Terms of Service

1. What VillageLink Is

VillageLink helps a person who needs support (a “village owner”) coordinate practical help from people they already know (their “helpers” or “contributors”). A village owner posts requests for help (“tasks”), and helpers they have accepted into their village can claim those tasks, mark them done, and exchange short notes about them.

VillageLink is a coordination tool. We do not provide care, transport, meals, childcare, medical services, or any other service that a task might describe.

2. Care and Screening Disclaimer

• We do not vet, screen, background-check, interview, or verify any user. Village owners decide for themselves who to accept into their village.
• We are not a care agency, staffing agency, or healthcare provider. We do not employ, supervise, train, or direct helpers, and helpers are not our agents or employees.
• We do not provide medical, nursing, legal, or financial advice. Nothing in the App is a substitute for professional advice. If you have a medical emergency, contact your local emergency services.
• Help arranged through the App happens in the real world, often in someone's home. You are responsible for deciding whether to accept help from, or give help to, any particular person, and for taking the precautions you judge appropriate.
• We do not guarantee that a task will be claimed or completed. A helper who claims a task may cancel or fail to complete it.

3. Eligibility and Minimum Age

You must be at least 13 years old to use the App (or older, if the age of digital consent in your country is higher — in which case that higher age applies). The App is not directed to children, and children may not create accounts.

If you are under 18, you may only use the App with the involvement of a parent or legal guardian.

You must also be legally able to enter into these Terms, and not barred from using the App under the laws that apply to you.

4. Your Account

• You must provide an email address you control, and keep it accurate.
• You are responsible for your account, for keeping your password and any one-time sign-in codes confidential, and for everything done through your account.
• One person, one account. Do not share your account, and do not create an account for someone else without their knowledge and permission.
• Tell us at contact@villagelink.social if you believe someone else has used your account.

You can delete your account at any time from Profile → Delete Account. If you are a village owner, deleting your account also deletes your village and every task and message in it.

5. Acceptable Use

You must not post, send, upload, or transmit content that:

• Harasses or bullies anyone, including repeated unwanted contact, intimidation, or targeted insults.
• Constitutes hate speech — attacks or demeans a person or group on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, disease, age, sex, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
• Is sexual, sexually explicit, or pornographic, or sexualises a minor in any way.
• Threatens violence against anyone, incites or glorifies violence, or promotes self-harm or suicide.
• Is illegal, or promotes, facilitates, or offers illegal goods, services, or activity — including the sale of drugs, weapons, or stolen goods.
• Is spam, a scam, or a solicitation — bulk or repetitive messages, advertising, phishing, fraudulent requests for money, or attempts to move a conversation to a payment channel outside the App.
• Impersonates another person or organisation, or misrepresents your identity or your relationship to a village owner in order to be accepted into a village.
• Contains another person's personal details without their consent. This applies in particular to the “propose a villager” feature: only submit someone's name and email address if you personally know them and they are comfortable being invited. Do not use it to send unwanted invitations or to pass on contact details you were not given permission to share.
• Infringessomeone else's copyright, trademark, privacy, or other rights.

You must also not:

• Attempt to access another user's account, data, or village.
• Probe, scan, or interfere with the App or the systems behind it, or bypass any access control, rate limit, or security measure.
• Use automated means to scrape, harvest, or bulk-collect data from the App.
• Use the App to recruit for, or to advertise, a commercial service.

6. Your Content

You keep ownership of everything you post — your profile details, village name and description, tasks, notes, thank-you messages, and photos (“Your Content”).

By posting Your Content, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, and display it for the purpose of operating the App — that is, showing it to the people in your village who are meant to see it, backing it up, and keeping it available to you. This licence lasts as long as the content is in the App, and ends when you delete the content or your account, subject to reasonable backup retention.

You are responsible for Your Content. You confirm that you have the rights needed to post it and that it does not break Section 5.

We do not claim ownership of Your Content, and we do not use it to train models or for advertising.

7. Reporting, Moderation, and Enforcement

Reporting content. Every piece of user-generated content in the App can be reported. Tap the report control on the task, note, or profile in question, choose a reason, and add any detail you want us to see. Reports are confidential — we do not tell the reported person who reported them. A report keeps a copy of the content it concerns, so the record survives that content being edited or deleted, and it outlives the accounts involved with the names removed.

Blocking a user. You can block another user from their profile or the member list. Blocking:

• removes your shared village membership, in both directions, so neither of you can see the other's village, tasks, notes, or profile any more;
• prevents that person from rejoining your village or requesting to join it again; and
• files a report with us automatically, so we see that it happened.

