Terms of Service

Effective September 2, 2026

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between you and Sunflare Communications ("Sunflare," "we," "us," or "our") governing your access to and use of Sunflare's chat, voice, and related services (the "Services"). By creating an account or otherwise using the Services, you agree to these Terms. If you don't agree, don't use the Services.

1. Who We Are

Sunflare Communications operates the Sunflare Services, reachable at sunflare.me and through the Sunflare desktop and mobile apps. Sunflare is contactable at legal@sunflare.me for legal notices and privacy@sunflare.me for privacy questions; see Contact Us below.

2. Age Requirement

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Services, and you must meet the minimum age required by the laws of your country if that's older than 13. Sunflare uses a neutral age-screening process that requires users to provide their date of birth. We may use additional verification methods if needed to confirm eligibility. We check this at signup and don't offer a way around it. There's no parental-consent process that unlocks an account for someone younger than the minimum age, because the Services aren't designed for children under 13 at all.

If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 13, we'll disable and remove it. If you believe a Sunflare account belongs to someone under 13, please tell us at legal@sunflare.me.

3. Teen Privacy & Safety

If you're between 13 and 17, additional protections apply to your account by default, including more restricted direct-message and friend-request settings, and no access to age-restricted (18+) content, regardless of any server's own settings. These aren't optional add-ons you have to find and turn on; they're how your account starts.

The full details (exactly what's different, why, and how to review or adjust the settings that aren't locked) are in the Privacy & Safety for Teen Accounts section of our Privacy Policy. We encourage every user aged 13–17, and any parent or guardian aware of a teen's account, to read it.

4. Your Account

You need an account to use most of the Services. You agree to provide accurate information when you create one and to keep your login credentials secure. You're responsible for activity that happens through your account, including anything done by someone you've shared your password with. Tell us right away at legal@sunflare.me if you think your account has been compromised.

You can't sell, transfer, or share your account with anyone else without our written permission. We may require you to change your username, avatar, or other account details if we determine they're misleading, impersonate someone else, or violate these Terms.

5. Content You Post

Your Content. You keep ownership of whatever you create and share on Sunflare: messages, images, files, custom emoji, and anything else you upload ("Your Content"). By posting Your Content, you grant Sunflare a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, and display it solely for the purpose of operating, maintaining, and improving the Services (for example, delivering your messages to the people you sent them to, and caching attachments so they load quickly). This license ends when you delete Your Content or your account, except where a copy needs to persist briefly for backups, legal compliance, or because it was shared into a space others still have a legitimate copy of (like a screenshot someone else took).

Our Content. Sunflare and its licensors own the Services themselves: the software, designs, logos, and branding. These Terms don't grant you any rights to that beyond what's needed to use the Services as intended.

Other People's Content. You'll encounter content posted by other users and by third-party bots/integrations. We don't review everything before it's posted and don't endorse it. Don't use someone else's content without their permission. If you believe content on Sunflare infringes your copyright, contact us at legal@sunflare.me with enough detail for us to locate and evaluate it. We'll remove infringing content we're made aware of, though we have no general obligation to monitor for it in advance.

6. Restrictions on Your Use of the Services

You agree not to, and not to help or encourage anyone else to:

• Harm, threaten, or harass another person, or organize or facilitate any of that;
• Post or share child sexual abuse material, or sexualize minors in any way: we report this to the relevant authorities and permanently ban accounts involved, no exceptions;
• Engage in grooming, predatory behavior, or other conduct intended to exploit minors, same treatment as above: reported to the relevant authorities, accounts permanently banned, no exceptions;
• Access or attempt to access another person's account without permission, or otherwise compromise the security of the Services;
• Infringe someone else's intellectual property, privacy, or other legal rights;
• Exploit, spam, or abuse other users or the reporting/moderation systems described below (including filing false reports);
• Interfere with or damage the Services: attempting to disrupt servers, distribute malware, or bypass rate limits and access controls;
• Scrape or bulk-collect data from the Services beyond what we make available through documented tools;
• Use the Services to violate any applicable law; or
• Circumvent the age requirement in Section 2 or the age-restricted content controls described in our Privacy Policy.

We may (but aren't obligated to) remove content, restrict features, or take other action against accounts that violate this section, with or without notice.

7. Safety Tools & Reporting

Sunflare provides tools to help you control your own experience and to help our team enforce the restrictions in Section 6:

• Report a message or a user: available directly from a message or a profile, or through Settings → Report a Problem. Reports go to a private staff queue; the person you report is never told who reported them.
• Block a user: hides their messages from you in direct messages and in any server you're both in, and prevents them from messaging or sending you a friend request.
• Moderation records: when staff take action on an account (a ban, a timeout, a role change), we keep a durable record of who took it and why, so enforcement on Sunflare is accountable rather than a series of untracked actions. See our Privacy Policy for more on how these records are kept.

These tools are for genuine violations of these Terms. Filing false or bad-faith reports, or abusing the blocking or reporting systems to harass someone, is itself a violation of Section 6.

