PrivateLine

Terms & Conditions

Effective: 14 October 2026

1. Who we are

PrivateLine (the "Service"), including the PrivateLine apps for iOS and Android and the line pages at privateline.me, is operated by Nikolay Dimitrov ("we", "us", "our").

These Terms & Conditions ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the Service, whether you own lines in the app or contact a line from its web page or the app. By using the Service, you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

2. Eligibility

2.1 You must be at least 18 years old. The Service is not directed to and may not be used by anyone under 18. If we become aware that a person under 18 is using the Service, we may end their access and delete the associated data.

2.2 You must have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract.

2.3 Your access must not previously have been ended by us for a breach of these Terms.

2.4 Your use of the Service, including calling features, must be lawful where you are located. You are responsible for determining this (see clause 3).

3. Geographic restrictions and sanctions

3.1 Availability. Internet-based voice and video calling is regulated or restricted in some jurisdictions. We do not offer the Service where its features are unlawful, and we may restrict or disable features, or refuse service entirely, in any jurisdiction at our discretion.

3.2 Sanctions and export control. You represent and warrant that you are not:

• located in, ordinarily resident in, or a national of any country or territory subject to comprehensive sanctions or embargo under applicable United Nations, European Union, United Kingdom, United States or other applicable law; or
• listed on any applicable restricted-party, sanctions or terrorist-designation list, or owned or controlled by any such person.

We may refuse, suspend or end access to the Service on these grounds.

3.3 No circumvention. You may not use a VPN, proxy, spoofed location or any other means to circumvent a geographic restriction or to access a feature that is disabled where you are.

3.4 Your responsibility. Encryption and secure communications products are regulated differently in different countries. It is your responsibility to know and comply with the law that applies to you. We make no representation that the Service is lawful in any particular country, and we accept no liability for your use of it where it is not.

3.5 No emergency calls. PrivateLine is not a telephone service and cannot be used to contact emergency services. Make sure you have another way to reach them.

4. Acceptable use

You will not use the Service, including any line you own or contact, to:

4.1 Child protection. Produce, request, store, transmit, solicit or distribute child sexual abuse material, or engage in the sexual exploitation or grooming of, or any sexualised communication with, a minor. We report such material and conduct to the relevant authorities and preserve the associated records. This prohibition admits no exception.

4.2 Serious crime. Plan, facilitate, finance or commit terrorism, violent extremism, human trafficking, kidnapping or violence; traffic in weapons, explosives or controlled substances; or launder the proceeds of crime.

4.3 Sanctions evasion. Evade, or help anyone evade, sanctions or export controls of the kind described in clause 3.2.

4.4 Fraud. Conduct fraud, phishing, identity theft, advance-fee, romance, investment or cryptocurrency scams, or any deceptive scheme causing financial loss.

4.5 Technical abuse. Distribute malware or ransomware; conduct unauthorised access, interception or denial-of-service; or reverse-engineer, decompile, probe or circumvent the security, encryption, rate limits, geographic restrictions or access controls of the Service, except where such a restriction is prohibited by applicable law.

4.6 Harm to others. Harass, stalk, threaten, defame, or incite violence or hatred against any person or group; distribute non-consensual intimate images; or share another person's private information without consent.

4.7 Unlawful or infringing content. Transmit content that infringes intellectual property rights or is unlawful in the jurisdiction of the sender or the recipient.

4.8 Service abuse. Send bulk unsolicited messages or calls; operate bots or automated clients without our written consent; resell or commercially redistribute lines or access to the Service; or impersonate any person or entity.

4.9 Evading enforcement. Circumvent a suspension, termination or removal action, for example by creating new identities or lines.

A breach of this clause is a material breach. We may suspend or end access to the Service, and disable or delete lines, immediately and without notice, and may preserve and disclose records where lawfully required or permitted.

