Transparency
How HourlyVPS handles requests from law enforcement and governments for customer data, and what we will report about them.
Last updated
In plain English
- We disclose customer data to authorities only under valid legal process, or in an emergency that involves a risk of death or serious injury.
- We check every request and ask for it to be narrowed when it asks for more than it needs.
- We tell the customer concerned before we disclose, unless the law or an emergency prevents it; then we tell them as soon as we may.
- We will publish counts of these requests twice a year, starting after our first full half-year.
1. What this page covers
Requests from police, courts, prosecutors, regulators and other government bodies for information about our customers, or for action on their services. Abuse reports and copyright notices from the public follow a different process, described on Report abuse.
2. How to send a request
Send requests to [email protected] with “Law enforcement request” in the subject line. If there is an imminent risk of death or serious injury, say so in the subject line; we treat those requests as urgent.
Legal process by post: White Label Services, LLC, 1308 Coffeen Ave, Sheridan, WY 82801, USA.
Please include:
- the issuing authority and a contact person;
- the legal basis for the request;
- the account, server, IP address or domain concerned, and the time period;
- the information or the action you are asking for.
3. What legal process we require
White Label Services, LLC is a US company, so US law, including the Stored Communications Act, governs most requests to us. As a rule:
| What is requested | What we need |
|---|---|
| Basic account information, such as name, email address and payment records | A subpoena, or an order with equivalent force in the United States |
| Other records about the service, such as IP address assignments and access logs | A court order |
| The contents of a customer’s server or communications | A search warrant |
| Preserving data while legal process is obtained | A preservation request. We keep the data for 90 days, and for another 90 days if the request is renewed. |
Requests from outside the United States should come through a mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) or another channel that makes them enforceable in the United States.
Where the hardware is matters too. Servers in Istanbul are physically in Türkiye; servers in New York, once that location opens, will be in the United States. Authorities in each country may have powers over the data centers there that do not depend on a request to us.
4. How we review requests
- We check that the request is genuine, comes from an authority with the power to make it, and follows the process above.
- We disclose only what the request requires. If it is too broad or unclear, we ask for it to be narrowed or clarified.
- We may challenge a request that we believe is invalid.
- We do not give any authority direct access to our systems or to our customers’ servers.
5. Emergencies
If we believe in good faith that an emergency involving a risk of death or serious physical injury requires it, we may disclose information without waiting for legal process, as US law allows. We disclose only what is needed to deal with the emergency.
6. Telling our customers
Unless the law, a court order or an emergency prevents it, we tell the customer about a request for their data before we disclose it, so that they can seek legal advice. If we cannot tell them at first, we do so once the restriction ends.
7. Requests to suspend a service or remove content
An authority may ask us to suspend a server or block content rather than to hand over data. We act on court orders. Other requests we assess against our Acceptable Use Policy and the law, and we give the customer the same notice and statement of reasons as for abuse reports.
8. What we will report
Twice a year we will publish:
- the number of law-enforcement and government requests, by country and type;
- how many we answered in full, in part, or not at all;
- how many affected customers we notified;
- preservation requests;
- abuse reports received and acted on;
- copyright notices and counter-notices.
No report has been published yet. The first one will cover our first full half-year after launch.
9. Changes
We update this page when our process changes. The version and effective date are at the top. Our Privacy Policy describes how we handle personal data in general.