Terms of Use

1. Who these Terms apply to

These Terms apply to every person who accesses or uses Herpegram, including beta testers, free users and subscribers. References to 'Herpegram', 'we', 'us' and 'our' mean the person or legal entity operating the Herpegram service. The operator's full legal identity, service address and formal legal contact details must be inserted here before public commercial launch.

Some features may also have additional terms, including Infection+ subscription terms, Beta Programme Terms, Sewer Rules, safety rules or feature-specific notices. If an additional term conflicts with these Terms for that feature, the more specific term applies to the extent of the conflict.

2. Eligibility and age

Herpegram is intended only for adults aged 18 or over. You must not create or use an account if you are under 18.

Age verification is intended to be performed by an independent third-party age-assurance provider. Herpegram does not need to receive or retain the identity document, selfie, date of birth or other source material used by that provider to establish age. Herpegram should receive only the minimum result necessary to confirm eligibility, such as whether the account has been verified as belonging to a person aged 18 or over, together with limited verification metadata where reasonably necessary for audit, security or legal compliance.

The age-assurance provider may process personal data under its own privacy information and contractual arrangements. A statement that the service is 18+ does not remove any statutory duties that may apply where children are likely to access a service.

3. Accounts and Variant identity

A Herpegram account is personal to you. You must provide accurate information where the registration process requires it, keep your authentication methods secure and take reasonable steps to prevent unauthorised access.

Herpegram uses a pseudonymous public identity system. Your public Variant identity is not a licence to impersonate another real person, conceal fraud, evade enforcement or expose another user's real identity.

You must not sell, transfer, rent or share your account; create accounts for deceptive or abusive purposes; circumvent an account restriction; or use another person's credentials without permission. We may limit the number of accounts, devices or simultaneous sessions associated with a person.

4. Pseudonymity, voluntary self-identification and the privacy of other Variants

Herpegram is designed so that users can participate through a pseudonymous Variant identity without making their real-world identity the centre of the service. You must respect that design.

You are responsible for personal information that you voluntarily choose to reveal about yourself through User Content, including your real name, photograph, employer, social-media accounts, external usernames, email address, telephone number, location or any other information capable of linking your Variant identity to you outside Herpegram. If you voluntarily identify yourself or publish information that enables other people to identify or contact you outside Herpegram, you accept the reasonably foreseeable privacy and contact risks arising from that disclosure. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Herpegram is not responsible for loss, unwanted contact, reputational consequences or other harm resulting solely from personal information that you voluntarily chose to make public or share with other users.

Nothing in the preceding paragraph excludes or limits any responsibility that Herpegram cannot lawfully exclude, including duties relating to unlawful content, platform safety, data protection, negligence where liability cannot be excluded, or Herpegram's own acts or omissions.

You must not use Herpegram to expose, solicit, trade, infer or coordinate the discovery of another Variant's private identity or private contact information without a lawful basis and that person's permission.

• Do not publish another person's private home address, telephone number, personal email address, private account credentials or non-public identifying records.
• Do not encourage others to identify, locate, stalk or contact a Variant outside Herpegram against their wishes.
• Do not use technical exploits, social engineering or coordinated investigation to defeat Herpegram's privacy controls.
• Publicly available information is not automatically fair game where its use on Herpegram would amount to harassment, stalking, unlawful processing or a serious invasion of privacy.

5. User content

You remain responsible for content you submit, including Contaminations, comments or 'Vomits', profile information, polls, reports, media and other material ('User Content'). You must have the rights and permissions necessary to submit it.

You retain ownership of intellectual property rights you hold in your User Content. You grant Herpegram a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, format, transmit, display, index and technically process that content only as reasonably necessary to operate, secure, moderate, improve and provide the service, and to comply with law. This licence ends when the relevant content is deleted except where continued retention or processing is reasonably necessary for backups, legal obligations, disputes, safety, fraud prevention or preserved moderation evidence.

Herpegram does not endorse a statement merely because it appears on the service, is recommended by CERBERUS, receives engagement or remains online.

6. The Sewer and acceptable expression

Herpegram deliberately permits a wider range of abrasive expression than many mainstream social platforms. Profanity, sarcasm, ridicule, robust disagreement, criticism, unpopular opinions and insults are not automatically prohibited merely because another user finds them offensive.

