The Science and Technology Facilities Council, as the current Mailtalk service provider, endeavours to operate the Mailtalk service to the highest standards. The STFC uses firewalls and sophisticated anti-virus software to safeguard the confidentiality of its users, and maintain the integrity of its operating systems. The relationship between the STFC as the Mailtalk service provider and you as the group owner, or group member is based on trust. Therefore, the STFC expects that your information and activities in Mailtalk are not:

• knowingly false, inaccurate or misleading
• offensive or menacing (including incitement to racial violence, terrorism or any other criminal activity). Are not abusive or defamatory, and are not in breach of copyright, confidence, privacy or any other rights
• fraudulent or involve the sale of counterfeit or stolen items
• offensive, obscene or contain indecent images, data or other material, or any data capable of being resolved into obscene or indecent images

and do not:

• infringe any third party's copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret or other proprietary rights, or rights of publicity or privacy
• create liability for us as service provider
• result in the transmission of unsolicited commercial or advertising material
• deliberately contain computer viruses, macro viruses, Trojan horses, worms or anything else designed to interfere with, interrupt, or disrupt the normal operating procedures of a computer, or surreptitiously intercept, access without authority, or expropriate any system, data or personal information
• cause the Mailtalk website to be interrupted, damaged, rendered less efficient, or affected such that the effectiveness of the website is in any way impaired

The Science and Technology Facilities Council does not control, or bear any liability for, the content of messages exchanged within or between Mailtalk groups, as it merely acts as a conduit for messages. However, if at any time you find other Mailtalk members' information to be offensive, harmful, inaccurate, deceptive, or infringing copyright, you are required to inform the Mailtalk helpline and the group owner, as soon as possible, so that the offending item can be removed at the earliest possible opportunity. Disagreements between members of a group on how that group should be managed should be taken up with the group owner and are not a matter for the STFC. In the unlikely event that an e-mail is misrouted by accident, the recipient is asked not to take action on it or show it to anyone else, but to return it to the sender and delete their copy of it.

The STFC does not sell e-mail addresses of group owners or group members to third parties, however, it reserves the right to provide JISC Advance or third parties acting on behalf of JISC Advance, with statistical data on the way in which the usage of the site relates to user preferences. However, this data will only ever be used to provide general overviews of the growth and performance of the Mailtalk service as required by the contract.