Questions tagged [terms-of-service]

A set of regulations which users must agree to follow in order to use a service.

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Is ban evasion illegal?

What is the legality of "Ban Evasions"? This sounds like a dumb question but perhaps enlighten the ignorant. Ban Evasion, "The creation of a new account on a platform or website after being ...
nolsen's user avatar
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34 votes
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Is it legal for Microsoft to install software without user approval?

On several occasions, Microsoft had misled their users to forcefully install updates or unwanted programs (like Windows 10 on Windows 7 here, here, here, and here), it also has forcefully installed ...
Chico3001's user avatar
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Is asking users to waive GDPR compliance a legal way of escaping GDPR data handling requirements?

I have recently come across this part of an app from a well-known US company: Is this a legal way of handling some of the technical obstacles GDPR introduced? Is this a "flexible" interpretation of ...
Michal's user avatar
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26 votes
2 answers
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What is the legal basis of requiring permission before one can link to a webpage?

I came across the "Linking Terms" of OTC Markets Group Inc.'s website: PLEASE READ THESE LINKING TERMS AND CONDITIONS ("LINKING TERMS") BEFORE LINKING TO THIS WEB SITE. YOU MAY ...
Flux's user avatar
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25 votes
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Can a software company forbid individuals to consult on how to use their software?

I read on https://easychair.org/licenses: Please note that we do not allow any organizations or individuals whose professional duties include conference organisation or who are paid, in any form, for ...
Franck Dernoncourt's user avatar
23 votes
5 answers
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Is it legal for a company to require you to delete your account to unsubscribe from marketing emails?

I'm subscribed to "Visual Studio Dev Essentials" (so that I can download older versions of Visual Studio from the Microsoft website), but they are sending me unwanted marketing emails ...
Hiccup's user avatar
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21 votes
1 answer
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Can I waive my statutory rights?

I've noticed that Steam has recently added this bit of text to its review and confirm page: By clicking the button below to proceed you agree that Valve provides you immediate access to digital ...
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18 votes
2 answers
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How is internet archiving legal, when it appears to violate many websites terms of use?

Internet archiving services like the internet wayback machine work by rehosting content from other website. However, many websites in their term explicitly disallow people to frame their website or ...
Joseph Petroske's user avatar
12 votes
3 answers
10k views

Mistakenly agreed with a scammer’s term of use

Say, someone was scammed by a false online bitcoin mining service. He invested some money to buy the scammer’s service, the service was said to produce bitcoins online at a very fast speed without any ...
gudako's user avatar
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11 votes
1 answer
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What does Firebase "use exclusively for purposes related to my trade, business, craft or profession" mean?

I'm creating a project in Firebase and it's asking me to confirm this statement: ☐ I confirm that I will use Firebase exclusively for purposes relating to my trade, business, craft, or profession (...
Bernat's user avatar
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2 answers
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Can a computer program agree to Terms of Service?

Most service providers have Terms of Service that people or entities need to agree to before legally using their services. On another question I had, arguments were made that you needed to be a person ...
Digital fire's user avatar
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Why are private game servers illegal?

Over on Arqade we were discussing a question which was asking about private servers for a game called World of Warcraft. The discussion was about if using and/or hosting a private server is illegal ...
Aequitas's user avatar
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3 answers
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Is there any law that Windows 10 "spying" might violate?

Windows 10 terms of service document includes Microsoft privacy statement which contains the following excerpt (as cited on http://bgr.com/2015/07/31/windows-10-upgrade-spying-how-to-opt-out/) ...
John Donn's user avatar
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9 votes
2 answers
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Can I get my answers deleted from Stack Exchange?

According to a moderator statement in meta that I read, Stack Exchange claims a "license" on the answers and questions which a user has posted. From a copyright standpoint can a claim be made or a ...
Cicero's user avatar
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Are GDPR-Walls legal?

Quite a few websites started showing european visitors "You cannot use this site because of GDPR", probably based on GeoIP information. I see two possible legal problems: GDPR forbids coupling of ...
allo's user avatar
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1 answer
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Is a job offer letter sent and accepted by email, legally binding?

TL;DR: You could also jump to the last paragraph. I was interviewed and selected by a software startup in India. Saturday was not a working day for them, but yet their tech VP, product manager and ...
Julia's user avatar
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8 votes
3 answers
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Can my landlord require me to agree to third-party terms of service if they install a smart lock on my door during my lease?