Context still matters. Conduct may be restricted where it becomes unlawful, threatening, seriously harassing, coercive, discriminatory in a manner prohibited by applicable law, privacy-invasive or otherwise creates a material safety risk. The detailed Sewer Rules form part of these Terms.

7. Prohibited conduct and content

You must not use Herpegram for unlawful activity or to materially facilitate unlawful activity. We may remove or restrict content and accounts where reasonably necessary to enforce these Terms, comply with law or protect users and the service.

• Credible threats of violence, instructions intended to facilitate violent wrongdoing, or targeted incitement to violence.
• Doxxing, stalking, coercive harassment or publication of unlawfully obtained private information.
• Child sexual abuse material, sexual exploitation, non-consensual intimate imagery or other illegal sexual content.
• Fraud, scams, phishing, credential theft, malicious impersonation or deceptive schemes intended to obtain money, data or access.
• Malware, destructive code, unauthorised security exploitation or attempts to compromise Herpegram, Pathogen HQ, its databases, users or service providers.
• Spam, artificial engagement, coordinated manipulation, unauthorised bots, scraping or bulk account creation.
• Content that infringes intellectual property rights or other legal rights.
• Attempts to evade moderation, account restrictions, safety systems, upload restrictions, session controls or technical access controls.

8. Images and media

If Herpegram permits media uploads, you are responsible for ensuring that you have a lawful right to upload the media and that doing so does not unlawfully expose another person. Herpegram may apply technical privacy measures, file limits, transformations, face-obscuring systems, metadata removal or other safeguards.

You must not deliberately defeat those safeguards. A technical safeguard is an additional protection, not permission to upload material that would otherwise breach these Terms or the law.

9. Mutations, Clusters and social features

Mutations, Clusters, reactions, rankings, badges, challenges and similar Herpegram mechanics are service features. They do not certify a person's identity, character, trustworthiness or real-world relationship with another user.

We may change, rebalance, suspend or retire social mechanics where reasonably necessary for product development, safety, abuse prevention or service operation. You must not manipulate these systems through fake accounts, automation, coordinated inauthentic behaviour or technical interference.

10. CERBERUS, ranking and recommendations

Herpegram may use automated systems, including CERBERUS, to organise, rank, recommend, search, filter or select content. Ranking can consider signals such as recency, interactions, relationships, user settings, content characteristics, safety signals and other service-relevant factors.

No user has a contractual right to a particular level of reach, ranking, recommendation, engagement or visibility. We may adjust ranking systems and experiments over time. Where automated processing has legal or similarly significant effects on a person, any additional rights required by data-protection law will apply.

11. Transmissions and private messaging

Where private messaging ('Transmissions') is available, additional technical and safety conditions may apply, including trusted-device requirements, access PINs, request controls, media limits and end-to-end encryption.

End-to-end encryption is intended to prevent Herpegram from having routine access to the plaintext of private message content in transit or storage. It does not make unlawful conduct lawful, prevent recipients from preserving or reporting material they receive, or guarantee that a recipient's device is secure.

Reports concerning private conversations may include information deliberately supplied by the reporting user and associated metadata necessary to investigate the report. The Privacy Policy explains the applicable processing.

12. Infection+ and paid services

Some Herpegram features may require a paid subscription such as Infection+. Before a paid subscription is offered, the applicable price, billing interval, renewal arrangements, cancellation method and any statutory cancellation rights will be shown to the consumer and governed by the Infection+ Terms.

Nothing in these Terms removes rights that consumers cannot lawfully waive. If a paid-service term conflicts with mandatory consumer law, the mandatory law prevails.

13. Beta and experimental features

Herpegram may provide unfinished, experimental or invitation-only features. Beta functionality may contain bugs, change materially, become unavailable or require data to be migrated or reset. We will not use a beta label to exclude legal duties that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Where a separate Beta Programme applies, its additional terms form part of your agreement while you participate.

14. Reports, moderation and enforcement

Users may be able to report content or Variants. A report is a request for review, not proof of wrongdoing. You must not knowingly submit false reports or weaponise reporting systems to harass another user.

To preserve evidence, Herpegram may create a moderation snapshot of reported material and relevant context at the time of a report. This can remain available to authorised moderation personnel even if the original material is later edited or deleted, where retention is lawful and necessary.