8. AI & Automated Systems

Sunflare uses a small number of automated systems as part of running the Services:

• Automated content scanning: images you upload are automatically scanned against known child sexual abuse material using industry-standard hash-matching technology. A confirmed match results in an immediate, automatic account suspension and IP block, without advance warning. This is the one place enforcement happens automatically rather than through staff review, given the severity of what it exists to catch. See Section 6.
• Anti-abuse screening: signup and certain other actions may be screened by automated risk-scoring (for example, reCAPTCHA) to reduce spam and fraudulent accounts.
• On-device call safety monitoring (accounts aged 13-17 only): during voice and video calls, a teen account's own device runs an automated, on-device speech pattern check on what call participants are saying, looking for language patterns associated with grooming (for example, pressure to keep the conversation secret, requests for photos, or attempts to move the conversation off Sunflare). Sunflare's servers never have access to call audio: calls are peer-to-peer, and this check runs entirely on the teen's own device. On its own, this check never interrupts or ends the call. If it finds a pattern worth a look, it flags the account and sends a short excerpt of the flagged text (not the full call) to Sunflare as a report for staff review, and the call continues normally. In addition, when enabled, a second-layer review can make a more informed judgment on that same flagged excerpt and, for a clear and higher-confidence case, show the teen account a private "are you okay?" check-in or end the call automatically. This is a heuristic/automated check, not a guarantee. It can miss real risks and can occasionally flag an innocent conversation by mistake. See Privacy & Safety for Teen Accounts for more detail.

We don't use AI to generate messages or content on your behalf, we don't use AI to make final account-termination decisions outside the automated CSAM match above, and we don't use your message content, including call audio, to train any AI model.

If you believe an automated action was taken on your account in error, you can appeal it the same way as any other moderation action. See Section 10 (Appeals).

9. Term & Termination

By you. You can delete your account at any time from Settings → My Account. This ends your agreement with us going forward. See our Privacy Policy for exactly what happens to your data when you do.

By us. We may suspend or terminate your access to the Services, with or without notice, if you violate these Terms, if we're required to by law, to prevent harm to Sunflare or other users, or if your account has been inactive for an extended period. Where reasonably possible, we'll try to give you advance notice and a reason.

10. Appeals

If your account is suspended or terminated, or content of yours is removed, and you think that was a mistake, you can appeal through the "Moderation Report / Appeal" option in Settings → Report a Problem, or by emailing legal@sunflare.me. We'll review appeals in good faith, though we can't guarantee a particular outcome or timeline.

11. Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify and hold Sunflare, its officers, and its personnel harmless from claims, damages, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your misuse of the Services, Your Content, or your violation of these Terms, except to the extent caused by our own negligence or misconduct.

12. Services "As Is"

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Services are provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We don't guarantee the Services will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure.

13. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Sunflare's total liability to you for any claim arising from these Terms or the Services is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the three months before the claim, or (b) $100 USD. We won't be liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages, or for content posted by other users. Nothing in this section limits liability that can't be limited under applicable law (for example, liability for our own gross negligence, willful misconduct, or death or personal injury caused by our negligence, where local law says it can't be capped).

14. Resolving Disputes Between You and Sunflare

Let's talk first. Before filing any formal claim, you agree to first send a written description of the dispute to legal@sunflare.me and give us 60 days to try to resolve it informally.

Individual arbitration. If that doesn't resolve things, you and Sunflare agree that any dispute will be resolved by binding, individual arbitration rather than in court, except where you or we choose to bring a qualifying claim in small-claims court instead. Arbitration will be conducted by a mutually agreed neutral arbitration provider, applying its rules for consumer disputes. Either party may bring intellectual-property or piracy-related claims in court instead of arbitration.

Class action waiver. You and Sunflare each agree to bring claims only in an individual capacity, not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, consolidated, or representative proceeding.

Opt-out. You can opt out of this arbitration agreement by emailing legal@sunflare.me with your account username and a clear statement that you want to opt out, within 30 days of first agreeing to these Terms (or of any future update to this section, for that update). Opting out doesn't affect any other part of these Terms.

Jury trial waiver. Where arbitration applies, you and Sunflare are each waiving the right to a trial by jury, to the extent permitted by law.

Time limit. Any claim must be filed within one year of when it arose, unless applicable law requires a longer period.

15. Governing Law

These Terms are governed by applicable law without regard to conflict-of-law principles, except where local mandatory consumer-protection law requires otherwise (for example, EU/UK/EEA consumers keep the protections of their own country's law regardless of this clause).

16. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time, for new features, legal reasons, or to keep the Services safe. If we make a material change, we'll give reasonable advance notice (for example, an in-app notice or an email) before it takes effect, except where an urgent change (like closing a safety loophole) requires acting sooner. Continuing to use the Services after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms.

17. Contact Us

Questions about these Terms: legal@sunflare.me.
Privacy questions: see our Privacy Policy or privacy@sunflare.me.