5. Encryption: what it does and does not do

5.1 Chat messages and voice and video calls are end-to-end encrypted, using established cryptographic algorithms. Messages are kept on our servers, in encrypted form, only until they are delivered. In normal operation the content of your communications is not accessible to us.

5.2 Encryption protects content, not metadata. It does not conceal, and we may process and hold, information needed to run the Service, such as line identifiers, line names you choose to show, public keys, push notification tokens, purchase and subscription records, IP addresses, connection information and timestamps, and records that communication occurred between a line and a visitor.

5.3 Direct calls reveal IP addresses. Calls connect directly between the two devices, so each side can see the other's public IP address, which can indicate an approximate location.

5.4 Recipients. Anyone you communicate with can keep, copy, screenshot, photograph or otherwise record what you send or say. We cannot prevent this. Do not send anything you would not want to be kept.

5.5 Web pages. Visitors who contact a line from a browser use encryption code that is served by our servers. The apps do not depend on code served this way, and offer stronger protection.

5.6 No guarantee. No security measure is perfect. We do not warrant that the Service or its encryption cannot be compromised, or that any security feature will be available without interruption.

6. Your identity and lines

6.1 No account details. PrivateLine does not ask for your name, email address or phone number. The app creates a cryptographic identity on your device, which may be backed up by iCloud Keychain or your Google account backup, depending on your device settings.

6.2 Your responsibility. You are responsible for your device, your identity, your recovery passphrase if you create one, and all activity through your identity and lines. Anyone who has your recovery passphrase can take over your identity, so keep it private.

6.3 We cannot recover it. We never see your identity's private key or your recovery passphrase, and cannot reset or recover them. If you lose access to your identity without a backup or recovery passphrase, your lines and connections cannot be restored.

6.4 Line links. Anyone who has a line's link can contact that line within the features you enable. Share links carefully. A visitor who contacts you from a browser is identified only by a key stored in that browser, so anyone who obtains it, for example through a "Continue elsewhere" link, can act as that visitor.

6.5 Your identity is personal. You may not sell or transfer it, or lines created with it.

7. Expiration and deletion

7.1 Lines. Each line expires at the time set in the app, or when the subscription or purchase it depends on ends. After that, its link stops working. Expired lines are kept for a short period, currently 3 days, so they can be renewed or extended, and are then deleted with their connections and any undelivered messages. You can delete a line at any time in the app, which deletes it right away.

7.2 Messages. Messages are deleted from our servers once the recipient's device confirms delivery. Undelivered messages are subject to the limits shown in the app.

7.3 Local copies. Chat history is stored on your device and the other party's device, including in device backups, notification previews and browser storage, until it is removed there. We cannot delete it for you.

7.4 Other records. Deleting lines does not delete your identity's records, such as purchase and subscription records, which we may keep where needed to provide the Service or where required by law.

8. Lawful requests and abuse reports

8.1 On receipt of a valid and binding legal order from a competent authority, we will assess it and respond as required by applicable law. Because message and call content is end-to-end encrypted, we are generally unable to produce it. We may be able to produce metadata of the kind described in clause 5.2. We do not represent that we can resist a lawful order, or that we hold no information.

8.2 We may preserve records where required by law, or where we reasonably believe preservation is necessary to investigate a breach of clause 4, protect any person's safety, or comply with law.

8.3 Reporting abuse. Report content or conduct breaching clause 4 to [email protected], including the line link. Child safety reports are treated as the highest priority.

9. Purchases and subscriptions

9.1 Subscriptions and line purchases are sold through the Apple App Store on iOS and Google Play on Android, and are subject to their terms. Payment is processed by Apple or Google; we never receive your payment card details.

9.2 Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel them in your App Store or Google Play account settings. Lines that depend on a subscription end when the subscription ends.

9.3 Refunds are handled by Apple or Google under their policies. Nothing in these Terms limits any refund or consumer rights you have under the law of your country of residence that cannot be waived.

9.4 Purchases give you a limited, personal, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the purchased features within the Service. They have no monetary value and cannot be exchanged, sold or transferred.

