Terms of Service

By creating an account or using OutTheGroupchat (“OTG”, “the service”), you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

The service is operated by [LEGAL ENTITY NAME AND REGISTERED ADDRESS — TO BE CONFIRMED BY THE FOUNDER BEFORE PUBLIC BETA].

• You must be at least 18 years old.
• You must be able to form a binding contract and must not be barred from using the service under applicable law.
• One account per person. Accounts are personal — do not share credentials or let someone else use your account.
• If your account has been terminated for a violation of these terms, you may not create a new one.

OTG is pre-launch. Features change, break and get removed. Data may be reset during the beta period, and we will tell you before we do that deliberately. Nothing about the beta should be read as a promise that a given feature will ship or persist.

You are responsible for what happens under your account. Passwords are stored only as hashes — we cannot recover one for you, only reset it. Sessions expire after thirty days. Repeated failed sign-in attempts are progressively slowed to frustrate credential-stuffing; this may temporarily delay your own sign-in if you mistype your password many times.

Tell us immediately if you believe your account has been accessed by someone else.

You agree not to:

• Harass, threaten, stalk, or intimidate anyone.
• Impersonate another person, misrepresent your identity, or create an account on someone else’s behalf without their consent.
• Post content that is unlawful, hateful, sexually explicit, or promotes violence.
• Spam, advertise, or use the service for unsolicited commercial promotion.
• Use another person’s location information — including anything you see on a heatmap or a check-in — to track, surveil, follow, or show up on someone who has not invited you.
• Scrape, crawl, bulk-export, or use automated tools against the service, or attempt to circumvent rate limits, authentication, or the privacy controls described in the Privacy Policy.
• Probe, scan, or attempt to breach the security of the service.
• Re-share another member’s location, plans, or content outside the service without their consent.

These are not aspirational — each one is implemented in the product today.

• Blocking. You can block any member. A block is one-directional and takes effect immediately: it also severs any existing Crew connection between you and that person in the same operation, so they lose the visibility that connection granted. Blocking the same person twice is harmless.
• Reporting. You can report a member or a meetup. Reports carry a reason — spam, harassment, inappropriate content, impersonation, a safety concern, or other — plus any detail you write. Every report is filed with a review status and moves to reviewed, actioned, or dismissed.
• Rate limits and anti-spam quotas. Requests are limited per minute, and content creation (meetups, Crew requests and similar) is additionally capped at ten per rolling twenty-four hours per account. Sustained abuse of these limits is itself a violation of these terms.
• Input validation and sanitisation. Everything you submit is schema-validated, and user-written content is sanitised before it is displayed to anyone else.
• Privacy defaults. Location contribution defaults to nobody, and precise coordinates are never shared with another member.

We may act on reports by removing content, restricting features, or terminating accounts. We do not promise a specific response time during the beta.

The entire point of this product is to get you to meet people in the physical world. You do so at your own risk.

We do not verify identities. We do not run background checks. We do not vet venues. We are not present at, and do not supervise, any meetup arranged through the service, and we are not a party to any interaction between members.

Please use ordinary sense, particularly with people you do not already know well:

• Meet in a public place the first time.
• Tell someone you trust where you are going and when you expect to be back.
• Arrange your own transport, and keep a way to leave.
• Do not share your home address, financial details, or identity documents.
• Trust your instincts and leave if something feels wrong. Then block and report.
• If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services first. Then, if it involves a member, report it in the app or email safety@outthegroupchat.com (placeholder address — to be confirmed by the founder).

To the fullest extent permitted by law, you assume the risks of meeting other members in person and release us from claims arising out of those interactions.

You keep ownership of what you create — your profile, intents, notes, posts, comments and meetup descriptions. You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce and display that content solely to operate the service and show it to the people you have chosen to show it to. That licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies we must retain for the safety and legal reasons in section 9.

You are responsible for your content and confirm you have the right to post it. We may remove content that violates these terms without notice.

You can leave at any time. Delete your account at Account settings. Deletion is permanent and removes your data — including your entire location contribution history — as described in the Privacy Policy.

We may suspend or terminate an account that violates these terms, that creates a risk to other members, or that we are required to act on by law. Where it is reasonable and safe to do so, we will tell you why.

We may retain limited records after termination where we need them for safety, fraud-prevention or legal reasons — for example, records of reports and of enforcement actions.

We may change, suspend or discontinue any part of the service. We do not guarantee uptime, and notifications, emails and real-time updates may be delayed or lost. Do not rely on the service for anything time-critical or safety-critical.

The service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, secure or error-free, that venue information from third-party sources is accurate, or that other members are who they say they are.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for loss of data, goodwill or profits, arising out of your use of the service or your interactions with other members.

Some jurisdictions do not allow these exclusions, in which case they apply only to the extent permitted. Nothing here excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Placeholder: the liability cap and any arbitration or class-action terms are deliberately left for counsel to draft. Do not open the public beta with this section unreviewed.

[GOVERNING LAW AND VENUE — PLACEHOLDER, TO BE SET BY THE FOUNDER WITH COUNSEL.] These terms will be governed by the laws of [JURISDICTION], without regard to its conflict-of-law rules, and disputes will be resolved in the courts of [VENUE]. This choice affects consumer rights and must be made deliberately, not copied from another product.

We may update these terms. When we do, we will change the date at the top of this page and, for material changes, notify you in the app. Continuing to use the service after a change means you accept the updated terms.

Questions about these terms: legal@outthegroupchat.com (placeholder address — to be confirmed by the founder before public beta). Privacy questions go to the address in the Privacy Policy.