# Terms of use

## 1. Who provides this service

Skudo is operated by a private individual in Italy. The operator's name and
postal address are given in the [privacy notice](/legal/privacy). Contact:
hello@skudo.org.

These terms are an agreement between you and the operator.

## 2. What the service is

Skudo gives you email addresses that forward to an inbox you already use, so you
can sign up to other services without giving them your personal address. You can
create and delete these addresses, switch them off, and reply from them.

The service is **free for everyone**. There are no paid plans, no premium
features and no limits that money removes.

If you want to support the project you can do so by card through Ko-fi, in
Bitcoin or Lightning through a BTCPay server we run ourselves, or by sending
directly to one of the published addresses for other currencies. The ways to do
it are listed at https://app.skudo.org/donate.

Support is voluntary and buys nothing: donors get exactly the same service as
everybody else, with no extra features, no higher limits and no priority. It
funds the servers, and that is all it does. Nothing recorded about a donation is
tied to an account, so a donation cannot change anything about yours even if we
wanted it to.

## 3. Who can use it

You must be at least **14 years old**, which is the age Italy sets for using an online service on your own account. We do not ask for identity documents and
cannot verify your age, so we rely on what you tell us.

The service is for individuals. There are no business accounts and no service
level commitments.

## 4. Your account

Keep your credentials safe. If you lose both your password and your recovery
material we cannot recover the account for you. That is a consequence of how the
service is built, not a policy we could relax.

You are responsible for what happens through your account. Tell us at hello@skudo.org if
you think someone else has access to it.

## 5. What you may not do

The acceptable use policy forms part of these terms. In short: no unsolicited
bulk email, no harassment or threats, no fraud or impersonation, no malware, no
material that is unlawful to distribute, and no creating a new account to get
around a suspension.

## 6. Limits

The same limits apply to every account:

| Limit | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Messages forwarded to you, per hour | 200 |
| Messages sent or replied from your aliases, per hour | 20 |
| New aliases, per hour | 100 |
| New aliases per month, on our shared domains | 30 |
| New aliases per month, on your personal subdomain | 75 |
| New aliases, on a domain you own | No limit |
| Total aliases, while the account is new | 30 |
| Mail forwarded, per month | 1 GB |

The monthly limits apply to our domains only, and exist so that one account
cannot generate thousands of addresses on a name everybody shares and get it
blocked for everybody. On a domain you own there is no monthly limit, because
the reputation at stake is your own.

The "while the account is new" limit lifts by itself once the account has gone
30 days with no abuse report against it. A domain you have added recently is
held to 5 new aliases a day until it has been verified for a while, for the same
reason.

Nothing on this list is removed by paying, because there is nothing to pay.

A new account can receive straight away, but cannot send from an alias until it
is 24 hours old and has received at least one forwarded message. For its first
30 days it can reply to people who have written to one of its aliases, but
cannot write to someone for the first time. Both restrictions exist because a
handful of accounts opened only to send spam can get our whole domain blocked,
which breaks every alias for every user at once.

Limits are published and change with notice, unless an immediate change is
needed to stop an attack in progress.

## 7. Suspension and appeal

We may suspend an alias or an account if we reasonably believe these terms have
been breached, or if the law requires it.

We will tell you what was suspended and which category of breach we relied on,
unless the law prevents us. You have **30 days** to appeal to abuse@skudo.org and we
answer within **10 working days**. Nothing is permanently deleted before the
appeal window closes or an appeal fails.

We act on addresses, not on people, and we do not need to know who you are in
order to do it.

## 8. Ending the agreement

You can delete your account at any time from within the application. Deletion is
real: the privacy notice says what happens and how quickly.

We may end this agreement with 30 days notice, or immediately in case of serious
breach.

## 9. If the service shuts down

If the service is discontinued you get at least **90 days notice**, during which
export stays available, followed by **30 days** in which mail still forwards.

The alias domains will not be released to anyone else afterwards. A lapsed alias
domain in somebody else's hands is the worst possible outcome for the people who
trusted it.

## 10. Your addresses are never reused

An alias you have deleted is **never given to another user**. An address that
once reached you must never later reach somebody else.

## 11. What we promise, and what we do not

The service is provided with reasonable skill and care. It is not guaranteed to
be uninterrupted or error free, and no uptime figure is promised, because a free
service should not make a commitment it cannot fund.

Mail delivery depends on parties outside our control, including your own mail
provider and the sending server. We are not responsible for their filtering,
blocking or rejection decisions.

## 12. Liability

Nothing here excludes liability that cannot be excluded by law, including for
death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or your mandatory
rights as a consumer.

Beyond that, and because the service is free, liability is limited to what you
have paid for it, which is zero. Voluntary support, by whatever means it
arrives, is a gift to the project and not a payment for the service, so it does
not change this and does not create a contract for a paid service.

## 13. Changes

Material changes are announced at least **30 days** in advance, by email and on
the site, and the previous version stays available. Continuing to use the service
after a change takes effect means you accept it. If you do not, delete your
account.

## 14. Law and disputes

Italian law applies.

If you are a consumer you keep the protection of the mandatory rules of the
country where you live, and you can bring proceedings in the courts of that
country.

## 15. Contact

hello@skudo.org, or the ticket form at https://app.skudo.org/contact, which needs
no account.

How the service works, including every limit above explained rather than listed,
is at https://help.skudo.org.