9.5 We may change plans, prices and features, acting in accordance with applicable consumer law and the rules of the App Store and Google Play.

10. Advertising

We do not display advertising in the Service and do not share data with advertisers. If this ever changes, we will update these Terms first and ask for your consent where required by law. The content of your encrypted communications would never be shared.

11. Third-party services

The Service relies on third-party services we do not control, including the Apple App Store, Google Play, Apple and Google push notification services, and public STUN servers used to connect calls. We are not responsible for their content, practices or policies.

12. Intellectual property

12.1 The Service, including its software, design, name and logo, but excluding user content, is owned by us or our licensors.

12.2 We grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the Service under these Terms.

12.3 You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, lease, reverse-engineer or create derivative works of any part of the Service, except where such a restriction is prohibited by applicable law.

12.4 Your content. You keep ownership of the content you send. Because it is end-to-end encrypted we do not access it, and we claim no licence over it beyond what is technically necessary to transmit it and store it in encrypted form until delivery.

12.5 Feedback. We may use suggestions you send us without any obligation to you, under a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free licence.

13. Suspension and termination

13.1 You may stop using the Service and delete your lines at any time.

13.2 We may suspend or end your access, and disable or delete your lines, with or without notice, if you breach these Terms (particularly clause 3 or 4); if required by law or a competent authority; if we reasonably believe continued access risks any person's safety; or if we discontinue the Service.

13.3 When your access ends, your licence ends immediately. Clauses 12 and 14 to 17 survive.

14. Disclaimer of warranties

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranty arising from course of dealing or usage of trade.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, error-free or available in any particular jurisdiction, or that messages will be delivered or calls will connect.

Nothing here excludes or limits any liability or warranty that cannot lawfully be excluded, including under the consumer protection law of your country of residence.

15. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law:

15.1 We and our contractors and agents shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill or other intangible losses, arising out of or relating to your access to or use of, or inability to use, the Service.

15.2 Our aggregate liability arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service shall not exceed the greater of (a) the total amount you paid for the Service in the twelve months before the claim, or (b) USD 50 (or the equivalent in your local currency).

15.3 We are not liable for the conduct of other users, for content transmitted by users, or for any unlawful act committed by a user.

15.4 These limitations apply regardless of legal theory, and even if we were advised of the possibility of such damages. They do not apply to liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

16. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless us and our contractors and agents from and against any claims, demands, proceedings, damages, losses, liabilities, fines, penalties, costs and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to:

• your access to or use of the Service;
• your breach of these Terms, particularly clause 3 (geographic restrictions and sanctions) or clause 4 (acceptable use);
• content you transmit through the Service;
• your violation of any law or regulation, including the law of the jurisdiction where you are located; or
• your violation of the rights of any third party.

This clause does not apply to the extent it is prohibited by the consumer protection law of your country of residence.

17. General

17.1 Severability. If any provision is held invalid, the rest continue in effect.

17.2 No waiver. Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver.

17.3 Assignment. You may not assign these Terms. We may assign them in connection with a transfer of the Service, by posting a notice on this page.

17.4 Force majeure. We are not liable for failure to perform due to causes beyond our reasonable control, including acts of God, war, terrorism, civil unrest, government or regulatory action, network or telecommunications failure, blocking or restriction of the Service by any authority or network operator, outages of third-party services, fire or flood.

17.5 Entire agreement. These Terms are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Service.

17.6 Language. These Terms are published in English, Japanese, German and Spanish. The English version prevails in the event of conflict, except where the mandatory law of your country requires otherwise.

18. Changes

We may change these Terms. Because we don't collect contact details, we will announce material changes on this page, and in the app where practical, at least 30 days before they take effect. Continuing to use the Service after the effective date means you accept the changes. If you do not accept them, stop using the Service and delete your lines.

19. Contact

For support, abuse reports, privacy questions, law enforcement requests and feedback, email [email protected].