Terms and Conditions

These are the terms you agree to when you keep your pages on Lyefl. They are written to be read, so they are short and they say what they mean. If a line here is unclear, write to us and ask before you agree to it.

You agree to them by signing in. If you do not agree to them, do not sign in, and do not use Lyefl.

1. What Lyefl is

Lyefl is a place to write your life down, a day at a time. You keep pages; a page can carry a photograph beside the words, and an almanac offers you something to write from each day. A page is private until you decide otherwise, and you can write here without publishing anything at all.

Your pages are private by default. Nothing you write is published until you choose to publish it.

Lyefl runs as an app on your phone and as a website at lyefl.com. These terms cover both, and they cover everything you write, post or send here — pages, photographs, thoughts left on somebody's page, letters, and your profile.

2. Your account

You sign in with Apple or with Google. There is no password to set here and none to lose, and we never see one.

Keep the account yours. Do not let somebody else use it, do not sign in as anybody but yourself, and do not present yourself as a person or an organisation you are not.

You must be at least 13 years old to keep pages on Lyefl. If we learn that an account belongs to a younger child, we close it and delete what is in it.

3. What you write is yours

You own your writing and your photographs. Making an account here hands none of it over, and we do not sell your writing or licence it to anyone.

So that the service can work, you give us permission to store what you put here and show it back to you; and, for a page you have chosen to publish, to show that page to the readers you published it to, wherever public work appears in the app and on the site. That permission covers running Lyefl and nothing else. It ends for a page when you delete the page, and otherwise when your account is deleted, except for the things section 9 names as outlasting it.

You are responsible for having the right to post what you post: your own words and pictures, or somebody else's with their permission. If you believe something here infringes your copyright, write to us and tell us which page and why, and we will look at it.

Lyefl's own material — the software, the design, the name and the mark — stays ours. Your writing is not covered by that sentence.

4. What may not be posted

Lyefl is for your own life, honestly written. None of the following belongs here, in a page, a photograph, a thought, a letter, a profile or a handle:

• sexual content involving a child, or any sexualised depiction of a minor
• pornography or sexually explicit material
• threats, or anything that incites, organises or celebrates violence against a person or a group
• anything that encourages suicide, self-harm or disordered eating
• harassment, bullying, stalking, or a campaign against somebody
• hate speech — attacks on people for their race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, religion, disability, illness, age, sex, gender, gender identity or sexual orientation
• graphic violence or gore posted to shock
• support or promotion of terrorism, violent extremism or organised crime
• the sale of drugs, weapons or anything else whose sale is illegal
• somebody else's private information — their address, their phone number, their documents, their photographs of themselves — published without their consent
• impersonating a person or an organisation
• material you do not have the right to post
• spam, scams, phishing, malware, and commercial promotion dressed up as a page
• anything that is illegal where you are

Nor may you attack the service itself: breaking into accounts, scraping it, working around its limits, or interfering with how it runs for anybody else.

5. There is no tolerance for objectionable content or abusive users

That is the whole rule, and it is not a figure of speech. Content on the list in section 4 is removed when we find it, and accounts that post it are suspended or deleted. Nobody has an allowance of abuse to spend here — not a long-standing account, not a popular one, not one that says it was joking.

For the worst of it — anything sexualising a child, a credible threat of violence, or a campaign against a person — the account goes on the first report we confirm, with no warning first.

6. How moderation actually works

Lyefl is a diary, and a page is private until you decide otherwise — most of what is written here is never published at all. So there is no machine reading your words on the way to your own page: nothing is screened before publication, and there is no classifier and no word list between you and what you wrote. We would rather tell you that plainly than imply a filter that does not exist.

What we do instead is act on what is reported and on what we find. Reports come to a queue that a person works through, and each one is either actioned or dismissed. We aim to look at every report within 24 hours.

When something breaks these terms we may, depending on what happened: take the page down, make it private, limit what the account can do, suspend the account, or delete it and refuse that person a new one. Where the law requires it, or where somebody appears to be in danger, we pass on what we have to the authorities.

If you think we got it wrong, write to us and say so, and a person will read it.

7. Reporting, and limiting who can reach you

Anything somebody else wrote — their page, their thought, their letter — and the person themselves can be reported, from the menu on the thing itself. A report is confidential: the person is never told that you reported them.

In the app:

• a page — open it, tap the menu at the foot of the page, then Report this page
• a thought somebody left — swipe the thought, then Report this thought
• a person — open their profile, tap the menu at the top, then Report this person
• a letter — open it in The Envelope, then Report this letter

On the website, an entry page carries Report this page and Block, and a person's pages carry Report, Restrict, Hide my posts and Block.

A person's profile also lets you limit them without reporting them, and none of the three is announced to them:

• Restrict — their thoughts on your entries show only to them, and they can't notify you or write to you.
• Hide my posts — your entries stop reaching them, in feeds, in discovery, on your profile.
• Block — neither of you can write to the other. Follows and shelvings between you end, both ways, and lifting the block does not bring them back.

Everybody you have limited is listed in the app under Study → People you have limited, and you can lift any of it from there.

8. Reaching us

Write to support@lyefl.com — about a report, about something we did to your account, about a copyright claim, or about anything on this page.

9. Ending your account

You can leave from inside the app, at any time: Settings → Delete account. On the website it is Settings → Account → Delete account.

You are signed out immediately, and the account is permanently deleted after 30 days. Signing back in within those 30 days cancels it. When the 30 days are up, your profile is scrubbed, your private pages are deleted, and any page you had published stays readable but is no longer attributed to you. Letters you sent are not deleted: a correspondence is one thread held between two people, and removing your half would take the other person's half with it — but once your profile is scrubbed those letters no longer carry your name. The notes you wrote in your own margins are not swept either; they were always private to you and they stay that way.

If you only want to step away, Settings → Deactivate account hides your pages and letters from everyone and deletes nothing. Signing back in brings it all back, as you left it.

We may end your account too, under section 6.

10. What we do not promise

We work to keep Lyefl running and to keep what you write safe, and we cannot promise it will never be down, never lose anything, or never change. Features come and go. If a page matters enough that losing it would hurt, keep a copy of it somewhere else as well.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we exclude all representations, warranties and conditions relating to Lyefl and to your use of it. Nothing in this section will:

• limit or exclude our or your liability for death or personal injury;
• limit or exclude our or your liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;
• limit any of our or your liabilities in any way that is not permitted under applicable law; or
• exclude any of our or your liabilities that may not be excluded under applicable law.

11. Changes to these terms

We change these terms from time to time. The date at the top says when they last changed, and the version on this page is the one that applies. Carrying on using Lyefl after a change means you accept it; if you do not, section 9 is how you leave.

12. Who you are agreeing with

Lyefl is a small, independently run service. The contact address above reaches the person responsible for it.

See also the Privacy Policy, which says what we hold and why.