Section A: Privacy of Members

• The e-mail addresses of AVIEN members, and all information displayed on the "Who's Who" and other Members pages, are private to AVIEN members.
• This information must not be disseminated outside the group or within members' corporations, nor used for commercial or other inappropriate gain without specific written consent of the individual(s) concerned.
• Unsolicited commercial email (aka spam) sent to AVIEN subscribers by other subscribers is a serious breach of the AVIEN Terms and Conditions. If you receive spam that seems to fit this description, two alternative courses of action can be taken:
  1. Contact the apparent spammer directly, asking them to desist. We recommend that you also forward a copy of the spam (including full Internet headers, if possible) to the Management Committee and copy the MC on all your communications with the person believed to be responsible for the spam.
  2. If you do not feel comfortable contacting the spammer directly for any reason (for example - because you don't believe the opt-out option is legitimate, or you feel that opting out legitimizes the spam, or that the spam has been received as a result of your AVIEN subscription but could have come from a third party) you can simply forward a copy to the MC.
• The MC may, at its discretion, choose not to investigate an apparent infraction of the rules unless you also make a formal complaint. Once a formal complaint has been made, no discussion or further discussion of the issue should be made on the lists of AVIEN until the MC has made a ruling.

Section B: Conduct

• AVIEN participants will conduct themselves professionally and appropriately at all times in all communications via the network and in any context where they might be seen as in some way representing AVIEN. Personal attacks, of any nature, are unacceptable. Failure to adhere to these standards will be investigated by the Management Committee
• AVIEN mailing lists should never be used to transfer or solicit viruses or other malicious code, or the source code thereof. Solicitation and transferring of small portions of a malicious code that can be used for detection and filtering purposes are permitted.

Section C: Confidentiality

• Any and all information exchanged amongst members of AVIEN will be considered private and must not be disseminated outside the Network, nor published for general release to the public or the members' corporation or associates in any form unless specific written consent has been given by the posting author(s).
• AVIEN alert and advisory mailing lists must only be used for alerting subscribers to imminent security threats. Sending any message which is not related to malicious code to these lists could result in an immediate disciplinary investigation against the sender.
• Any subscriber may request that the Membership Committee investigate any other subscriber(s) whom they regard as having been misusing the lists by sending unwarranted malicious code alerts. The Committee will report their findings to the original petitioner once the matter has been investigated and a decision reached.

Section D: No Commercial Use

• No member of AVIEN shall use AVIEN, nor any of the information or lists within it, to sell or promote a commercial product in which they or their corporation retains an interest.
• For any company to use their membership of AVIEN or information gained through their membership to gain commercial advantage at the expense of other members is totally unacceptable.
• Any attempt to suggest that AVIEN endorses or favours one product or range of products in preference to others will result in disciplinary action.

Section E: Rule Acceptance and Termination of Membership

• Continued membership after a 21 day period following any published changes to rules, terms and conditions shall constitute implicit acceptance of these altered terms.
• Should you wish to withdraw your membership within the 21 day period a pro-rata refund of fees may be made unless there is a period of less than three months to run of your current membership.
• If a membership is cancelled for any reason of misconduct, that cancellation shall apply only to that individual, not to other members of that corporation, unless that corporation has misused AVIEN for commercial purposes, in which case it may be applied to all members of that corporation at the decision of the Management Committee.
• If membership is revoked permanently, a pro-rated refund may be provided, but egregious violations may result in forfeiture of the AVIEN / AVI-EWS subscription fee. A flat setup fee of 50% will be non-refundable in all cases of membership termination and any pro-rated amounts remaining under £15(GBP) shall also be non-refundable.

Section F: Subscription Rules

• You may only subscribe the number of members for which you have paid. A standard AVIEN membership allows two members per subscription. Forwarding within an organisation to non-members is not permitted.
• Group rates for ten or more subscribers in a company may be available, and queries should be directed to ByteMatrix Limited.
• Please note that an extra charge is payable for payments made by bank transfer due to the handling charges exacted by banks involved in the transfer.
• The amount charged to your credit card may be slightly different from the value mentioned here due to bank service charges included in the exchange rate they charge you - we have no control over this.
• Invoices can be issued in GBP, USD, CAD or Euro.

Section G: Sub Group Participation

• Participants in AVIEN lists or sub-groups for which there are extra membership requirements may not forward traffic from those lists to non-participants, except as specified in the Terms and Conditions for AVIEN and any additional rules imposed by a sub-group.
• In the event that a member of AVIEN or of AVIEN subgroups is found to be misusing their membership to pass inappropriate information to non-members or any third parties representing vested commercial interests, they will be liable to instant expulsion from AVIEN, in addition to any sanctions taken by the administrators of that group, and their membership subject to termination as described above.

Section H: Alteration of Rules, Terms and Conditions

• These rules and the AVIEN Terms and Conditions may be altered from time to time by the Management Committee to reflect current circumstances of AVIEN; such changes will be notified to AVIEN members via a posting on the lists and become effective 21 days from the date of posting.