The terms.

Privacy and your data

Our Privacy Policy describes the personal data we collect, how we use it, your sharing controls, and our data retention and deletion practices.

• No sale of personal data. We do not sell, rent, trade, or monetize your personal data. We do not use advertising trackers, advertising networks, advertising profiles, or data brokers.
• Location sharing controls. Nobody sees your exact location unless you grant it to them, and a grant never lasts more than 24 hours. You can grant your exact location to a specific person, to a group you belong to, or to the participants of an Event you take part in, and you can end a grant at any time. A grant to an Event, or to a group while that group has an upcoming Event, covers you only while you are within 25 miles of the Event's location; beyond that, they see that you are out of range. Your exact location is never shared publicly. Everyone else sees at most the area of the resort you are at, or the resort's name or a nearby town, as your sharing preferences allow, and people who are not your friends can be shown nothing at all. We keep only your most recent location, not a history of where you have been; the one exception is that your friends' Home feed can show when you arrived at a resort. Exact coordinates are stored only while a grant is active. Your location is deleted as soon as you stop sharing. If your updates stop without you stopping sharing, for example because your phone loses signal, people who could see your location see it marked as last seen, with its age, and it is deleted automatically one hour after your last update. A location you choose to send as a chat message is shared with that conversation and is not covered by these limits.
• Post visibility. When creating a post, you may select Public or Friends only. Posts default to Friends only. Public posts may appear in the broader feed.
• Date of birth. We collect your date of birth to verify eligibility and enforce the minimum age requirement. It is not visible to other users and is not used for advertising or age-based targeting.
• Website analytics. The hotlaps.app website uses Google Analytics as described in the Privacy Policy. The iOS and Android apps do not contain analytics SDKs.

Ownership and use of your content

You retain ownership of the posts, messages, Events, and other content you post through the Service. By posting content, you grant Squads a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, transmit, display, and distribute that content solely to operate the Service. We do not sell your content or use it for advertising.

You must have the rights necessary to post the content you submit. We may remove content that violates these Terms or that we reasonably believe is harmful.

Account deletion

You may delete your account at any time using the account deletion option in the app. Your data will be removed in accordance with our Privacy Policy, which explains the treatment of messages previously sent to other users.

Safety and assumption of risk

Skiing and snowboarding are inherently dangerous activities. Squads facilitates connections between users but does not assess terrain, weather or snow conditions, avalanche risk, or the suitability of other users as activity partners. You participate in activities and meet other users at your own risk.

You are responsible for your decisions and conduct while using the Service and participating in related activities. In particular:

• Select terrain and activities appropriate to your abilities.
• Comply with resort rules, the skier responsibility code, and posted closures.
• Exercise reasonable care when meeting other users, including meeting in public locations and informing a trusted person of your plans.
• If you are a teenager, select activity partners and location sharing settings with guidance from a parent or guardian.

Squads is not a safety, rescue, or emergency service. In an emergency, contact ski patrol or the appropriate emergency services. Do not rely on the Service for emergency assistance.

Acceptable use

Squads has a zero-tolerance policy: there is no tolerance for objectionable content or abusive users. Objectionable content includes content that is offensive, defamatory, obscene, hateful, threatening, harassing, or mean-spirited. Users who post objectionable content or engage in abusive conduct toward others will be removed from the Service and banned.

We reserve the right to remove, and are responsible for removing, any content that violates these Terms. You may report posts, messages, Events, comments, and profiles within the app, and you may block any user from their profile. We review reported content and act on violations within 24 hours, by removing the offending content and banning the user who posted it.

You must not use the Service to:

• Harass or threaten others, engage in hate speech, or share unwanted sexual content.
• Stalk or track another person. Presence and location information, including an exact location someone has granted you, may be used only to facilitate meeting other users.
• Impersonate another person or organization, create a false profile, or misrepresent yourself in a manner that puts others at risk.
• Conduct scams, distribute spam, recruit, or use Events to solicit sales.
• Collect or attempt to extract other users' data or location information.
• Post content that is offensive, defamatory, obscene, or mean-spirited, or that infringes another person's intellectual property or privacy rights.
• Send phishing messages or attempt to obtain another user's password, account, or personal information by deception.
• Upload or distribute viruses, malware, or other malicious code.
• Access the Service by automated means, scrape it, or attempt to interfere with, disrupt, or gain unauthorized access to the Service or its systems.
• Engage in unlawful activity or violate resort rules in a manner that endangers others.

Eligibility and account responsibilities

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service. You must provide your date of birth during account setup. If we learn that an account belongs to a person under 13, we will permanently block access and remove personal information while retaining the minimum account and sign-in provider records needed to enforce the block, as described in our Privacy Policy. The account holder may explicitly delete the account.

You must provide accurate account information, maintain the confidentiality of your password, and use only one account belonging to you. You must not impersonate another user, ski patrol, Squads, or any other person or organization.

Account suspension and termination

Users who post objectionable content or behave abusively will have their accounts terminated and will be permanently prohibited from re-registering. We may also suspend or terminate an account for any other violation of these Terms. For serious violations, including harassment, safety threats, or use by a person under 13, we may suspend an account immediately, before completing our review.

Disclaimer of warranties

Squads is provided "as is," without warranties of any kind. The Service may be unavailable, features may change, and location data may be inaccurate. You must not rely on the Service where its accuracy or availability is necessary for your safety.

Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Squads and its operators are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages, or for events or interactions between users, whether on or off the mountain. Content posted by users, including messages, posts, comments, and Events, reflects the views of the user who posted it, not Squads. We do not endorse user content and are not responsible for it, though we will remove content that violates these Terms. Our total liability for any claim is limited to $50. Some jurisdictions do not permit these limitations, so portions of this section may not apply to you.

Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Colorado, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules.

If you have a problem, contact us first at support@hotlaps.app. We will try to resolve it informally, and we ask that you give us 30 days to do so before starting a formal proceeding.

If a dispute cannot be resolved informally, you and we agree that it will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Denver, Colorado, and both of us consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts. Either of us may still bring an individual claim in small claims court if it qualifies.

Nothing in this section takes away any right you have under the mandatory consumer-protection laws of the country or state where you live, including the right to bring a claim there if the law of that place gives you that right.

We may transfer these Terms, and our rights and obligations under them, to a business entity we form to operate Squads, or to a successor that takes over the Service. We will update this document to name that entity when that happens. You may not transfer your account or your rights under these Terms to anyone else.

Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. For material changes, we will notify you through the app or by email before the changes take effect. We will update the effective date at the beginning of this document whenever these Terms change. Your continued use of the Service after updated Terms take effect constitutes acceptance of those Terms.