Terms of Service

These Terms govern your use of Clustar — the mobile app, the website at clustar.space, and any related services (together, the “Service”). By creating an account or using the Service you agree to these Terms. If you don’t agree, please don’t use Clustar.

1. Who can use Clustar

You must be at least 16 years old to use Clustar. If you’re under 18, you confirm that a parent or guardian has reviewed and agreed to these Terms on your behalf.

You must not use the Service if you have previously been removed for violating these Terms, or if you are barred from using it under applicable law.

2. Your account

• You sign up with a phone number, email address, or Google account. You are responsible for keeping access to that credential secure.
• You choose a public handle. Handles that impersonate others, imply official affiliation you don’t have, or contain slurs may be reclaimed.
• You are responsible for everything posted from your account, including posts made under a burner identity.
• One person, one account. Creating additional accounts to evade a suspension is not allowed.

3. How Clustar works

Understanding the mechanics matters, because they shape what you agree to:

• Location-scoped posts. When you post a clustar, you set a radius (roughly 20 metres to 1 kilometre). Only people physically inside that radius can see it in their feed.
• Everything expires. Clustars live between 1 and 24 hours, then they vanish. Replies and reactions vanish with the parent clustar.
• Travelling clustars. If you mark a clustar as travelling, its anchor point follows your device location while it is alive. This requires background location permission, which you can revoke at any time.
• Two identities. Each clustar, reply, and direct message can be sent as your real handle or as an anonymous burner. Burner handles rotate on a weekly cadence.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to use Clustar to post, send, or share anything that:

• Is illegal, or promotes or facilitates illegal activity (including the sale of controlled substances, weapons, or stolen goods)
• Sexualises minors in any way, or contains child sexual abuse material. We report this to the relevant authorities without exception.
• Harasses, threatens, bullies, stalks, or incites violence against any person or group
• Contains hate speech targeting people based on ethnicity, religion, nationality, disability, gender, sexual orientation, or any other protected characteristic
• Doxes anyone — publishing private information such as home addresses, phone numbers, financial details, or government IDs without consent
• Shares intimate images of a person without their consent
• Impersonates another person, brand, or organisation in a way likely to mislead
• Is spam, bulk unsolicited promotion, or manipulates the feed through automation
• Infringes someone else’s copyright, trademark, or other rights

You also agree not to:

• Spoof or falsify your location to appear somewhere you are not
• Scrape, crawl, or bulk-collect content or user data from the Service
• Reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract source code, except where that restriction is prohibited by law
• Probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of our systems without written permission, or bypass authentication and rate limits
• Use the Service to build a competing product or train a machine learning model on user content

5. Burner identities and anonymity

Burner identities hide who you are from other users. They do not make you anonymous to us.

Burner rotation is limited to once every seven days. This is an anti-abuse measure — it prevents someone from generating a fresh identity after every hostile post.

6. Your content

You own what you post

You keep ownership of the text, photos, and other material you post. We don’t claim it.

The licence you give us

To operate the Service, you grant Clustar a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, display, and transmit your content — solely for the purpose of running and improving Clustar. This licence ends when your content expires or you delete it, except where copies persist in backups for a limited period or where we must retain material for legal reasons.

Content expiry is not a guarantee of deletion

When a clustar expires it stops being visible and we delete it from active storage. Encrypted backups may retain it for up to 30 days. Content reported for abuse may be retained longer while under review or where retention is legally required.

7. Moderation and enforcement

Users can report content and block other users. Reports are reviewed by a human moderator. Depending on severity we may:

• Remove the reported content
• Issue a warning
• Temporarily restrict posting
• Suspend or permanently terminate the account
• Report the matter to law enforcement

We may act on content proactively, without a report, where we become aware of a clear violation. We aim to be proportionate, but we don’t guarantee a specific outcome or timeline for any report.

8. Service availability

Clustar is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. We are an early-stage product. Features may change, break, or be removed. We may suspend the Service for maintenance, and we don’t promise uninterrupted access or that content will always be delivered.

9. Location and safety

Clustar shows content based on physical proximity. That means people near you can see what you post, and by posting you reveal that you are somewhere within the radius you chose.

• We never display your exact coordinates to other users. Distances are shown approximately.
• Choosing a very small radius narrows the area someone could infer you are in. Consider that before posting sensitive material.
• You are responsible for your own safety when meeting anyone you encounter through the Service. We do not verify identities.

10. Third-party services

Clustar relies on third-party providers for sign-in, SMS delivery, hosting, and push notifications. Your use of those features is also subject to those providers’ terms. We are not responsible for third-party services we don’t control.

11. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Clustar and its operators are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, data, or goodwill, arising from your use of the Service.

Where liability cannot be excluded, our total aggregate liability to you is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or NGN 10,000.

Nothing in these Terms excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot legally be limited.

12. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold Clustar harmless from claims, damages, and reasonable legal costs arising from your content, your use of the Service, or your breach of these Terms.

13. Ending your account

You can delete your account at any time from the app’s settings, or by emailing us. Deletion removes your profile, handles, and remaining active content. Some records may persist in backups or where retention is legally required.

We may suspend or terminate your account if you materially breach these Terms, if required by law, or if continuing to serve you would create risk for other users. Where practical we will tell you why.

14. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as the product changes. If a change materially affects your rights we will notify you in the app or by email before it takes effect. Continuing to use Clustar after that means you accept the updated Terms.

15. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Disputes will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Nigerian courts, except where mandatory consumer protection law in your country of residence gives you the right to bring a claim locally.

16. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email clustarsinfo@gmail.com.