Stash - Terms of Service

INTERIM DOCUMENT - NOT YET REVIEWED BY COUNSEL

This is a provisional set of terms written in-house so that Stash has something honest and readable to show users during alpha testing. It has not been reviewed or approved by a lawyer. It is not a substitute for legal advice, and it may be replaced in full once counsel reviews it. Every item in [SQUARE BRACKETS] is an open decision that the owner or counsel must settle before these terms are used in public release.

Version: 2026-08-31 Effective date: [EFFECTIVE DATE - SET WHEN PUBLISHED] (drafted 2026-08-22) Applies to: the Stash mobile app and the services behind it

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1. Who we are and what this is

Stash is a food journaling app. You use it to record dishes and drinks you have eaten, the places you visited, and deals you have found, and to keep those records in one place.

Stash is operated by Bitter Melon Technologies LLC ("we", "us", "our"). These terms are the agreement between you and us about your use of Stash. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the app.

2. Accepting these terms

You accept these terms when you create a Stash account. The sign-up screen asks you to confirm your age and your agreement to these terms in a single checkbox, and we record that you accepted, when you accepted, and which version you accepted.

These terms carry a version number. If we publish a materially different version, we will ask you to accept the new one before you keep using the app.

3. Who can use Stash

You must be at least 13 years old to create a Stash account. [MINIMUM AGE - the app currently enforces a 13+ self-affirmation at sign-up; CONFIRM with counsel, including whether any market requires 16+ and whether a date of birth is needed instead of an affirmation.]

When you sign up you confirm that you meet this age requirement. We do not currently verify your age beyond asking you. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under the minimum age, we may remove it.

You also confirm that you are allowed to use Stash under the laws that apply to you, and that we have not previously removed your account for breaking these terms.

4. Your account

You need an account to use Stash. You choose a username and give us an email address, and you pick a password.

A few things are your responsibility:

• Keep your password to yourself, and use a password you do not use anywhere else.
• Give us an email address you actually control, because it is how we verify your account and how you reset your password.
• Everything done through your account is treated as done by you, so tell us promptly if you think someone else has access to it.

We reserve some usernames. Names that impersonate us, our staff, an app store, or a system role are not available, and we filter names that are abusive or offensive. We may require you to change a username that slips through.

5. Your content

"Your content" means everything you put into Stash. That includes your dish, drink, deal and spot entries, your photos, your notes and ratings, your taste preferences and dietary information, and anything you share with other people through the app.

Your content stays yours. We do not claim ownership of your photos or your writing.

The permission you give us

To actually run the app we need your permission to handle your content. So you give us a licence that is:

• non-exclusive (you keep every right to use your own content however you like),
• worldwide and royalty-free (our servers and users are in different places, and we do not pay you or charge you for this),
• limited to operating Stash.

Specifically, that permission lets us store your content, back it up, prepare your photos so they display properly, and show your content back to you and to the people you have chosen to show it to. Where you share a dish with a friend, or post a deal that appears to other users on Discover, this licence is what allows us to display it to them.

It also lets us remove or hide content, which is covered in section 7.

What this permission does not cover

We are not taking a general commercial licence in your content. This permission does not let us sell your photos, license them to other companies, put them in advertising, or use them to promote Stash outside the app, unless you separately and specifically agree to that. [MARKETING USE - CONFIRM whether the owner wants a separate, clearly optional opt-in for using user photos in Stash marketing. The current draft deliberately excludes it.]

The permission lasts as long as we need it to show the content where you put it. If you delete a piece of content or your account, the permission ends for that content, except for copies described in section 11 of the Privacy Policy and any copies other users already hold.

You need the rights to what you post

You confirm that you own your content or otherwise have the right to post it, and that posting it does not break anyone else's rights. Do not upload photos taken by someone else without their permission.

6. Rules for using Stash

Use Stash for what it is for. Do not do any of the following.

• Post content that is illegal, hateful, harassing, threatening, or sexually explicit.
• Post content that sexualises or endangers a child, which we report and act on without exception.
• Impersonate another person, a business, or us.
• Upload photos of other people who have not agreed to appear, or content you do not have the rights to.
• Post deals, restaurants, or reviews that you know to be false, or post the same thing repeatedly to spam the app.
• Harass, stalk, or try to find the real-world location of another user.
• Try to break, overload, probe, or reverse engineer the app or its servers, or get into accounts or data that are not yours.
• Scrape or bulk-collect content or user information from the app.
• Use automated tools to create accounts.

If you break these rules we may remove content, restrict features, or close your account, as described in section 8.

7. Reporting, blocking, and content removal

Stash gives you tools to deal with other users.

• Block. You can block another user. Once you do, neither of you sees the other's shared content in the app.
• Report. You can report a user or a shared post, choosing a reason such as spam, harassment, inappropriate content, or impersonation.
• Takedown. We can hide a reported post from everyone while we look at it, and we can leave it hidden.

Reports are reviewed by people on our team, and we act on what we find. We look at reports in the order we receive them and we do not promise a response time.

Please be honest about this: we do not automatically scan photos or text before they are posted. Moderation happens when someone reports something, or when we notice it ourselves. That means content that breaks the rules can be visible for a while before it is removed.

