Hackerzone
Platform Standards

Acceptable Use Policy

Last updated: October 2026 · Draft for platform functionality

Policy Intent: Hackerzone is built to celebrate genuine software craft and AI innovation. This policy defines prohibited behaviors across our hackathons, project gallery, APIs, and community tools to protect builders, organizers, and partners.

1. Code Freshness & Original Authorship

Hackathon competitions rely on authentic effort. Participants agree to:

  • Author original code: Core application features must be developed within the hackathon's active hacking timeframe.
  • Attribute open source: Third-party libraries, APIs, and pre-trained foundation models are permitted but must be declared in project submissions under "Built with" or repository READMEs.
  • Zero plagiarism: Submitting whole or partial repos authored by others without explicit authorization, or resubmitting unchanged past hackathon entries, is strictly prohibited and results in immediate disqualification.

2. Responsible AI Model & Tool Usage

We embrace AI code generation and autonomous agent development, but prohibit:

  • Prompt injection attacks designed to subvert automated evaluation sandboxes or manipulate judge rubric scoring.
  • Generating malicious code, spyware, keyloggers, exploit kits, or vulnerability payloads.
  • Using AI tools to generate hate speech, non-consensual imagery, harassment, or unlawful content.
  • Abusing sponsor API credits or tokens distributed for hackathons for non-hackathon commercial usage.

3. Platform & Infrastructure Integrity

You must not interfere with or degrade the security of Hackerzone infrastructure:

  • Do not launch denial-of-service (DoS) or distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against platform endpoints.
  • Do not scrape, crawl, or harvest participant emails or private team data at scale without written permission.
  • Do not bypass authentication, tamper with judge authorization controls, or modify database scores.

4. Community Interaction & Fair Play

Hackerzone enforces zero tolerance for harassment, threats, or intimidation in hackathon discussions, team formation channels, or project reviews. We expect all participants to uphold our Community Guidelines.

5. Reporting Violations & Enforcement

If you witness an acceptable use violation, please contact our trust team at trust@hackerzone.in. Violations may result in score invalidation, disqualification from prizes, account suspension, or permanent IP bans.