I am in the middle of my current fixed-term lease and have always had a mechanical key-based lock on my apartment door. My landlord has announced that the doors of all apartments will shortly be ...
user37812's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
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Can an airline forcibly remove a senior citizen who is wearing a soiled adult diaper?

I am curious to know if an airline has a legal right to forcibly remove a senior citizen from an airplane if it is discovered that this person is wearing a soiled adult diaper. Say for example that ...
user57467's user avatar
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8 votes
2 answers
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How can a license agreement or terms of use be enforced on a minor?

Since a license agreement/terms of use document is a contract between the publisher and the end-user, and since minors are prohibited from entering into legally binding contracts in most U.S. states, ...
Wes Sayeed's user avatar
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7 votes
3 answers
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Legality of creating bot accounts in Facebook/Twitter/Instagram

I am a programmer and have a job offer to create a script that will automate the creation of a Bot Farm. So my boss wants me to develop a program to mass-create Facebook/Twitter/Instagram accounts. ...
Maxim Yefremov's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
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Why exclude 13 world countries from international sweepstakes or giveaways?

Why are 13 countries excluded from various contests, giveaways, sweepstakes run by many different types of organizations on the Web? These countries are: Taiwan, South Korea, Portugal, Italy, Austria,...
babou's user avatar
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Does a German visitor implicitly agree to a website’s Terms of Service when reading a page?

When Bob visits a website and reads a page, does he implicitly agree to the website’s Terms of Service? The ToS are linked from each page (e.g., in the footer), and they say something like "By using ...
unor's user avatar
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7 votes
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Can your ToS ban law enforcement?

Researching something I stumbled over the following Terms of service for a website: Notwithstanding any other part of these Terms of Service, and notwithstanding any other express or implied grant of ...
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Is it even possible to use the Google Maps API without violating their terms of use?

I went to the Google Maps API terms of use page and scrolled down and found section at 10.5f, which read: No incorporating Google software into other software. You will not incorporate any ...
Katgus's user avatar
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7 votes
1 answer
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What's the validity of different versions of Terms of Service (Software, Web)

Many people sit around and nitpick about wording that's added or subtracted. They have many terms for this but its essentially everything they get you to agree before they allow you to use a web ...
helena4's user avatar
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6 votes
1 answer
427 views

Accepting online contracts on behalf of a corporation

I use a computer and the Internet for work. I use a lot of software that is licensed to my employer. Say some software licensed to my employer pops up its license on my employer's computer and demands ...
interfect's user avatar
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6 votes
1 answer
103 views

The circumvention of terms and conditions

There are sites, for example 'moodys.com', which require an explicit agreement to the terms and conditions on every vist (e.g. https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-affirms-Chang-Hwa-Commercial-Banks-...
J. Doe's user avatar
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6 votes
3 answers
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How to Prove, Legally, That a User Actually Clicked the "I Accept" for TOS, etc

In a click-wrap scenario, how does one prove, legally, that a user actually clicked or checked the "i accept" or equivalent on a given site. e.g. what if the website owner doesn't track clicks, ...
GWR's user avatar
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6 votes
1 answer
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Can I resell my Amazon gift card?

I bought an Amazon gift card, and I would like to sell it to my friend. However Amazon Gift Card Terms and Conditions §2 states: Gift Cards cannot be reloaded, resold, transferred for value or ...
Doug's user avatar
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1 answer
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EU Cookie Law can I use cookies before users' consent?

I am trying to get my website to be EU Cookie compliant and I have encountered some plugins which have something called "implied consent" in other words a popup appears on the website saying something ...
Petar Vasilev's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
147 views

How prominent must terms of service be?

How easy must it be to find a website's terms of service? I assume that if it's very difficult to find, then users couldn't be reasonably expected to know the terms of service. Are there any ...
Jeff Caros's user avatar
6 votes
4 answers
908 views

What is the point of website Terms and Conditions?

I was considering answering How prominent must terms of service be?; when I was struck by a thought: what is the point of website Terms and Conditions anyway? Clearly, if they form a contract and ...
Dale M's user avatar
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6 votes
1 answer
293 views

What can be the consequences of indemnification clauses in online terms of use?

A lot of online services prompt users to accept conditions of use that have clauses for indemnification that look very much like there is a chance that the user who pays for the service can possibly ...
OlimpPro's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
830 views

Can a dispute resolution clause be set aside?

