Terms of Service
Last updated: May 12, 2026
These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of the IRL application, websites (including irlapp.org), and related services (“IRL,” “Service”). By tapping accept, creating an account, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you disagree, discontinue use immediately.
Contact: admin@irlapp.org.
1. Who can verify—and where venues run today
IRL verifies age and identity through flows that ingest U.S. state-issued driver's-license and state-ID barcodes our scanner recognizes together with onboarding steps shown in-product. Holding a credential our pipeline can legally read—not any particular immigration or residency status—is what satisfies verification as shipped today; passports or foreign-government IDs unsupported by the barcode path cannot complete the same onboarding until we widen coverage.
Real-world venues and discovery tooling you see in the Service are presently aimed at participating locations in the United States. Misuse meant to spoof locations, circumvent verification requirements, launder barred activity, export personal data illicitly, or otherwise breach these Terms still leads to moderation or termination—even if someone flashes a plausible ID once.
Barcode-assisted verification supports authenticity—it does not make offline meetings safe or predictable. For safety tooling versus legal boundaries, see Sections 12–14.
2. Eligibility
You must meet every age gate and verification step surfaced in-app (ordinarily eighteen (18)+ with completed ID barcode verification before participating in venue discoverability). Enabling discoverability confirms you complied truthfully with those prompts. Fraudulent accounts may be removed without refunds; if paid features arrive later separate billing disclosures govern them.
3. Accounts and security
Provide accurate signup information as prompted. Maintain credential confidentiality. Notify admin@irlapp.org promptly if you suspect unauthorized access.
4. Location-based discovery
Portions of IRL intentionally operate relative to venues and device location. Permissions you grant materially affect availability of features. You accept that location safeguards (including automatic termination of discovery states when leaving a venue perimeter or after maximal session windows) constitute core product mechanics rather than outages.
5. Mutual consent framework
Pre-connection discovery is anonymity-centered; richer identity surfaces only after reciprocal opt-in pathways defined inside the Service. Respect others' autonomy—withdraw interest, discontinue interactions, or leave venues without harassment.
6. No unrestricted messaging obligation
Unless explicitly documented otherwise in-product, IRL is not offered as an open-ended chat platform. Structured coordination affordances remain limited by design—do not attempt to circumvent with prohibited content pathways.
7. Acceptable conduct
You agree not to:
- Harass, stalk, threaten, intimidate, or harm others—including following someone after rejection or misuse of inferred location cues.
- Spam, bombard others with unsolicited signals within or outside the intent of capped wave limits disclosed in-product.
- Impersonate people, entities, venues, moderators, or staff.
- Upload deceptive or stolen photos/materials.
- Use the Service fraudulently, including synthetic accounts, scripted automation, probing, scraping, reversing network traffic except as allowed by interoperability law, exploiting bugs, interfering with reliability, probing users for commercial harvesting without disclosure and consent frameworks as law requires.
- Transmit malware, circumvent security controls, scrape personal data unlawfully.
- Use the Service in violation of sanctions, export control, gambling (if surfaced), solicitation rules, or prostitution facilitation.
- Post or transmit illegal content—including child exploitation material (immediate reporting obligations apply as law requires), non-consensual intimate imagery when prohibited, credible threats of violence.
8. Enforcement
We may moderate, throttle, temporarily suspend, or permanently terminate accounts, remove contributions, withhold features, escalate to authorities, cooperate with lawful process, deny future access, associate device or payment fingerprints for abuse prevention—all at our discretion, with or without prior notice when safety or illegality dictates. Repeated or severe violations escalate consequences.
9. User-generated content & license
You retain rights you already hold to content you upload. By submitting content you grant us a worldwide, transferable, royalty-free license (including sublicensing to processors) host, reproduce, encode, transmit, excerpt, annotate, summarize, moderate, rearrange layouts, anonymize facets, derive non-identifying signals, showcase in marketing only where lawful and permitted by supplementary marketing consents—solely operating, improving, promoting (with bounds above), safeguarding, complying with legal duties.
Represent you have requisite rights—no infringing, privacy-violative, unlawful material. Automated & human review may examine submissions.
10. Intellectual property
IRL brands, UX, codebase, aggregated analytics, unreleased roadmap materials remain our property absent explicit writing. Do not copy confusingly similar marks or misattribute origin.
11. Third parties
Links or embedded tools may lead to third-party services governed by their terms. We are not responsible for them.
