Acceptable use policy

Last updated: 2026-10-21

This policy is part of the terms of service. It applies to every zone, secondary zone, dynamic-DNS hostname, domain registered through SatsDNS and account, and to every request to the API. Some of these rules are enforced by the service itself; the others are up to you.

Whose names

• Host only zones for domains you hold or are allowed to manage. Do not try to take over a domain you do not control, for example by ordering a zone for it ahead of its owner.
• Choose hostnames honestly. Names that imitate brands, banks, payment services, login pages or government services are refused or removed.
• Domain registrations are not screened for brand names or look-alikes before purchase: any valid, available name can be registered. Using a name to impersonate someone, for phishing or fraud, is abuse all the same. Disputes about the right to a domain name itself are decided under ICANN's UDRP or URS or by a court, as described in the registration agreement.
• Registrant data must be real and accurate (see the registration agreement).

What zones, hostnames and domains may not be used for

• Phishing, fraud, scams or impersonation, including pages that ask for passwords, payment data or wallet seeds on someone else's behalf.
• Malware: distributing it, or pointing to its download, command-and-control or botnet servers.
• Spam, or DNS records that support it.
• Piracy, trademark or copyright infringement, counterfeiting, or other fraudulent or deceptive practices.
• Anything else illegal where you are, under the law that governs these terms or under any other law that applies to us, including child sexual abuse material, which we report where the law requires.
• Hiding abusive infrastructure, for example by rotating addresses rapidly to dodge blocklists (fast flux).

Abuse of the service itself

• Do not use secondary DNS primaries, outside-secondary peers or NOTIFY messages to probe, scan or flood other servers.
• Do not try to avoid payment, reuse payment proofs beyond what the docs allow, abuse retries or refunds, or overload the API or the nameservers.
• Do not use many addresses or accounts to get around the rate limits, quotas or per-account limits listed in the docs.

How names are checked

• Before any invoice: every new zone and hostname is compared with public phishing lists (refreshed daily) and with the names we have blocked. A name on the list, or below a listed name, is refused and no invoice is made. New hostnames are also checked against brand and lure words, including look-alike spellings such as paypa1 or g00gle.
• Every day: live names are compared with the refreshed list again. A dynamic-DNS hostname that appears on it is suspended at once: its records stop being served, it is kept, and the owner (if it has an account) is told. We then review it and lift the suspension if it was a mistake. A hosted zone that appears on the list is flagged for our review; we decide what to do.
• There is no waiting period for new zones and hostnames, so ACME DNS-01 and other quick uses work at once.
• Newly registered domains start on our nameservers and stay there for about 3 hours. At the end of that hold the name is checked against the public phishing lists. A listed domain is flagged for our review, and the buyer's nameservers are not set until the review is done.

Enforcement

• Suspension: we stop serving the zone's or hostname's records but keep the zone, its keys and a copy of its records, so it can be restored as it was. The DS record at your registrar stays valid.
• Removal: we delete the zone or hostname. We may also block the name, and names below it, for new orders.
• Registered domains: we may suspend a domain registered through SatsDNS by pointing it at our nameservers and withdrawing any zone we host for it, and ask the registrar to place it on hold or delete it. The registrar and the registry may also act on their own. While we act on a confirmed case of phishing, malware or child sexual abuse material on a domain, its transfer code is withheld; it is not withheld for other reasons.
• Accounts that break this policy may be banned from new orders, claims and transfers.
• We respond to abuse reports within 5 business days. We act on reports when we can confirm them, and without notice where the harm is ongoing. Zones, hostnames and domains suspended or removed for abuse are not refunded.
• Where the law requires it, we report illegal content or activity to the authorities.

Reporting abuse

To report a phishing site, malware or other abuse using a domain registered through SatsDNS, a SatsDNS zone or a dynkite.com hostname, email abuse@satsdns.com or use the other ways on the abuse page. Include the domain or hostname, the URLs, the times you saw it and what happened (a screenshot or the page's text helps). We do not host websites: the content itself is on someone else's server, and we can only stop the name pointing at it.

These pages are written in plain language and are not legal advice.