Terms of Service

1. Who can use Porch

You must be at least 13 years old to use Porch. By using it, you confirm you meet that age requirement and that the information you give us is accurate. If you’re using Porch on behalf of someone else, you confirm you’re authorized to do so.

2. Your account

Keep your login details secure — you’re responsible for activity on your account. Use one account that’s really you; don’t impersonate others or create accounts to evade a suspension. Tell us promptly at support@your-domain.com if you think your account has been compromised.

3. The house rules

There’s really one rule: keep it kind. Treat the porch like it’s someone’s home — because it is. More concretely, you agree not to:

• ✕Harass, threaten, bully, or hate on anyone.
• ✕Post illegal content, or content that infringes someone else’s rights.
• ✕Share sexual content involving minors, or sexualize anyone under 18 — ever.
• ✕Spam, scam, phish, or distribute malware.
• ✕Scrape, crawl, or harvest data, or use bots to mass-knock or automate the service.
• ✕Break, probe, or circumvent Porch’s security or rate limits, or reverse-engineer the service.

Anything published to The Porch Press — the public local paper — is also reviewed against our Community Guidelines before it runs.

4. Your content

You own what you post. You keep all rights to it. To run Porch, you grant us a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, display, and transmit your content solely to operate and provide the service to you and the neighbors and communities you share it with. This license ends when you delete the content or your account, except for content others have already saved or copies retained in routine backups.

You’re responsible for what you post, and you confirm you have the right to share it. We’re not obligated to host anything, and we may remove content that breaks these Terms.

5. How Porch works

Connections (“neighbors”) are mutual and capped at 250. The only public response to a post is a Knock, which opens a private chat. There are no likes, public comments, follower counts, or algorithmic feed. Posts fade from feeds after 30 days. These are product features, described here so you know what to expect — they may evolve as Porch grows.

6. Privacy

Your use of Porch is also governed by our Privacy Policy, which explains what we collect and how we use it. Please read it.

7. Suspension and termination

You can delete your account at any time from Settings. We may suspend or terminate accounts that break these Terms, create risk for other people, or for legal reasons. We’ll try to give notice where it’s reasonable to do so.

8. The service is provided “as is”

Porch is offered on an “as is” and “as available” basis, without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We don’t promise the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that content will always be preserved — Porch is intentionally ephemeral.

9. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Porch will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or any loss of data, profits, or goodwill, arising from your use of Porch. Some jurisdictions don’t allow these limits, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

10. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we’ll update the effective date above and, where appropriate, notify you in the app. Continuing to use Porch after a change means you accept the updated Terms.

11. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Where required, disputes will be handled by the courts located there.

12. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email Porch at support@your-domain.com.