User Agreement

1. Who provides the Service

The Squeek messenger and this website (together, the “Service”) are created and provided by Vladyslav Serhiiovych Nesterov, a private individual and citizen of Ukraine (the “Developer”, “we”). The Developer is not registered as a business entity and runs the project as personal, non-commercial development work. The Service is provided free of charge: you pay nothing to use Squeek, and the Developer does not sell you any goods, work, or services. The app describes the Premium Squeek and Premium Squeek Plus plans, but as of this edition they are not on sale and nobody is charged; before sales begin we will update this Agreement and publish the payment terms separately.

2. Acceptance of the Agreement

This Agreement is a contract between you and the Developer. You accept it when you download, install, or launch Squeek, or create an account — whichever happens first. If you do not accept any provision of this Agreement, you may not use the Service and must delete the app.

3. Beta status of the Service

Squeek is in beta testing. This means the Service is an unfinished product provided solely for evaluation and testing. In particular:

• the Service may contain errors, failures, and unfinished features;
• messages may fail to be delivered, arrive late, be duplicated, or be lost;
• your account, conversations, media files, and settings may be lost, corrupted, or deleted beyond recovery;
• features may change or disappear without notice;
• the Service may become unavailable at any time and for any period, including permanently.

4. Do not rely on Squeek in critical situations

You must not use Squeek as your only or primary channel of communication. Do not use the Service for emergency calls, or to send medical, financial, legal, or work-related messages where life, health, safety, or property depends on their timely delivery or confidentiality. Keep important data and conversations outside Squeek yourself.

5. Who may use the Service

Only people aged 18 or over with full legal capacity may use Squeek. By creating an account you confirm that you meet these requirements. If we learn that an account was created by someone under 18, we may delete that account without notice.

6. Territory of the Service

The Service is intended for and offered exclusively to people located in Ukraine. We do not offer, advertise, or direct the Service to users in other countries, and we do not adapt it to the requirements of foreign law. If you use Squeek outside Ukraine, you do so on your own initiative and at your own risk, and you alone are responsible for complying with the law of the country you are in. The Developer bears no responsibility for the Service’s compliance with foreign law.

7. Your account and access security

You are responsible for protecting access to your account, your device, and the email address and password used to sign in, and for all actions taken through your account. You may add another device by scanning a code in the app: it receives your keys and full access to your conversations, and you are responsible for such devices in the same way. Tell us as soon as you become aware of unauthorised access. Bear in mind, however, that as of this edition there is no way to recover a forgotten password, and in a beta version we may have no technical means of restoring access or lost data.

8. Your content

Everything you send, publish, or store in Squeek — text, images, files, voice messages — remains yours. The Developer claims no ownership of your content. At the same time, you are solely and fully responsible for it: for its substance, its lawfulness, your right to share it, and the consequences of passing it to others. You grant the Developer a limited technical right to store and transmit your content solely to the extent needed to operate the Service. The server keeps messages and files for a limited time that depends on the sender’s plan (90 days from sending on the free plan, 180 on Premium, 365 on Premium Plus) and then deletes them for good; the copy on your device stays. You can also set a self-destruct timer for a chat. The volume of files you can send per month and the size of a single file are limited by your plan; the current limits are shown in the app.

9. How conversations are protected: chats, groups, and channels

Different kinds of conversation in Squeek are protected differently. The difference decides what is technically available to the Developer, so it is worth knowing before you choose where to write:

• private chats and groups are end-to-end encrypted: messages and files are encrypted on your device and decrypted only on the devices of the people in the conversation, and the Developer has no technical means of reading their content;
• the content of channels and the discussions beside them is encrypted on the server with a key the Developer holds, so unlike private chats and groups it is technically available to the Developer;
• groups and channels are visible in search by default, and any user of the Service can join them unless the owner turns that off in the settings — so assume that what you post there can be read by people you did not choose personally (in groups, new members do not see messages sent before they joined);
• even for end-to-end encrypted conversations, service data remains technically available to the Developer: who takes part, who sent a message and when, reactions, read marks and pins, and system messages — who joined or left, calls and their duration;
• a bot added to a group or channel receives a copy of every message from the moment it is added, and in a private chat with a bot — everything you write to it; a bot is run by its owner, another user, not by the Developer;
• the app keeps a decrypted copy of your conversations and files in its protected storage on your device so that chats open instantly; that copy is as protected as the device itself;
• audio and video calls connect devices directly: the server sees only the fact, time and duration of a call, and your IP address becomes known to the other party;
• access to your conversations is protected by a twelve-word recovery phrase issued when you create your account: if you lose it, neither you nor the Developer can restore your message history.

