end-user licence agreement

last updated: September 17, 2026

This agreement covers your use of hqchat (listed on the App Store as hqChat). You accept it in the app, before you create an identity. If you do not accept it, do not use the app. It sits alongside our terms of service and privacy policy; where this page and /terms disagree about acceptable behaviour, this page governs.

no objectionable content, and no abusive users

There is zero tolerance for objectionable content or abusive behaviour. You agree not to use hqchat to send, request or solicit:

• sexual content involving minors, or any material that sexualises a child — reported to the authorities, always, without exception;
• harassment, stalking, threats of violence, or content intended to intimidate or humiliate a specific person;
• content that incites violence or hatred against a person or a group;
• spam, scams, phishing, or malware;
• anything that is illegal where you are, or that infringes someone else's rights.

Accounts that do these things are removed from this server. That is not a warning system with steps; a single credible report of the first item ends an account immediately.

reporting

Every message in the app can be reported: press and hold it, choose report, say what happened. Reports are reviewed and acted on within 24 hours.

Two things about a report are worth knowing before you send one, and the app says both on the screen where you send it:

• It uploads that message's text to this server. Messages are end-to-end encrypted and this server cannot read them — a report is the one path that hands one over, and it happens because you chose to, not as a side effect.
• A reported excerpt is not verifiable. It is the reporter's own copy of a message, and this server has no way to tell a genuine one from an invented one. It is read as what somebody handed in, not as proof of what was said. We would rather say that plainly than imply a check that does not exist.

Reports are deleted 90 days after they are filed. Deleting your account does not delete reports filed about you — otherwise deleting an account would be a way to erase the complaints against it — but it does remove your name from reports you filed. See the privacy policy.

blocking

You can block anyone, from their contact row or from the report screen. Blocking ends the friendship, revokes their access to your conversation on the server, and cannot be walked around by adding you again. Your own copy of the conversation stays on your device, read-only, until you delete it. You can unblock later; that does not restore the friendship, and neither of you can message the other until one of you asks again.

what we can and cannot do about a report

We can remove an account from this server, revoke its access to conversations, and disconnect it. We cannot read your messages, so we act on what a reporter hands us and on what the server itself can see.

And one honest limit: an identity here is derived from a key your device generates, so somebody who is removed can reinstall the app and arrive as a new person with a new identity. A ban cannot follow a human being across that on this architecture. What it does do is end the account that was reported, break its existing conversations, and require anyone who wants to reach you to be added by you again.

your account

You are responsible for your device and your identity keys. Keys exist only on your device and are never sent to us, so a lost key cannot be recovered by anyone, including us. You may delete your account from within the app at any time.

contact

Abuse reports, questions, and anything else: support, or support@martinrougeron.me. A person reads that address.