rule.

4. Data requiring a different arrangement

The free plan is not offered for safety-critical systems or workloads which depend on a guaranteed recovery time, certified compliance regime or sole-copy retention. Do not upload special-category personal data, criminal-offence data, complete payment-card data, government-classified information or similarly high-risk regulated datasets without a separate written agreement and an appropriate assessment of safeguards.

Ordinary personal data may be stored only where you have authority and meet your own data protection obligations. The Data Processing Agreement governs processing on your behalf where applicable. These service restrictions do not remove our obligations for any personal data we actually receive.

5. Reporting an issue

Email abuse@backends.co.uk. Include the S3 hostname, bucket/object identifier or offending page, the nature of the issue, relevant dates and enough information to locate it. You need not be a customer. A public link is not required to report an issue; do not change a private object to public merely to demonstrate a report.

Do not attach suspected child sexual abuse material, malware or unnecessary copies of other people's confidential data. Do not send access secrets or full signed URLs containing credentials. Give identifiers instead; we can arrange a safe method if further evidence is genuinely necessary. Where someone is in immediate danger, contact emergency services rather than relying on our mailbox.

For an intellectual-property report, identify the protected work, explain your ownership or authority, identify the disputed object precisely and provide a contact address and a good-faith explanation. We may need further information or a response from the account holder. A report does not guarantee removal or disclosure of an account holder's identity.

6. How we act and how to appeal

We assess credible reports and available evidence, limit access where necessary, preserve information where lawfully required, and use proportionate steps such as warnings, object-access restrictions, credential suspension or termination. Our Terms explain notice and opportunities to remedy a non-urgent breach. We may act immediately where delay creates a serious risk or would breach a legal requirement.

The service does not promise to scan every object, pre-approve every upload or detect every harmful file. We do not treat that limitation as an exemption from legal duties that apply to the service. We may examine relevant data only for legitimate operational, security or legal purposes and with appropriate safeguards.

You can ask for a human review at abuse@backends.co.uk. Give your account or case reference and why you believe the decision is wrong. We will consider new evidence and explain the outcome so far as lawful. We will not retaliate merely because you raise a good-faith report, complaint or appeal. Our complaints procedure contains further details.