General Acceptable Use Policy
Last Updated:
August 26, 2026
PROHIBITED CONTENT AND ACTIVITIES
The following statements pertain to all products and services offered by DreamHost, including DreamCompute and DreamObjects:
Illegal Activity
Customer may only use DreamHost Services for lawful purposes. Customer is responsible for ensuring that their use of Services complies with all applicable regulations. Use of DreamHost services in a manner that is reasonably believed to be in violation of applicable law may result in disablement, suspension, or termination. DreamHost does not act as a law enforcement body, or as an arbiter of legality, but reserves the right to take appropriate action in response to clear, credible indications of unlawful activity. To this effect, CSAM material is strictly prohibited, as well as housing any copyrighted information (to which the customer does not hold the copyright or an appropriate license) on DreamHost infrastructure. Additionally, using DreamHost's infrastructure to conspire to commit or support the commission of illegal activities is forbidden as well.
Hacking
Use of DreamHost’s infrastructure to engage in, coordinate, or otherwise facilitate malicious hacking activities, including the distribution of tools, software, or resources intended for unauthorized access, disruption, or attack, is strictly prohibited. This includes attempting to access any system, service, or network without the owner’s consent.
Service Interruptions
Any activity that causes service interruptions to either DreamHost's infrastructure or any outside infrastructure is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to, the execution of Denial of Service attacks or other maliciously configured software.
Mining of Cryptocurrencies.
Mining of any cryptocurrency is prohibited on any DreamHost platform. This includes but is not limited to individual, collective, or cloud mining of any digital currency.
Spamming
Spamming in any form is strictly prohibited. Customer agrees to not utilize, distribute, or in any way make available tools or methods to send unsolicited e-mail or usenet postings (spam), or to use DreamHost infrastructure for relaying unsolicited e-mail or usenet postings, or to use unsolicited e-mail or usenet postings to advertise for their site hosted at DreamHost. More details about our Anti-Spam Policy can be found here
Personal Information Harvesting
Collecting email addresses or other personal identifiers without the consent of the person identified (including, without limitation, phishing, Internet scamming, password robbery, spidering, and harvesting) is strictly prohibited.
Blacklisting
You agree that if a DreamHost IP address assigned to your account is listed on an abuse database or blacklist, you will be in violation of this AUP, and DreamHost may take reasonable action to protect its IP addresses, including suspension and/or termination of your service, regardless of whether the IP addresses were listed as a direct result of your actions.
Unregulated Financial Services and Investment Sites
The operation of unlicensed or unregulated financial trading, investment, or brokerage websites is prohibited on all DreamHost platforms. This includes, without limitation, FOREX and cryptocurrency exchanges, stock and bond trading, commodities, binary options, high-yield investment programs, or any site soliciting financial investments or promising financial returns. Businesses operating in these sectors must be fully licensed, bonded, and operating legally. DreamHost reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to disable, suspend, or terminate any such website that cannot be immediately verified as being in compliance with applicable regulations, with or without prior notice.
Spoofing/Impersonation
Use of DreamHost infrastructure to impersonate another person or entity, be it through Email, Internet Forums, or any other means, is strictly prohibited. This includes spoofing email or network packet headers, whether or not it is done for malicious purposes.
Spamdexing
Customer agrees to not engage in activities relating to Black Hat SEO, Spamdexing, and so-called "Scraper sites." These can all have a severely detrimental effect on server performance and are not permitted.
Any conduct that is likely to result in retaliation against DreamHost's infrastructure, or DreamHost's employees, officers or other agents, including engaging in behavior that results in any server being the target of a denial of service attack (DoS).
Personal Backups
With the exception of Hosting plans with defined resource allocations at signup, including but not limited to Web Hosting (Launch, Growth, Scale), Shared Starter, DreamPress, VPS, Managed VPS, and Dedicated Servers, you agree to make use of DreamHost’s hosting servers primarily for the purpose of hosting a website and associated email functions. Data uploaded must be primarily for this purpose. We reserve the right to delete personal backups in accordance with the Legacy Unlimited Policy.
Mail Archiving
Forwarding all emails from a fully-hosted email address to another fully-hosted email address for archival purposes is not permitted. Further, mail accounts cannot be used for file storage, such as for security camera uploads, storage of emails used to transfer files, or similar archival purposes.
Abusive Scripts/Processes
Any script or process. that adversely affects the ability of any other customer to satisfactorily use their provided services, or that negatively impacts DreamHost infrastructure, is prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to, CPU-intensive CGI/PHP scripts and websites for which the scale of traffic has exceeded the acceptable limits of a specific hosting environment or plan.
IRC Bots/Bouncers
All IRC bots and “bouncers,” including software or services that maintain a persistent connection to an IRC server or mask a user’s IP address, are prohibited on all DreamHost platforms.
BitTorrent software
While we recognize the value in the BitTorrent protocol as a distribution method, it is far too easily (and often accidentally) abused/misused and therefore prohibited on all DreamHost platforms.
Proxy Software
All proxy software, anonymous or otherwise, is prohibited on all DreamHost platforms.
Network Daemons
With the exception of DreamHost Dedicated Servers, Cloud products, DreamPress instances, Managed VPS, and VPS instances, any process that opens a network socket to accept connections from external networks is prohibited. Processes are allowed to bind to the local host only, but are held to the limitations placed on all other processes. They must not use up more than their fair share of resources, and they must not negatively impact DreamHost infrastructure.