Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of these terms

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) are a binding agreement between you and (“Gibbur”, “we”, “us” or “our”). They govern your access to and use of the website at gibbur.com, the chat service and any related features (together, the “Service”).

By using the Service, you agree to these Terms, our Community Guidelines and our Privacy Policy. Before you can start a chat, you must tick the box on the chat page confirming “I am 18 or older and agree to the Terms of Service and Community Guidelines.” Ticking that box, creating an account or otherwise using the Service means you accept these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

2. Eligibility: 18+ only

You must be at least 18 years old (or the age of majority where you live, if higher) to use Gibbur. The Service is not directed to, and may not be used by, anyone under 18.

By using the Service you represent and warrant that you are at least 18, that you are legally able to enter into these Terms, and that you are not barred from using the Service under any applicable law or by a previous ban from Gibbur.

Age misrepresentation. Lying about your age is a serious violation of these Terms. If we learn or reasonably believe that a user is under 18, we will immediately terminate their access, ban them and delete their account data, as described in our Privacy Policy. If you believe you are chatting with a minor, end the chat and report it.

3. Accounts and security

You can use Gibbur without signing up. You may optionally create a free account with an email address and password, which lets you save a display name, birthday, gender and interests. If you create an account, you agree to:

• provide accurate information, including your real date of birth;
• keep your password confidential and not share your account with anyone else;
• be responsible for all activity under your account; and
• tell us promptly at support@gibbur.com if you believe your account has been accessed without permission.

One person, one account. You may not create accounts by automated means, buy or sell accounts, or create a new account after we have banned you. You can delete your account at any time from your Account settings.

4. The Service

Gibbur pairs you at random for one-on-one text conversations with other users. If you add interest tags, we first try to match you with someone who shares an interest and, if nobody matches within a few seconds, we connect you with a random stranger instead. You appear to your chat partner as “Stranger”; shared interests, if any, are shown to both of you.

• Text only, for now. The Service currently offers text chat only. We may add, change or remove features (including video, which may come later) at any time.
• No guarantee of availability. We don’t guarantee that the Service will be available at any particular time, that you will be matched with anyone, that matches will share your interests, or that the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free. We may suspend or discontinue all or part of the Service at any time, including for maintenance.
• Limits. We apply technical limits to keep the Service fair and free of spam, such as message length limits, rate limits on messaging, skipping and connecting, and limits on links. You agree not to try to get around them.
• Free service. The Service is currently free. If we introduce paid features, we will present any additional terms before you buy anything.

5. User conduct and prohibited uses

You must follow our Community Guidelines, which are part of these Terms. In particular, you agree that you will not use the Service to:

• Exploit or endanger minors. Post, request, share or link to any sexual content involving minors, or attempt to contact, groom or solicit anyone under 18. We have zero tolerance for this. We will ban offenders immediately and report apparent child sexual exploitation to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and to law enforcement as required by law.
• Harass or threaten. Bully, harass, intimidate, stalk or threaten anyone, or encourage self-harm or violence.
• Spread hate. Attack or demean people based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, disability, serious disease or similar characteristics.
• Share non-consensual intimate content. Share, threaten to share or link to intimate images or sexual content of anyone without their consent, or send unwanted sexually explicit messages.
• Extort or scam. Engage in sextortion, blackmail, fraud, phishing, romance or investment scams, or any attempt to obtain money, personal information or credentials under false pretenses.
• Spam or automate. Send spam, advertising or unsolicited promotions; drop links in bulk; operate bots or automated accounts; or scrape, crawl or harvest data from the Service.
• Impersonate. Pretend to be another person, a Gibbur moderator or staff member, or misrepresent your affiliation with anyone.
• Break the law. Promote, facilitate or engage in illegal activity, including selling illegal goods or services, or infringing others’ intellectual property or privacy rights.
• Dox people. Share someone else’s personal information (such as their name, address, phone number, workplace or photos) without their permission.
• Record or share chats without consent. Record, screenshot, publish or share another user’s conversation or messages without their consent, except when reporting abuse to us or to law enforcement.
• Evade enforcement. Circumvent or attempt to circumvent a ban, suspension, rate limit, filter or other protective measure, including by using new accounts, VPNs, proxies or other tools to disguise your identity after being banned.
• Interfere with the Service. Hack, probe, disrupt, overload or reverse engineer the Service; introduce malware; access it by means other than the interfaces we provide; or interfere with other users’ enjoyment of it.