Depending on severity, context, history and legal obligations, enforcement may include no action, a warning, reduced functionality, content removal, visibility restrictions, temporary suspension, permanent account termination or preservation/referral of evidence where required or permitted by law. Where an appeal mechanism is required or offered, users may challenge eligible decisions through it.

15. Blocking and personal safety controls

Blocking and similar controls are provided to help users manage interactions. They are not emergency services and cannot guarantee that another person will never encounter content or create another account. Where there is an immediate risk of physical harm, users should contact the appropriate emergency or law-enforcement service rather than rely solely on platform tools.

16. Intellectual property belonging to Herpegram

Except for User Content and third-party material, the Herpegram service, software, visual identity, original artwork, Herbert characters, CERBERUS branding, interface elements, logos and other proprietary materials are owned by or licensed to the operator and are protected by applicable intellectual-property law.

These Terms give you a limited, personal, revocable, non-exclusive right to use the service as intended. They do not transfer ownership of Herpegram intellectual property to you.

17. Security and technical restrictions

You must not probe, scan, attack, overload, reverse engineer where prohibited by law, bypass access controls, extract protected data, interfere with another user's session, access administrative systems without authorisation or exploit a vulnerability for purposes beyond responsible verification and reporting.

If you discover a security vulnerability, do not access more data than reasonably necessary to demonstrate it, do not retain or disclose personal data obtained through it, and report it through Herpegram's designated security route when available.

18. Availability and changes to the service

We aim to operate Herpegram reliably, but we do not promise uninterrupted or error-free availability. Maintenance, security incidents, provider outages, legal requirements and product changes can interrupt features.

We may modify or discontinue features. If a change materially affects a paid service or a user's contractual rights, we will provide any notice, remedy or cancellation option required by applicable law.

19. Suspension, termination and deletion

You may stop using Herpegram and, where the service provides the facility, request account deletion. Deletion does not necessarily require immediate erasure of every record where continued retention is lawfully required for security, fraud prevention, legal claims, financial records, moderation evidence or regulatory obligations.

We may suspend or terminate access for a material or repeated breach of these Terms, a serious safety risk, unlawful use, attempts to compromise the service, or where required by law. We will act proportionately where the circumstances and applicable law require it.

20. Third-party services

Herpegram relies on third-party infrastructure and service providers. Their services may be subject to separate terms and availability. Where third parties process personal data on our behalf, that processing is addressed in the Privacy Policy and applicable data-processing arrangements.

21. Disclaimers

Herpegram hosts user-generated content. Users' statements are their own. We do not guarantee that User Content is accurate, complete, safe, useful or suitable for reliance, and content on Herpegram should not be treated as professional medical, legal, financial or other regulated advice merely because a user presents it that way.

Nothing in these Terms excludes statutory guarantees or obligations that cannot lawfully be excluded.

22. Liability

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes liability where doing so would be unlawful, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or other liability that cannot legally be limited.

Subject to those protections and to applicable consumer law, we are not responsible for losses that were not reasonably foreseeable when the agreement was made, losses caused by events outside our reasonable control, or business losses suffered by a person using a consumer service for commercial purposes. Any further financial cap on liability must be settled by the operator and reviewed by UK counsel before commercial launch.

23. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms to reflect changes in law, regulation, safety requirements, technology or the service. The current version will state its effective date. If a change materially affects existing users' rights or obligations, we will provide reasonable notice where required and will not treat continued use as consent where the law requires a different form of agreement.

24. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, subject to any mandatory consumer protections that apply where you live. If you are a consumer, nothing here deprives you of any right to bring proceedings in a court that applicable law entitles you to use.

Before public commercial launch, this clause and the operator's formal dispute/contact procedure should be reviewed against the countries in which Herpegram will actively offer the service.

25. General terms

If a court finds part of these Terms unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue to apply to the extent permitted by law. A delay in enforcing a right does not automatically waive that right. You may not transfer your contractual rights or obligations where doing so would prejudice Herpegram or another person without permission, except where applicable law gives you that right.

26. Contact

Legal notices, formal complaints and questions about these Terms should be sent through Herpegram's designated legal contact route. Before these Terms become the production contract, this section must contain the operator's legal name, geographic/service address and appropriate contact details.