12. Trust features reduce risk—they cannot guarantee safety
IRL provides safety tooling—including in-app reporting, blocking, moderation and enforcement workflows, verification gating before discoverability, anonymity until mutual consent, discoverability switches, venue-scoped design, automatic session endings, and related controls described more fully in our Safety Center. We invest in these mechanisms because they materially lower certain classes of misuse compared with unstructured anonymous feeds.
Exercise independent judgment anytime you bridge digital signals into physical space.
13. Disclaimers
Nothing in Sections 13–14 dismisses our obligation to maintain the reporting, moderation, blocking, verification, enforcement, or trust processes we describe—we operate them thoughtfully even though no software can supervise every interpersonal encounter. They operate alongside, not opposed to, the legal limitations spelled out below.
THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE.” TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW IN THE UNITED STATES WE DISCLAIM ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT ERROR-FREE, SECURE, OR CONTINUOUS SERVICE; THAT IDENTITY DOCUMENTS ARE ALWAYS GENUINE; OR THAT USERS WILL BEHAVE LAWFULLY AFTER YOU MATCH.
YOU ALONE ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY INTERACTION—ON THE SERVICE OR OFFLINE—THAT YOU CHOOSE TO HAVE WITH ANY OTHER PERSON. IRL DOES NOT EMPLOY BODYGUARDS, CHAPERONES, BACKGROUND SCREENING OF OTHER USERS, OR MEDICAL OR PHYSICAL SECURITY AT VENUES. IF YOU FEEL UNSAFE, LEAVE AND CONTACT LOCAL EMERGENCY SERVICES FIRST.
14. Limitation of liability
TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, IRL AND ITS OWNERS, AFFILIATES, CONTRACTORS, LICENSORS, AND SUPPLIERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOSS OF PROFITS, PERSONAL OR EMOTIONAL INJURY, LOSS OF GOODWILL, OR PROPERTY DAMAGE, ARISING OUT OF YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE OR ANY OFFLINE CONTACT WITH ANYONE YOU MET THROUGH OR BECAUSE OF THE SERVICE—WHETHER OR NOT FORESEEABLE. SOME STATES DO NOT ALLOW THESE EXCLUSIONS; WHERE THAT APPLIES THESE LIMITS APPLY ONLY TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED.
OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY RELATING TO THE SERVICE FOR ALL CLAIMS IN ANY TWELVE (12)-MONTH PERIOD IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF THE FEES YOU ACTUALLY PAID US IN THAT PERIOD AND U.S. $50 IF NO FEES WERE PAID. THESE CAPS APPLY EVEN IF A REMEDY FAILS ITS ESSENTIAL PURPOSE.
15. Indemnity
You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless IRL and its owners, directors, contractors, successors, and assigns from any losses, settlements, judgments, fines, penalties, attorneys' fees, and costs arising from third-party claims that (a) you violated these Terms or applicable law, (b) allege misconduct by you toward others, or (c) arise from encounters or communications with people introduced through the Service—unless a court finally determines IRL alone engaged in gross negligence or willful misconduct toward you unrelated to other users' independent behavior.
16. Dispute resolution
You agree that disputes arising from these Terms or the Service—except qualifying small-claims filings—will ordinarily be resolved through binding arbitration administered under streamlined rules of a reputable arbitration forum, conducted on an individualized basis. You waive trial by jury and class or representative proceedings to the fullest extent permitted. If mandatory consumer-protection law where you reside forbids arbitration for your dispute category locally, those laws govern only where required—and this sentence does not waive non-waivable rights. You may opt out by emailing admin@irlapp.org within thirty (30) days of first accepting these Terms with “Arbitration opt-out,” your name, and the phone or email tied to your account. Either party may seek injunctive relief in court concerning intellectual-property misuse or unauthorized access where statutes allow.
17. Miscellaneous
If any provision is deemed invalid, the rest remains in force. Section titles are informational only. We may assign these Terms; assignment by you requires our prior consent where law permits restriction. Choosing not to assert a breach right away does not waive that right forever. Formal notices acceptable via postings in-app or email where law honors electronic communications.
Governing law. Outside mandatory arbitration exclusions, substantive interpretation defaults to laws of the State of California (excluding conflicting choice-of-law rules), while non-waivable consumer statutes applicable where you reside still control solely to mandated extent.
18. Updates
Revised Terms posting changes effective promptly or after stated deferred date—continuing use signifies acceptance materially adverse ones may insist explicit re-affirmations when regulation demands.