10. Prohibited use

In using Squeek, you undertake not to:

• break the law of Ukraine or infringe the rights of third parties;
• send threats, harass or stalk others, or incite hatred;
• distribute sexual material involving minors, or material promoting violence or terrorism;
• distribute spam, fraudulent schemes, malware, or phishing links;
• impersonate another person or mislead other users about who you are;
• collect other users’ data without their consent;
• interfere with the Service, circumvent technical restrictions, carry out automated access other than through bots created with the Service’s own tools, or carry out decompilation or reverse engineering, except where expressly permitted by law;
• use the Service for commercial purposes without the Developer’s separate written consent.

11. Bots

You may create a bot — an account run by your program. A bot appears in search, can be messaged, and can be added to a group or channel; a bot cannot message a person first and does not take part in calls. By creating a bot you:

• are responsible for everything the bot does and sends, just as for your own actions;
• must keep the bot token and the webhook link secret — whoever has them acts as the bot; if they leak, replace them in the app at once;
• may not use the bot for spam, bulk messaging without the recipients’ consent, or to circumvent the Service’s limits;
• accept that the number of bots and the pace of their messages are limited by your plan and by technical limits;
• by adding a bot to a group or channel, disclose the content of that conversation from that moment on to the bot’s owner — the other participants see a system message about it.

12. Reports and our response

We do not review users’ private conversations in the ordinary course and we do not pre-moderate content. In channels and discussions you can report a message — the report goes to the owner and administrators of that channel, not to the Developer. Any user can be blocked: a blocked user cannot message or call you. If you believe another user is breaching this Agreement or the law, you may also notify us at the email address given at the end of this page. We review reports as far as we are able, but we do not guarantee any review time, outcome, or particular action. The Developer is under no obligation to monitor user content and is not its author.

13. The Service is provided “as is”

To the fullest extent permitted by the law of Ukraine, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind. In particular, the Developer does not warrant that:

• the Service will operate uninterrupted, on time, error-free, or securely;
• messages will be delivered, stored, or remain accessible;
• data will not be lost, altered, or disclosed through technical error or the acts of third parties;
• the Service will meet your expectations or any particular purpose;
• any defects found will be corrected.

14. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by the law of Ukraine, the Developer is not liable for:

• loss, corruption, or disclosure of data and conversations;
• messages not received or received late;
• unavailability of the Service or the ending of its operation;
• lost profit, damage to business reputation, or other indirect losses;
• the acts of other users and the content they distribute;
• the acts of telecom operators, hosting providers, app stores, and other third parties.

15. Limits of these exclusions

The limitations in sections 13 and 14 apply only to the extent permitted by the law of Ukraine and do not apply where the law does not allow liability to be excluded or limited, in particular to harm caused intentionally.

16. Suspension and termination of access

The Developer may restrict, suspend, or terminate your access to the Service and delete your account — in whole or in part, with or without notice — where this is necessary to comply with the law or to protect the Service or other users, or where you breach this Agreement. You may stop using the Service at any time by deleting your account in the app’s profile (which also deletes the groups and channels you own) or simply by deleting the app.

17. Changes to and discontinuation of the Service

Because Squeek is a beta product, the Developer may at any time and without prior notice change, restrict, or discontinue the Service or any of its features, including shutting the project down for good. If the Service is discontinued, user data may be deleted beyond recovery. The Developer is under no obligation to provide a data export, compensation, or a replacement.

18. Rights in the Service

The Squeek name, logo, design, interface, website copy, and source code belong to the Developer and are protected by intellectual property law. This Agreement grants you no rights in them other than a non-exclusive, revocable, non-transferable right to use the app for its intended purpose while this Agreement is in force.

19. Personal data

The processing of personal data is described in the Privacy Policy, which forms an integral part of this Agreement. By accepting this Agreement you confirm that you have read the Privacy Policy.

20. Changes to this Agreement

The Developer may amend this Agreement. The current edition is always available on this page, and its effective date is shown above. We will try to announce material changes in the app or on the website. Continuing to use the Service after changes take effect means you agree to the new edition. If you do not agree, stop using the Service.

21. Governing law and disputes

This Agreement is governed by the law of Ukraine. The parties will try to settle any dispute arising from use of the Service through negotiation; failing agreement, the dispute is to be heard by the courts of Ukraine under the rules of jurisdiction set by law.

22. Final provisions

If any provision of this Agreement is held invalid, the remaining provisions stay in force. The Developer’s failure to exercise any right under this Agreement is not a waiver of it. This Agreement is drawn up in Ukrainian; translations into other languages are provided for convenience, and in case of any discrepancy the Ukrainian text prevails.