Blocking takes effect immediately. You can see and undo your blocks at Profile → Blocked Users. Unblocking does not restore the old membership — rejoining is a new request that the village owner has to accept.

Our review. We act on every report as quickly as we can, and within seven days at the latest. Depending on what we find, we may remove the content, warn the account, suspend it, or terminate it.

Removal and termination. We may remove any content and suspend or terminate any account at any time, without notice, if we believe it breaks these Terms or puts another user at risk. For serious cases — threats of violence, sexual content involving minors, or other illegal content — we terminate immediately and may report the account to law enforcement.

What we tell you. If we remove your content, issue a warning or suspend your account, the App tells you what we did, which rule it concerned, and what it applies to. You need that to use the appeals route below, so we send it whether or not you ask.

Termination is the exception. It normally comes after a warning or a suspension you were already told about, and the most serious cases — illegal content, or a threat to someone's safety — are ended straight away. Once an account is closed we have no way to reach you inside the App, so no notice is sent there. The appeals route below still applies.

Filtering. The App screens submitted text against a list of prohibited terms and refuses submissions that match. This filter is one layer among several and does not replace reporting; content that gets past it is still subject to removal.

Appeals. If you believe we removed your content or terminated your account in error, write to contact@villagelink.social and we will review the decision.

8. Interactions Between Users

You are solely responsible for your interactions with other users, both in the App and in person. We are not a party to any arrangement you make with another user.

We encourage you to use the same judgement you would use with anyone else coming into your home or family life: only accept people you actually know into your village, be specific about what a task involves, and stop using a helper or a village if something feels wrong.

9. Fees and Donations

The App is currently free to use. It includes an optional donation link. A donation is voluntary, is not a purchase, buys no feature or service, and is not refundable except where the law requires it.

If we introduce paid features in future, we will tell you the price and the terms before you are charged.

10. Privacy

Our handling of personal information is described in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms.

11. Availability and Changes to the Service

We may change, suspend, or discontinue any part of the App at any time. We will give reasonable notice of a material change or a shutdown where we can.

We do not promise that the App will be available without interruption or free of errors. Scheduled maintenance, outages at our hosting providers, and bugs all happen.

12. Disclaimers

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the App is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory. We specifically disclaim implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that:

• the App will meet your requirements or be available at any particular time;
• any user is who they claim to be, or is trustworthy, competent, or safe;
• any task will be claimed or completed; or
• content posted by other users is accurate, lawful, or inoffensive.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any right you have that cannot be excluded or limited under the law that applies to you — including, in some jurisdictions, statutory consumer guarantees.

13. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law:

• We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or loss of goodwill, arising out of your use of the App.
• We are not liable for the conduct of any user, whether in the App or in person, or for any injury, loss, or damage arising from help arranged through the App.
• Our total aggregate liability to you for all claims relating to the App is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose, or (b) EUR 50.

These limits apply even if we have been advised of the possibility of the damage, and even if a limited remedy fails of its essential purpose.

14. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Summit Software & People S.R.L. and its officers, directors, employees, and contractors from any claim, demand, loss, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of your use of the App, Your Content, your breach of these Terms, or your interactions with other users.

15. Termination by You or Us

You may stop using the App and delete your account at any time, from Profile → Delete Account.

We may suspend or terminate your access as described in Section 7. On termination, your right to use the App ends immediately. Sections that by their nature should survive — including Sections 6 (licence, for content already displayed), 12, 13, 14, 16, and 17 — survive termination.

16. Governing Law and Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of Romania, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. You and we agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the competent courts of Romania, except that either party may seek injunctive relief in any court with jurisdiction.

If you are a consumer resident in the EEA, the UK, or another jurisdiction whose law gives you the right to bring proceedings locally, this section does not remove that right.

Before starting formal proceedings, please contact us at contact@villagelink.social — most problems are faster to fix directly.

17. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms. If a change is material, we will notify you through the App or by email before it takes effect, and the “Last updated” date above will change. Continuing to use the App after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms. If you do not accept them, delete your account.

18. General

• Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about the App.
• Severability. If a provision is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce a provision, that is not a waiver of it.
• Assignment. You may not assign these Terms. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
• Apple. These Terms are between you and us, not with Apple. Apple has no obligation to provide support for the App and is not responsible for any claim relating to it.

19. Contact Us

Questions about these Terms, reports of objectionable content, and appeals: