Effective Date: July 11, 2023

TalkUp Terms of Service

In order to provide our Services (as defined below) through our apps, services, features, software, or website, we need to obtain your agreement to our Terms of Service ("Terms").

About our services

NO ACCESS TO EMERGENCY SERVICES: There are important differences between our Services and your mobile phone and a fixed-line telephone and SMS services. Our Services do not provide access to emergency services or emergency services providers, including the police, fire departments, or hospitals, or otherwise connect to public safety answering points. You should ensure you can contact your relevant emergency services providers through a mobile phone, a fixed-line telephone, or other service.

Registration. You must register for our Services using accurate information, provide your current mobile phone number, You agree to receive text messages and phone calls with codes to register for our Services.

Address Book. Contact upload is an optional feature that allows us to check which of your contacts in your device's address book are also TalkUp users. It also means we can update your TalkUp contact list when your contacts who aren't using TalkUp yet sign up later. When you grant TalkUp access to your device address book, TalkUp will access and upload the phone numbers in your address book typically daily, but this depends on various factors including how often a user uses TalkUp, including those of TalkUp users and your other contacts. We don’t collect any of the other information that could appear in your device address book including names, email addresses, etc. If you choose not to use Contact Upload you can still communicate with people who have TalkUp but certain functionality will be limited.

Age. You must be at least 17 years old to register for and use our Services (or such greater age required in your country or territory for you to be authorized to register for and use our Services without parental approval). In addition to being of the minimum required age to use our Services under applicable law, if you are not old enough to have authority to agree to our Terms in your country or territory, your parent or guardian must agree to our Terms on your behalf. Please ask your parent or guardian to read these Terms with you.

Devices And Software. You must provide certain devices, software, and data connections to use our Services, which we otherwise do not supply. In order to use our Services, you consent to manually or automatically download and install updates to our Services. You also consent to our sending you notifications via our Services from time to time, as necessary to provide our Services to you.

Fees And Taxes. You are responsible for all carrier data plans, Internet fees, and other fees and taxes associated with your use of our Services.

Privacy Policy And User Data

TalkUp cares about your privacy. TalkUp's Privacy Policy describes our data (including message) practices, including the types of information we receive and collect from you, how we use and share this information, and your rights in relation to the processing of information about you.

Acceptable Use Of Our Services

Our Terms And Policies. You must use our Services according to our Terms and posted policies. If you violate our Terms or policies, we may take action with respect to your account, including disabling or suspending your account and, if we do, you agree not to create another account without our permission. Disabling or suspending your account will be in accordance with the "Termination" section below.

Legal And Acceptable Use. You must access and use our Services only for legal, authorized, and acceptable purposes. You will not use (or assist others in using) our Services in ways that: (a) violate, misappropriate, or infringe the rights of TalkUp, our users, or others, including privacy, publicity, intellectual property, or other proprietary rights; (b) are illegal, obscene, defamatory, threatening, intimidating, harassing, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or instigate or encourage conduct that would be illegal or otherwise inappropriate, such as promoting violent crimes, endangering or exploiting children or others, or coordinating harm; (c) involve publishing falsehoods, misrepresentations, or misleading statements; (d) impersonate someone; (e) involve sending illegal or impermissible communications such as bulk messaging, auto-messaging, auto-dialing, and the like; or (f) involve any non-personal use of our Services unless otherwise authorized by us.

Harm To TalkUp Or Our Users. You must not (or assist others to) directly, indirectly, through automated or other means, access, use, copy, adapt, modify, prepare derivative works based upon, distribute, license, sublicense, transfer, display, perform, or otherwise exploit our Services in impermissible or unauthorized manners, or in ways that burden, impair, or harm us, our Services, systems, our users, or others, including that you must not directly or through automated means: (a) reverse engineer, alter, modify, create derivative works from, decompile, or extract code from our Services; (b) send, store, or transmit viruses or other harmful computer code through or onto our Services; (c) gain or attempt to gain unauthorized access to our Services or systems; (d) interfere with or disrupt the safety, security, confidentiality, integrity, availability, or performance of our Services; (e) create accounts for our Services through unauthorized or automated means; (f) collect information of or about our users in any impermissible or unauthorized manner; (g) sell, resell, rent, or charge for our Services or data obtained from us or our Services in an unauthorized manner; (h) distribute or make our Services available over a network where they could be used by multiple devices at the same time, except as authorized through tools we have expressly provided via our Services; (i) create software or APIs that function substantially the same as our Services and offer them for use by third parties in an unauthorized manner; or (j) misuse any reporting channels, such as by submitting fraudulent or groundless reports or appeals.