6. Your content

You own your messages. You keep ownership of the messages and other content you send through the Service (“User Content”).

License to us. You grant Gibbur a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, limited license to host, store temporarily, transmit, display, process and review your User Content solely to operate, secure and improve the Service — including delivering your messages to your chat partner, detecting spam and abuse, moderating, enforcing these Terms and complying with law. This license ends when your content is deleted from our systems, except where we are required to keep it by law.

Your responsibility. You are solely responsible for your User Content and for the consequences of sending it. You represent that you have all rights needed to share it and that it does not violate these Terms or any law. We do not endorse any User Content and are not responsible for content sent by other users.

7. Moderation and monitoring

To keep Gibbur safe, we monitor the Service. You should know that:

• Chats are not end-to-end encrypted. Messages are encrypted in transit (HTTPS / secure WebSockets), but our server relays them in plain text so that we can moderate them.
• Moderators may view live chats and recent messages to investigate reports, detect abuse and enforce these Terms.
• Temporary, in-memory retention. A copy of chat message text is kept only in the chat server’s memory for up to 2 hours for moderation and spam fighting, then discarded. It is never written to our database or to disk.
• Automated tools. We use automated systems such as rate limits, duplicate-message detection and link restrictions, and users who are repeatedly reported may be temporarily banned automatically.

We are not obligated to monitor or review all content, and we cannot catch everything. We may, but need not, remove content or take action against users at our discretion.

8. Reporting

If someone breaks the rules, use the Report button in the chat. When you report, we store report metadata (such as the reason, time, chat ID, IP addresses and account IDs, if any) — not the message text. You can also email abuse@gibbur.com. If you encounter content that sexually exploits a child, also report it to NCMEC’s CyberTipline at report.cybertip.org. If anyone is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services.

Please report in good faith. Filing false or abusive reports is itself a violation of these Terms.

9. Enforcement

If we believe you have violated these Terms or the Community Guidelines, or that your use poses a risk to other users, to Gibbur or to the public, we may take any action we consider appropriate, including warning you, ending a chat, restricting features, or suspending or permanently banning you. Bans may be applied by IP address, browser identifier and/or account. We may take these actions with or without notice and without liability to you. We may also preserve information and refer matters to law enforcement where appropriate or required by law.

If you believe we made a mistake, including in an automatic ban, you can contact us at abuse@gibbur.com and we will review it.

10. Copyright and intellectual property complaints

We respect intellectual property rights and expect users to do the same. If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, send a notice under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to legal@gibbur.com including:

1. your physical or electronic signature;
2. identification of the copyrighted work you claim is infringed;
3. identification of the allegedly infringing material and information reasonably sufficient for us to locate it (for example, the time and approximate content of a chat, or a URL);
4. your contact information (address, telephone number and email);
5. a statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent or the law; and
6. a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the owner’s behalf.

Because chat messages are held only briefly in memory, we may not be able to locate material after it has been discarded. We may terminate users who repeatedly infringe. Other intellectual property complaints (such as trademark) can be sent to the same address.

The Service itself — including the Gibbur name, logo, design, software and content we create — is owned by us or our licensors and protected by intellectual property laws. We grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Service in accordance with these Terms. Nothing in these Terms gives you any other right to use our trademarks or content.

11. Third-party links and services

Other users may share links, and the Service may link to third-party websites or services. We do not control and are not responsible for third-party content, products, services or privacy practices. Open links from strangers with caution; visiting them is at your own risk.

12. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it and your choices. Our Cookie Policy explains the single essential cookie we use. By using the Service, you acknowledge that we will process your information as described in those policies.

13. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND ANY WARRANTIES ARISING FROM COURSE OF DEALING OR USAGE OF TRADE.

Strangers are strangers. We do not screen, verify the identity or age of, or run background checks on users. We cannot guarantee how other users will behave or that their statements are true. Your interactions with other users are solely between you and them, and you use the Service and interact with strangers at your own risk. Never share personal information, money or anything you would not want made public, and be careful about meeting anyone you met on Gibbur in person.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure or error-free, that defects will be corrected, or that the Service is free of harmful components. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so some of these exclusions may not apply to you.

14. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, GIBBUR AND ITS OWNERS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, CONTRACTORS, AGENTS AND LICENSORS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO YOUR USE OF (OR INABILITY TO USE) THE SERVICE, ANY CONDUCT OR CONTENT OF OTHER USERS OR THIRD PARTIES, OR ANY UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO OR USE OF YOUR INFORMATION, WHETHER BASED ON WARRANTY, CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE) OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY, EVEN IF WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US TO USE THE SERVICE IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM AROSE, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS (US$100).