In relating to an international contract that includes a provision that in 'All dispute in relation to user agreements will be referred to California by Arbitration My question : If the disputes ...
snowball's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
147 views

Can written notices such as company terms and conditions be rejected on grounds of being too long

Sometimes companies post 30 page terms and conditions notices that an end user must accept by clicking in a box. Can such agreements be rejected well after the fact (after clicking) on grounds like: ...
crokusek's user avatar
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5 votes
2 answers
1k views

Is "cheating" in offline, single-player games illegal?

I understand there are laws like the Circumvention of Technological Measure (CTM), Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). According to these laws it's considered ...
Jack's user avatar
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5 votes
2 answers
2k views

Are terms of service legal contracts?

Are ToS considered contracts in and of themselves, enforceable under contract/civil law? Generally I'm talking about the Common Law systems in the major regions (UK, North America and Oceania). ...
Terms of Endearment's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
373 views

Is using hidden city ticketing a theft of service?

In some cases, A-B-C flights (from A to C with layover at B) cost less than a direct A-B flight with the same company. "Hidden city ticketing" is the practice of taking the cheaper A-B-C ...
Therac's user avatar
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5 votes
1 answer
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can I get sued without accepting EULA

I plan publishing information in an article about Software which is the result of people reverse engineering the software. The author of the software has been attempting to sue people who made use of ...
user17160's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
2k views

Are "exact change only" policies legal?

I parked in a garage that has an automated pay-to-park kiosk - you specify how many hours you wish to purchase, and then insert payment. For two hours of parking, the price was listed as $6. It was ...
alexw's user avatar
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5 votes
1 answer
424 views

Is my lyrics searching program illegal?

I have developed a program that scans your media folder, finds the lyrics of each song online and saves them. To do this, my program manages to find the website where the lyrics is posted (I use ...
Ant's user avatar
  • 153
5 votes
2 answers
888 views

What if the user disagreed with the Terms of Service, but still registered on a website?

This is purely hypothetical, based on an anecdote told on a web design lecture a long time ago. Most websites nowadays require you to click on a little checkbox that usually says I agree to the Terms ...
fstanis's user avatar
  • 507
5 votes
1 answer
221 views

To what degree do I have to comply to COPPA in this scenario?

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) is designed to restrict sites collecting information about children under the age of 13 years of age. If I am operating a general purpose web ...
Sam Weaver's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
105 views

Host a public wiki website: how to make every contributors' content to be licensed under CC-SA automatically?

I'm trying to host a wiki website which is similar to Wikipedia: all contents licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Besides putting a footnote at each page to explicitly ...
xuhdev's user avatar
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5 votes
1 answer
378 views

Website Registration Terms Agreement - Implicit With a Blurb or Need Checkbox?

During sign-up, the user must agree to the terms and conditions and privacy policy. Is it sufficient to state: "by registering, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy" (where the words ...
GWR's user avatar
  • 282
5 votes
1 answer
91 views

What does this "Forfeiture of the right of withdrawal" section mean in a Terms of Service agreement?

My client has asked me to sign up for toggl.com so they can do their taxes. However, I saw this alarming section in the Terms of Service and am now unsure as to whether it is a good idea to sign up: ...
ijt's user avatar
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5 votes
0 answers
98 views

Does Google routinely form contracts by accessing web sites with their crawler?

Many web sites contain terms of service, where the web site puts a link to "Terms" or similar, and anyone who accesses the web site forms a contract with the web site operator under those ...
interfect's user avatar
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5 votes
0 answers
487 views

#SOreadytohelp - international giveaway without terms and conditions? [closed]

Currently StackOverflow is celebrating their 10 millionth question. They are randomly distributing a total of 400 t-shirts among participants, over a period of one month. Participation is done by ...
freekvd's user avatar
  • 151
4 votes
2 answers
2k views

Can HOA force you to pay dues for a community service you do not use?

To begin this, I have lived in this residence for a decade now. The community charges $300 annually for access to the community pool, to which I only actually used the first three years living here. I ...
Neuromeda's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
2k views

What prevents companies form putting "You can't sue me" in their disclaimer?

In a disclaimer or a Terms of Use document, there are often pages and pages of statements like "We are not liable if you do this", "We are not liable if you do this", "We will not give more than $50 ...
wythagoras's user avatar

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