When you block someone. Messages and calls sent by the contact won't show up on your phone and won’t be delivered to you. Blocking a contact won't remove them from your contacts list, nor will it remove you from the list on the contact's phone. Blocked numbers will be visible in the Blocked section. The only way to remove blocked contacts from this list is to unblock them.

When you report someone. TalkUp receives the last five messages sent to you by the reported user, and they won’t be notified. TalkUp also receives the reported group or user ID, information on when the message was sent, and the type of message sent (image, video, text, etc.).
You can also choose to report an account by long pressing a single message.
Our developers will act on objectionable content reports within 24 hours. We may ban accounts if we believe the account activity is in violation of our Terms of Service. Per our Terms of Service, we may retain the right to ban the user without notification.
Please be aware that a user report of conduct in violation of our Terms of Service won't necessarily result in us banning the user or otherwise taking action against the user.

Keeping Your Account Secure. You are responsible for keeping your device and your TalkUp account safe and secure, and you must notify us promptly of any unauthorized use or security breach of your account or our Services.

Licenses

Your Rights. TalkUp does not claim ownership of the information that you submit for your TalkUp account or through our Services. You must have the necessary rights to such information that you submit for your TalkUp account or through our Services and the right to grant the rights and licenses in our Terms.

Your License To TalkUp. In order to operate and provide our Services, you grant TalkUp a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works of, display, and perform the information (including the content) that you upload, submit, store, send, or receive on or through our Services. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating and providing our Services (such as to allow us to display your profile picture and status message, transmit your messages, and store your undelivered messages on our servers for up to 30 days as we try to deliver them).

TalkUp's License To You. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, and non-transferable license to use our Services, subject to and in accordance with our Terms. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling you to use our Services in the manner permitted by our Terms. No licenses or rights are granted to you by implication or otherwise, except for the licenses and rights expressly granted to you.

Disclaimers And Release

YOU USE OUR SERVICES AT YOUR OWN RISK AND SUBJECT TO THE FOLLOWING DISCLAIMERS. WE ARE PROVIDING OUR SERVICES ON AN “AS IS” BASIS WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND FREEDOM FROM COMPUTER VIRUS OR OTHER HARMFUL CODE. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED BY US IS ACCURATE, COMPLETE, OR USEFUL, THAT OUR SERVICES WILL BE OPERATIONAL, ERROR FREE, SECURE, OR SAFE, OR THAT OUR SERVICES WILL FUNCTION WITHOUT DISRUPTIONS, DELAYS, OR IMPERFECTIONS. WE DO NOT CONTROL, AND ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR, CONTROLLING HOW OR WHEN OUR USERS USE OUR SERVICES OR THE FEATURES, SERVICES, AND INTERFACES OUR SERVICES PROVIDE. WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR AND ARE NOT OBLIGATED TO CONTROL THE ACTIONS OR INFORMATION (INCLUDING CONTENT) OF OUR USERS OR OTHER THIRD-PARTIES. YOU RELEASE US, OUR SUBSIDIARIES, AFFILIATES, AND OUR AND THEIR DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, PARTNERS, AND AGENTS (TOGETHER, THE “TalkUp PARTIES”) FROM ANY CLAIM, COMPLAINT, CAUSE OF ACTION, CONTROVERSY, DISPUTE, OR DAMAGES (TOGETHER, “CLAIM”), KNOWN AND UNKNOWN, RELATING TO, ARISING OUT OF, OR IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH ANY SUCH CLAIM YOU HAVE AGAINST ANY THIRD-PARTIES. YOUR RIGHTS WITH RESPECT TO THE TalkUp PARTIES ARE NOT MODIFIED BY THE FOREGOING DISCLAIMER IF THE LAWS OF YOUR COUNTRY OR TERRITORY OF RESIDENCE, APPLICABLE AS A RESULT OF YOUR USE OF OUR SERVICES, DO NOT PERMIT IT. IF YOU ARE A UNITED STATES RESIDENT, YOU WAIVE ANY RIGHTS YOU MAY HAVE UNDER CALIFORNIA CIVIL CODE §1542, OR ANY OTHER SIMILAR APPLICABLE STATUTE OR LAW OF ANY OTHER JURISDICTION, WHICH SAYS THAT: A GENERAL RELEASE DOES NOT EXTEND TO CLAIMS THAT THE CREDITOR OR RELEASING PARTY DOES NOT KNOW OR SUSPECT TO EXIST IN HIS OR HER FAVOR AT THE TIME OF EXECUTING THE RELEASE, AND THAT IF KNOWN BY HIM OR HER WOULD HAVE MATERIALLY AFFECTED HIS OR HER SETTLEMENT WITH THE DEBTOR OR RELEASED PARTY.

