Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing or using EchoWithin ("the Platform"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service. If you do not agree to these terms, you must not use our services.

2. Service Overview

EchoWithin provides a hybrid platform for digital expression, connection, and productivity, including:

• Public Blogs: Shared community content, discussions, reactions, and threaded comments.
• Personal Space: Private, encrypted note-taking with markdown, PIN locking, version history, note pinning, tags, and search.
• Bonds & Partner Connections: 1-on-1 connections (Love Partner, Friend, Study Mate, Family, Accountability Partner, Custom) with shared goals, encrypted daily journals, mutual-reveal Question of the Day (with AI generation), daily mood tracking, shared calendar with reminders and ICS export, daily habits, photo album, countdowns, streaks, and real-time nudges.
• Whisper Mode: Ephemeral, timed private conversations (15 to 120 minutes) with auto-deleting memory-only messages and screenshot detection alerts.
• Direct Messaging & Scheduled Messages: Real-time private chat, image/voice attachments, typing indicators, scheduled future DMs, and in-chat game invites.
• Interactive Forms: Shareable questionnaires with multiple question types, encrypted submissions, response dashboards, push alerts on submissions, and CSV data export.
• Multiplayer Games: Real-time multiplayer game lobbies featuring 6 game modes (Poll, Trivia, Would You Rather, Two Truths and a Lie, Story Chain, Caption This) with live results and leaderboards.
• Community Spaces: Topic-focused group spaces featuring polls, resource libraries, check-in mood tracking, and welcome banners.
• Shared Notes & Surprises: Temporary note sharing with surprise celebration themes, access codes, and live collaboration.
• Mobile App & PWA: Installable progressive web app and native Android app with offline sync and push notifications.

3. Account & Authentication

You may create an account using an email/password or by signing in with Google OAuth. By using Google sign-in, you authorize us to access your basic profile information (name, email, profile picture) as provided by Google. We do not access your Google contacts, files, or any other data beyond what is needed for authentication.

You are solely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials and for all activities that occur under your account.

4. Privacy & Data Encryption

We prioritize your privacy and data security across all features:

• Personal Note Encryption: Personal notes are encrypted at rest using per-user Fernet keys (AES-128-CBC + HMAC-SHA256). Platform administrators cannot read your private notes.
• Bond Journal, Habit & QotD Encryption: Shared bond journals, Question of the Day responses, daily habits, and countdown titles are encrypted at rest using unique per-bond Fernet keys.
• Form Response Encryption: All interactive form responses are encrypted at rest using symmetric Fernet encryption keys.
• Direct Message Encryption: Direct messages are encrypted at rest using envelope encryption keys.
• Whisper Mode Non-Persistence: Whisper Mode messages exist only in temporary memory with automatic Time-To-Live (TTL) expiration. They are never written to permanent message storage, never included in backups, and are permanently erased upon session expiration.
• PIN-Locked Notes: Sensitive notes can be locked behind a user PIN. The PIN is securely hashed. Lost PINs cannot be recovered by administrators.
• Security Infrastructure: Enforced HTTPS with HSTS, Content Security Policy (CSP), and XSS protection headers.
• No Data Sales: We never sell, trade, or rent your personal information to third parties.

5. Shared Content & Collaboration

When sharing notes via links or engaging in collaboration:

• Revocation: You may revoke shared links manually or set automatic expiration limits.
• Access Controls: Access codes protect shared notes. You are responsible for sharing access codes only with authorized recipients.
• Collaboration & Proposals: Shared notes with edit permissions allow collaborators to suggest changes. Depending on approval settings, edits auto-apply or queue for review in the Activity tab.
• Version History: Changes are tracked with version snapshots (up to 50 versions per note). You can compare side-by-side and restore earlier snapshots.
• Surprise Media Ethics: All media uploaded for celebration themes must be owned by you or authorized for use, complying with platform safety guidelines.
• Purge on Delete for Everyone: If an original note owner selects "Delete for Everyone", all cloned recipient copies are permanently purged.

6. Direct Messaging & Whisper Mode

EchoWithin offers real-time direct messaging, in-chat game invites, and ephemeral Whisper sessions:

• Conduct Rules: Spam, harassment, unsolicited commercial offers, or abusive behavior in DMs or Whisper sessions is strictly prohibited and grounds for account termination.
• Whisper Mode Ephemerality: Whisper sessions run on strict timers (15, 30, 60, or 120 minutes). When the timer expires, the session and all associated messages are permanently destroyed.
• Screenshot & Provenance Protection: Whisper Mode incorporates dynamic tiled session watermarks and desktop PrintScreen capture alerts. Attempting a desktop screen capture triggers a notification to both participants. Standard mobile operating systems do not expose hardware button presses to web browsers, so session watermarks serve as the primary leak deterrent across all devices.
• Game Invites: Users may send multiplayer game invitations directly inside DMs. Invitations link to active game lobbies and follow the same conduct and safety rules.
• Rate Limits: Free accounts are limited to 3 Whisper sessions per day (max 30 mins each); Premium accounts receive up to 10 sessions per day (max 120 mins each).

