AWS prohibits using its services for any illegal activity, violence, terrorism, fraud, or harmful content, and also prohibits helping others do these things through AWS.
This analysis describes what Amazon's agreement states, permits, or reserves. It does not constitute a legal determination about enforceability. Regulatory applicability and practical outcomes may vary by jurisdiction, enforcement context, and individual circumstances. Read our methodology
This clause establishes the core scope of prohibited conduct and is the basis on which AWS may take enforcement action, including service suspension, against accounts it determines are engaged in or facilitating these activities.
Interpretive note: Terms such as 'otherwise objectionable' are broad and give AWS substantial discretion in determining what conduct qualifies as a violation, creating interpretive uncertainty for customers.
Customers whose use cases are flagged as illegal, harmful, or fraudulent under this clause may have their services suspended or terminated, potentially without advance notice, disrupting access to data and workloads hosted on AWS.
How other platforms handle this
You may not use our generative AI features to generate content or engage in activities that violate our Generative AI Prohibited Use Policy. You're responsible for your use of generative AI features and any content you create, including ensuring that such use and content complies with applicable law...
You may not use the Services to: (a) violate any applicable law or regulation; (b) infringe the intellectual property or other rights of any third party; (c) generate or distribute content that is illegal, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, or otherwise objectiona...
You may not use the Services to generate content that violates applicable laws or regulations, including content that is defamatory, obscene, fraudulent, or that infringes the intellectual property rights of any third party.
Monitoring
Amazon has changed this document before.
Receive same-day alerts, structured change summaries, and monitoring for up to 25 platforms.
"You may not use, or facilitate or allow others to use, the Services or AWS Site: in a way that violates any applicable law or regulation; to engage in, promote, facilitate or encourage illegal activity; to threaten, incite, promote, or actively encourage violence, terrorism, other serious harm; or in a manner that is fraudulent, defamatory, obscene, or otherwise objectionable.— Excerpt from Amazon's AWS Acceptable Use Policy
(1) REGULATORY LANDSCAPE: This provision engages the FTC Act Section 5 regarding unfair or deceptive practices, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and equivalent EU and member-state laws. In the EU context, the Digital Services Act imposes specific obligations on how platforms handle illegal content and the procedures for removal or suspension. The FTC and State Attorneys General are relevant US enforcement authorities. (2) GOVERNANCE EXPOSURE: Medium. The breadth of terms such as 'otherwise objectionable' introduces interpretive ambiguity regarding what conduct triggers enforcement. AWS retains discretion to determine what qualifies, which creates compliance uncertainty for customers operating in edge-case content categories. (3) JURISDICTION FLAGS: EU customers are subject to the Digital Services Act, which may require AWS to follow specific procedural steps before acting on illegal content determinations. UK customers operate under the Online Safety Act framework, which has its own content and enforcement obligations. California and other US state AG offices may have jurisdiction over deceptive or fraudulent use cases. (4) CONTRACT AND VENDOR IMPLICATIONS: B2B procurement teams should assess whether their vendor agreements with AWS include any procedural protections around AUP-based enforcement actions. The broad language of 'facilitate or allow others to use' means customers may bear responsibility for downstream end-user conduct on their AWS-hosted platforms. (5) COMPLIANCE CONSIDERATIONS: Compliance teams should document how their platform's content or activity categories map to the prohibited uses list. Organizations that allow user-generated content or third-party integrations on AWS infrastructure should assess their own acceptable use policies and moderation procedures to limit exposure under this clause.
Full compliance analysis
Regulatory citations, enforcement risk, and due diligence action items.
Free: track 1 platform + weekly digest. Monitor: 25 platforms + same-day alerts. No credit card required.
Compliance Governance Intelligence
Need to monitor specific governance provisions?
Compliance includes provision-level monitoring, governance timelines, regulatory mapping, and audit-ready analysis.
Built from archived source documents, structured governance mappings, and historical version tracking.
This clause establishes the core scope of prohibited conduct and is the basis on which AWS may take enforcement action, including service suspension, against accounts it determines are engaged in or facilitating these activities.
Customers whose use cases are flagged as illegal, harmful, or fraudulent under this clause may have their services suspended or terminated, potentially without advance notice, disrupting access to data and workloads hosted on AWS.
No. ConductAtlas is an independent monitoring service. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Amazon.