Limitation Of Liability

THE TALKUP PARTIES WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY LOST PROFITS OR CONSEQUENTIAL, SPECIAL, PUNITIVE, INDIRECT, OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES RELATING TO, ARISING OUT OF, OR IN ANY WAY IN CONNECTION WITH OUR TERMS, US, OR OUR SERVICES (HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), EVEN IF THE TALKUP PARTIES HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

Indemnification

If anyone brings a claim ("Third-Party Claim") against us related to your actions, information, or content on TalkUp, or any other use of our Services by you, you will, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, indemnify, and hold the TalkUp Parties harmless from and against all liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses of any kind (including reasonable legal fees and costs) relating to, arising out of, or in any way in connection with any of the following: (a) your access to or use of our Services, including information and content provided in connection therewith; (b) your breach of our Terms or applicable law; or (c) any misrepresentation made by you. You will cooperate as fully as required by us in the defense or settlement of any Third-Party Claim. Your rights with respect to TalkUp are not modified by the foregoing indemnification if the laws of your country or territory of residence, applicable as a result of your use of our Services, do not permit it.

Dispute Resolution

Time Limit To Bring A Claim Or Dispute. THESE TERMS ALSO LIMIT THE TIME YOU HAVE TO BRING A CLAIM OR DISPUTE, INCLUDING THE TIME TO START AN ARBITRATION OR, IF PERMISSIBLE, A COURT ACTION OR SMALL CLAIMS PROCEEDING TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. We and you agree that for any Dispute we and you must bring Claims (including commencing an arbitration proceeding) within one year after the Dispute first arose; otherwise, such Dispute is permanently barred. This means that if we or you do not bring a Claim (including commencing an arbitration) within one year after the Dispute first arose, then the arbitration will be dismissed because it was started too late.

Availability And Termination Of Our Services

Availability Of Our Services. We are always trying to improve our Services. That means we may expand, add, or remove our Services, features, functionalities, and the support of certain devices and platforms. Our Services may be interrupted, including for maintenance, repairs, upgrades, or network or equipment failures. We may discontinue some or all of our Services, including certain features and the support for certain devices and platforms, at any time. Events beyond our control may affect our Services, such as events in nature and other force majeure events.

Termination. Although we hope you remain a TalkUp user, you can terminate your relationship with TalkUp anytime for any reason by deleting your account. For instructions on how to do so, please visit Delete Account.

We may modify, suspend, or terminate your access to or use of our Services anytime for any reason, such as if you violate the letter or spirit of our Terms or create harm, risk, or possible legal exposure for us, our users, or others. We may also disable or delete your account if it does not become active after account registration or if it remains inactive for an extended period of time. The following provisions will survive any termination of your relationship with TalkUp: "Licenses," "Disclaimers And Release," "Limitation Of Liability," "Indemnification," "Dispute Resolution," "Availability And Termination Of Our Services," and "Other".

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