Acceptance

By registering and using our website, you agree to these terms, our privacy policy and cookie policy, as updated from time to time.

Eligibility

• You must be at least 13 years old.

Registration / Profile

• You must provide us with accurate information about yourself.
• The information must be relevant to what is expected.
• You must maintain your information to keep it current.

Conduct

By using our website, you agree that you will not:

• Abuse, threaten, intimidate, harass or mistreat any person.
• Solicit money from or defraud any person.
• Spam or advertise any kind of website or business.
• Violate anyone's rights, including privacy, copyright, trademark or other intellectual property.
• Post anything that is knowingly false or inaccurate.
• Post hate speech or anything likely to be offensive, including swearing.
• Post anything that is sexually explicit or contains nudity.
• Post anything that is otherwise unsuitable for all ages and audiences.
• Post any links, email addresses, phone numbers or other forms of contact.
• Incite violence or promote physical harm of any kind.
• Create a false or misleading identity of an admin.
• Encourage or promote any illegal activity.
• Attempt to hack, deny access or gain unauthorised access to our website.
• Intentionally harm the reputation of our website in any way.

Cheating

To make our website fair, we have a zero-tolerance policy to cheating:

• You must be from the country that you select at registration.
• The conversations that you have must be genuine.
• You must not message yourself from another account.

Moderation

• To help keep our website safe for everyone, we may monitor and review the content that you post, using a mixture of automated and manual processes.
• We reserve the right to remove, partially remove or edit your content at our own discretion.

Safety

We are not responsible for the actions of our users or your interaction with them, and we don't conduct background checks. Be careful and be sure to read and follow our safety guide on interacting with people.

Content

• The views expressed by others are the views of the individual authors and not ours.
• We give no warranty as to the accuracy and validity of any content on our website.
• We cannot guarantee that all content will comply with this agreement.

Accounts

• You should not use another member's account, share an account with another member, or maintain more than one account.
• You should not create another account if we have terminated your account, unless you have our permission.
• We may delete your account if you haven't verified your email address within one week.
• We may delete your account if you haven't completed your profile within two weeks.
• We may delete your account if you haven't logged in for over one year.
• We reserve the right to suspend or delete your account if you have violated this agreement, misused our website or behaved in a way that we regard as inappropriate or unlawful.

Copyright

If you believe that your intellectual property has been posted on our website and that it violates your copyright, please contact us with details so that we can investigate and take action if necessary.

Disclaimer

We provide the service on an "as is" and "as available" basis and to the extent permitted by applicable law, grant no warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, statutory or otherwise with respect to our website (including all content contained therein), including, without limitation, any implied warranties of satisfactory quality, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement. We do not represent or warrant that (a) the availability of our website will be uninterrupted, secure or error free, (b) any defects or errors on our website will be corrected, or (c) that any content or information you obtain on or through our website will be accurate.

We take no responsibility for any content that you or another member posts, sends or receives on our website. Any material downloaded or otherwise obtained through our website is accessed at your own discretion and risk.

We disclaim legal liability for the quality, safety, or reliability of our website.

Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless against all liability there may be in respect of and arising out of your use of our website.

Cookies

Cookies are small text files placed on your computer by websites so that they can remember information about you. The only cookies that we place on your computer are essential ones, necessary for our website to function. Please see our cookie policy to learn more.

The information you provide that others can see

Countryness is a messaging platform and as such you are able to provide a variety of information. This helps in finding people to chat to and aims to improve your experience on our website. The information you provide that others can see includes:

• Your first name
• Your gender
• Your age bracket
• Your country
• Your profile image (optional)
• Your bio (optional)

Other people can also see the date that you registered, the date you were last active and the countries you have talked to.

The information you provide that only you can see

Some of the information that you provide is not visible to others. This includes:

• Your time zone
• Your language
• Your email address

Other information

We also store other information that helps us to keep our website secure, defeat spam and analyse any issues that you might experience. Only the admins can see this information. This includes:

• Your IP address
• The country your IP address belongs to
• The type of your device

How long we keep your information for

We keep your information for the minimum amount of time necessary. For instance:

• If you register but don't verify your email address, your account will be deleted after one week.
• If you delete your account, it will be deleted immediately unlike on some other websites.

In rare situations we may be required to keep your data for longer, if for example a law has been broken.

How we secure your information

• Using SSL to encrypt all of the data that you send on our website
• Restricting access to your information to the minimum extent necessary
• Using a secure server, which is regularly updated, to store your information
• Verifying the identity of any individual who requests access to your information

How you control your information

We aim to give you the maximum amount of control over your data. For example:

• You can edit your information in the settings
  • The only exception is your first name and country (this helps prevent abuse)
• You can export your information to understand what is stored
• You can delete your account

External services

To assist with making our website as safe as possible for everyone, we might on occasion send some of your information to various third-party services that we have carefully chosen:

• hCaptcha to stop bots from registering (privacy policy)