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes liability that cannot be limited or excluded under applicable law, such as liability for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence where that cannot lawfully be excluded. If you are a consumer in a country that gives you mandatory rights, those rights are not affected.

15. Indemnification

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Gibbur and its owners, officers, employees, contractors and agents from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to (a) your User Content, (b) your use or misuse of the Service, (c) your violation of these Terms or the Community Guidelines, or (d) your violation of any law or the rights of any third party.

16. Dispute resolution

16.1 Informal resolution first

Most concerns can be sorted out quickly. Before filing any claim, you agree to first contact us at legal@gibbur.com with a description of the dispute and the relief you want. We will do the same if we have a dispute with you and have your contact details. Both of us will try in good faith to resolve the dispute informally for at least 60 days before starting a formal proceeding.

16.2 Governing law

These Terms and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or the Service are governed by the laws of , without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and, where applicable, the U.S. Federal Arbitration Act. If you are a consumer living in the European Union, the United Kingdom or another country whose law gives you the right to rely on the mandatory consumer protections of your home country, nothing in these Terms takes those rights away.

16.3 Individual arbitration

If we can’t resolve a dispute informally, you and Gibbur agree that it will be resolved by final and binding individual arbitration, rather than in court, except as set out below. The arbitration will be administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, before a single arbitrator. Hearings may be conducted by video or phone, or in person in the county where you live. The arbitrator may award the same individual relief a court could, but only to the individual party seeking relief and only to the extent necessary to resolve that party’s claim. If you start arbitration, we will pay any filing, administrative and arbitrator fees above what you would pay to file a claim in court, unless the arbitrator finds your claim frivolous.

This arbitration agreement does not apply to (a) claims that qualify for small claims court, (b) claims for injunctive relief to stop infringement or misuse of intellectual property, or (c) users in jurisdictions where pre-dispute arbitration agreements with consumers are not enforceable.

16.4 Class action waiver

YOU AND GIBBUR AGREE THAT EACH MAY BRING CLAIMS AGAINST THE OTHER ONLY IN AN INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY, AND NOT AS A PLAINTIFF OR CLASS MEMBER IN ANY PURPORTED CLASS, CONSOLIDATED OR REPRESENTATIVE PROCEEDING. If this class action waiver is found unenforceable for a particular claim, that claim must be severed and decided in court, not in arbitration.

16.5 Small claims

Either of us may bring an individual claim in small claims court instead of arbitration, as long as the claim qualifies and stays in that court on an individual basis.

16.6 30-day right to opt out

You can opt out of this arbitration agreement by emailing legal@gibbur.com within 30 days after you first accept these Terms, with the subject “Arbitration Opt-Out” and your name and the email address of your account (if any). Opting out does not affect any other part of these Terms. If you opt out, or if arbitration does not apply, disputes will be resolved exclusively in the state or federal courts located in , and you and we consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts, subject to any mandatory consumer rights you have to sue in your home courts.

17. Termination

You may stop using the Service at any time, and you can delete your account from Account settings. We may suspend or terminate your access to all or part of the Service at any time, for any reason, including violation of these Terms, with or without notice. Sections that by their nature should survive termination — including User Content responsibilities, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification and dispute resolution — will survive.

18. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will change the “last updated” date on this page and, for material changes, give reasonable notice — for example, by a notice on the site or by email if you have an account. Changes take effect when posted unless stated otherwise; changes to the dispute resolution section will not apply to disputes that arose before the change. If you keep using the Service after changes take effect, you accept the updated Terms. If you don’t agree, stop using the Service.

19. Severability and waiver

If any provision of these Terms is held invalid or unenforceable, that provision will be enforced to the maximum extent permissible and the remaining provisions will stay in full force and effect. Our failure to enforce any right or provision is not a waiver of that right or provision.

20. Entire agreement and assignment

These Terms, together with the Community Guidelines, Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy, are the entire agreement between you and Gibbur about the Service and supersede any prior agreements. You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets, or by operation of law. There are no third-party beneficiaries to these Terms.

21. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Reach us at legal@gibbur.com. For general help, email support@gibbur.com; to report abuse, email abuse@gibbur.com. See all options on our contact page.