7. Bonds & Partner Connections

The Bonds feature allows users to form dedicated 1-on-1 relationship spaces:

• Mutual Consent: Bonds require invitation acceptance by both parties. Either partner may break a bond at any time from the Bonds page.
• Data Deletion on Bond Termination: Breaking a bond permanently purges all shared goals, encrypted journals, habits, countdowns, calendar events, photo albums, mood logs, and streak history for that bond.
• Shared Calendar & Reminders: Partners can schedule recurring or one-off calendar events with automated push notification reminders and ICS file export.
• Goal Collaboration: Partners can propose, approve, check in on, and complete shared goals. Free accounts support up to 5 active goals per bond; Premium accounts support up to 20 active goals.
• Streak Shields: Premium subscribers receive 1 Streak Shield per week per bond to protect active streaks from breaking due to missed daily check-ins.

8. Interactive Forms & Multiplayer Games

Guidelines for interactive utilities and real-time multiplayer features:

• Form Creation & Ownership: Form creators are responsible for the questions they publish and for handling submitted response data in accordance with applicable privacy standards. Collecting sensitive personally identifiable information (such as credit card numbers or national IDs) without authorization is strictly prohibited.
• Encrypted Responses & Export: Form responses are encrypted at rest. Form owners may inspect aggregated results and export responses to CSV, or deactivate and permanently delete forms at any time.
• Multiplayer Games Conduct: Real-time game sessions (Trivia, Would You Rather, Two Truths and a Lie, Story Chain, Caption This, Polls) require respectful participation. Inappropriate submissions in user-generated text modes (e.g., Story Chain, Caption This) violate community guidelines and may result in penalties.
• Lobby Ephemerality: Game lobbies and transient session states automatically expire and are purged after the scheduled session window.

9. Community Guidelines & Moderation

To maintain a safe and productive community, you agree NOT to:

• Post or share illegal, abusive, harassing, hate speech, or defamatory content.
• Infringe upon the intellectual property rights of others.
• Engage in automated scraping or systematic data collection without permission.
• Impersonate other users or create misleading accounts.
• Use the platform to distribute malware, phishing content, or fraudulent schemes.

EchoWithin reserves the right to remove any content (including blog posts, comments, messages, forms, community resources, and shared notes) and suspend or terminate accounts that violate these guidelines.

10. Communications & Notifications

By creating an account, you may receive:

• Push Notifications: Browser and mobile push notifications for new comments, replies, messages, nudges, calendar reminders, form responses, game invites, and collaboration activity.
• Granular Notification Preferences: You may customize or mute notifications independently across 8 distinct categories (DMs, Whispers, Bonds, Anniversaries, Calendar, Forms, Games, Community) at any time within your Profile Settings.
• Email Communications: Service emails and weekly newsletters. We comply with RFC 8058 "One-Click Unsubscribe" standards. You may opt out anytime using the unsubscribe link.

11. Data Export & Account Deletion

You maintain full ownership and control over your data:

• Full Export: Download a complete JSON file containing your profile, blog posts, comments, and decrypted personal notes anytime from Account Settings.
• Account Deletion: Deleting your account immediately purges your profile, notes, blog posts, comments, DMs, bonds, forms, and media from active databases and search indexes.
• 3-Day Backup Recovery Window: For protection against accidental deletion, account data remains in encrypted backups for 3 days. You can request account recovery within 3 days by contacting support. After 3 days, all backup data is permanently and irreversibly destroyed.

12. Limitation of Liability

EchoWithin is provided "as is." While we maintain high availability, offline sync redundancy, and encryption at rest standards, we are not liable for service interruptions, data loss from third-party hardware failure, or damages arising from platform use.

13. Premium Subscriptions & Billing

EchoWithin offers an optional Premium plan (billed at KSH 50/month via Paystack):

• Unlimited Personal Notes and higher character limits (100,000 chars/note vs 20,000).
• Note Locking — protect sensitive notes with a PIN.
• Scheduled Messages — schedule DMs for future delivery.
• Enhanced Bonds & Streaks — 20 active goals per bond and 1 weekly Streak Shield per bond.
• Extended Whisper Mode — up to 10 sessions/day with up to 120-minute session timers.
• Extended Version History — 365-day version retention (vs 7 days on Free).

Subscriptions renew monthly unless canceled in Profile Settings. Upon cancellation, Premium benefits remain active until the end of the current billing cycle. Reverting to Free never deletes your existing data.

14. Free Trial & Refund Policy

New accounts automatically receive a 1-day free trial of Premium with no credit card required. Fees for digital Premium subscriptions are generally non-refundable, but technical billing discrepancies reported within 7 days will be reviewed by support for prompt resolution.