Terms of service

The agreement

These terms apply between you and Dhruv Mishra, operating mishra.info as an individual ("the site"). Submitting a request and paying the fee means you accept them. They are governed by Indian law, and the courts at the operator's place of residence have jurisdiction over any dispute that cannot be settled directly.

What the fee provides

A licence to use a username on mishra.info for one year, in the form set out in your plan - a mail alias, a mailbox, a subdomain redirect, a hosted profile page, or a combination.

You are licensing a name, not buying one. The domain mishra.info remains the property of the operator. Your rights are to use the address for the paid period and to renew it on the terms below. A username cannot be sold, transferred or traded to another person, although it can be transferred within a family by asking.

Service levels are stated honestly rather than contractually. Provisioning is normally completed within 48 hours of payment being verified. The mail and DNS services are provided by third parties, and their availability is outside the operator's control; no uptime guarantee is offered, and none should be inferred.

Name allocation and disputes

First come, first served, by the time a request was submitted. A username is held against your reference while the request is open and allocated once payment is verified. An unpaid request lapses after thirty days and the name returns to the pool.

Reserved names - system and infrastructure names, deity names, institutional and brand names, and abusive words - are not allocated. Some are held for review rather than banned outright; if a reserved word is genuinely your given name, write in and it will usually be granted with a note on the record. The current list is published on the service FAQ.

Impersonation is prohibited. Holding a name that happens to match a public figure's is fine; presenting yourself as that person is not, and neither is registering a name in order to sell it to them or to anyone else.

Disputes between family members over the same name are resolved by order of request. The operator will not arbitrate who in a family has the better claim to a given name, and does not have the standing to.

Admin discretion. The operator may decline a request, or decline to renew, where a name is likely to cause offence, to mislead, or to create a legal problem for the domain. Where a request is declined the fee is refunded in full. This discretion exists to keep a shared family domain usable and is not exercised for any other reason.

Acceptable use

This section matters more than it looks, because email reputation on a domain is shared. One address sending spam causes every other address on mishra.info to be filtered into junk folders. The rules are therefore enforced strictly and immediately.

You may not use an address or subdomain on this domain to:

• Send bulk, unsolicited or marketing email of any kind
• Send phishing, fraudulent or deceptive messages
• Impersonate another person or an organisation
• Distribute malware, or run automated attacks of any kind
• Publish or link to content that is unlawful under Indian law
• Publish content that attacks or demeans any community, caste or religion - including material asserting the superiority of any community over another
• Resell, sublicense or share the address with people outside your household

Consequences. An address found in breach is suspended immediately, without notice where mail reputation is at risk, and without refund. Where the breach is minor or looks accidental, you will be contacted first. Repeated breach ends the licence permanently.

Renewal, expiry and release

• A reminder is sent 15 days before your renewal date
• A grace period of 30 days follows expiry, during which the service continues and renewal is at the normal rate
• After the grace period the mailbox and subdomain are deactivated; mailbox contents are kept for a further 30 days
• The username is released for others to request 90 days after expiry

Renewal is at the rate published when you renew. Existing holders are given at least 30 days' notice of a price increase and are not moved to a new rate part-way through a paid year.

Full detail is on the refund and renewal policy.

Content on the site

Heritage content on this site is written for reference. It is researched carefully and it will still contain errors; it is not authoritative, and it is not a substitute for your family's own purohit, records or elders on any ritual or genealogical question. Corrections are welcomed through the contact form.

Material you contribute - family histories, vanshavalis, photographs - remains yours. By sending it for publication you give permission to publish it on this site and to keep a copy; you can withdraw that permission at any time and the material will be removed.

Quoting from the site is fine with attribution and a link. Wholesale copying of pages is not.

Profile pages are your content. You are responsible for what appears on yours, and it is subject to the same acceptable-use rules as everything else.

Liability

The service is provided as it is. To the extent the law permits, the operator is not liable for indirect or consequential loss - including lost mail, loss of business, or loss of data - arising from use of the service or from an interruption to it.

Where the operator is liable, liability is limited to the fee you paid for the current year.

Nothing here limits liability for anything that cannot lawfully be limited.

A practical note rather than a legal one: do not use a mishra.info address as the sole recovery address for a bank account, a government service or anything else you cannot afford to lose access to. It is a small service run by one person. Keep a major provider's address as your recovery route.

Changes to these terms

Terms may change. Existing holders are emailed at least 30 days before a change that affects them takes effect, and may cancel and receive a pro-rata refund for the unused part of the year if they do not accept it.