We may remove content or restrict an account when we reasonably believe the rules have been broken, when we are required to by law, or when leaving it up would put someone at risk. We will try to tell you when we take action on your content, but there are cases where we may not be able to.

8. Suspending or closing accounts

You can close your account at any time from the app, and section 9 explains what happens.

We may suspend or close your account if you break these terms, if your account is used in a way that harms other users or us, or if we are required to. Where a problem is minor and fixable we will usually try a lesser step first, such as removing the specific content or asking you to change a username.

If we close your account for breaking the rules, you may not create a new one without our agreement.

9. Deleting your account

You can delete your account from inside the app.

Deletion is not immediate, on purpose. When you request it, we schedule your account for permanent deletion 30 days later, and we email you to confirm. During those 30 days your account is recoverable: sign back in, and the app offers you the option to keep your account, which cancels the deletion.

Note that signing in on its own does not cancel the deletion. You have to choose to keep the account. If you do nothing, we send a reminder shortly before the deadline, and then the deletion goes ahead and is permanent.

What is and is not removed is set out in the Privacy Policy, section 11. Please read it, because a small number of things do survive deletion.

10. Food, allergies, and your health

Stash is a journal, not a health or safety tool.

Stash lets you record allergies, dietary patterns, and ingredients you avoid, and it uses them to personalise what it shows you. That personalisation is based only on what you and other users have typed in. We do not have ingredient lists from restaurants, we do not verify what is in any dish, and we cannot know whether a kitchen has changed a recipe or cross-contaminated a plate.

Never rely on Stash to decide whether a food is safe for you to eat. If you have a food allergy or intolerance, or any medical condition affected by what you eat, check directly with the restaurant and with a medical professional. Nothing in Stash is medical or nutritional advice.

11. Deals, restaurants, and other user content

Deals, restaurant details, prices, and opening times in Stash come from users and from data we have loaded to get the map started. They go out of date, and they can simply be wrong.

We do not verify them, and we are not the seller. Any deal is between you and the restaurant, and a restaurant is under no obligation to honour something posted in Stash. Please check with the venue before you rely on a deal.

Content posted by other users is theirs, not ours, and does not represent our views.

12. Our own rights

The Stash app, its name, its logo, its design, and the software behind it belong to us or to the people we license them from. These terms do not give you any right to use our name or branding.

You may use the app as an ordinary user. You may not copy, modify, resell, or create derivative versions of it, except where the law says you can regardless of this clause.

13. Services we rely on

Stash runs on services provided by other companies, including for maps, photo storage, hosting, email, crash reporting, and analytics. They are listed by category and purpose in the Privacy Policy.

Those services have their own terms, we do not control them, and we are not responsible for what they do. Map content in particular is supplied by our maps provider and is subject to that provider's terms.

14. Stash is provided as it is

Stash is offered as is and as available.

We are a small team and the app is under active development, currently in testing. We do not promise that it will be uninterrupted, error free, or free of bugs, that your data will always sync, or that any particular feature will keep existing. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim implied warranties, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

Keep your own copies of photos that matter to you. [DATA LOSS - CONFIRM whether the owner wants to commit to any backup or export guarantee. The current draft promises none, which matches what is built today.]

Some places do not allow these exclusions, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

15. Limits on our liability

To the fullest extent the law allows:

• We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential losses, or for lost profits, lost data, or lost goodwill.
• We are not liable for what other users post or do, for what a restaurant does, or for a decision you make based on information in the app.
• Our total liability to you for any claim connected with Stash is limited to [LIABILITY CAP - e.g. the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or a fixed sum such as USD 100. Stash is free today, so CONFIRM the cap with counsel].

Nothing here limits liability that cannot legally be limited, such as liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. Some places do not allow these limits, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

16. Indemnity

[INDEMNITY - CONFIRM whether counsel wants a user indemnity clause here, and how broad. A consumer app with no paid tier may not need one, and an overbroad indemnity is unenforceable in several jurisdictions. Left deliberately unwritten rather than copied in.]

17. Changes to these terms

We will change these terms as the app changes, and certainly once counsel has reviewed them.

When we make a material change we will raise the version number, show you the new terms in the app, and ask you to accept them before you carry on using Stash. For small corrections we will update the version and the effective date without interrupting you. If you do not accept a new version, you can stop using Stash and delete your account.

18. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California. Any dispute will be handled in the courts of [VENUE - CITY/STATE/COUNTRY, CONFIRM. The governing law above is settled; the court is a separate answer and is still open].

[ARBITRATION - OPEN DECISION. Counsel must decide whether Stash requires binding arbitration and a class action waiver, or leaves disputes to the courts. Nothing is assumed here, because the choice has real consequences for users and cannot be made by an engineer. Whichever is chosen, any consumer rights that cannot be waived in the user's country are unaffected.]

19. The rest

If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force. If we do not enforce something straight away, we have not given up the right to enforce it later. These terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the whole agreement between you and us about Stash. You may not transfer your rights under these terms; we may transfer ours if our business is transferred, and we will tell you if that happens.

20. Contact us

Questions about these terms, or a legal notice:

• Email: [email protected]
• Post: [BUSINESS ADDRESS - CONFIRM]

To report content or a user, use the report tool in the app, which reaches us fastest.