Terms of Service

These terms are the agreement between you and SnapEcho. They cover what you can expect from us, what we expect from you, and what happens when something goes wrong. What we do with your data is a separate question, answered in the Privacy Policy — where the two overlap, that page is the more detailed one. Like it, this is written to be read.

Read this part first: anyone with the link can get in

Event galleries are not password-protected. Anyone holding the event link, or able to scan the event QR code, can view everything in the gallery and add uploads of their own without signing in or identifying themselves.

That is the design, not a defect — it is what lets guests contribute in seconds at a wedding or a party. But it means a link shared onward is access shared onward, and we cannot take that access back for you. Treat an event gallery as a shared space, and share the link only as widely as you would share the photos.

Agreeing to these terms

By creating an account, creating an event, uploading anything, or simply viewing a gallery, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree with them, please do not use SnapEcho.

SnapEcho is operated from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. In these terms, "we" and "us" mean SnapEcho; "you" means whoever is using it, whether as an event organiser with an account or as a guest who scanned a code.

What SnapEcho does

SnapEcho lets you create a gallery for an event and collect photos, videos and audio recordings from the people who were there. Organisers create events and share a link or a printed QR code; guests open it and upload. Organisers can browse contributions, play them back as a slideshow, and delete anything they do not want to keep. Anyone viewing a ready item can also share or download it; shared photos and videos are watermarked, while voice notes are sent unchanged.

Accounts

Only organisers need an account; guests never do. To create one you must give a working email address and confirm it before you can sign in. Accounts are intended for adults — if you are not old enough to enter a binding agreement where you live, please do not create one.

You are responsible for keeping your password to yourself and for everything done through your account. We require passwords of at least eight characters mixing upper and lower case, digits and symbols, with at least six distinct characters, and we lock an account for fifteen minutes after five failed sign-in attempts. Those measures help; they do not substitute for a password you have not used elsewhere. Tell us promptly if you think someone else has got in.

One account per email address. Please do not create an account on someone else's behalf without their knowledge, or share one between people who should each have their own.

Your display name is public

The name on your account is shown to guests on your event pages, as "Hosted by …". It does not have to be your legal name, and you can change it whenever you like from your profile page. Your email address is never shown to guests.

Because it is public, do not use a display name that impersonates someone else, passes your event off as another organisation's, or is chosen to harass or mislead. We may change or clear a display name that does.

If you run an event, this part is yours

You chose the event, invited the guests and shared the link, so a few things sit with you rather than with us:

• Consent. Make sure the people at your event know their photos, video and voices may be collected in a shared gallery, and that they are willing. This matters most for recognisable faces, for recorded voices, and for children.
• Who you give the link to. Every person holding it can view and upload. Deciding how far it travels is your decision to make.
• What stays up. You can delete any individual upload or the whole event. If a guest asks you to remove their contribution, please do.
• Where the law applies to you. If your event is a commercial or professional one, obligations may apply to you that do not apply to us. Meeting them is your responsibility.

You are also responsible for what your guests upload to your event, to the extent that you can be — which is why the delete controls exist and why we ask you to use them.

If you are a guest

You can upload without an account, and we do not ask you for a name, an email address or a phone number. Only upload things you have the right to share, and remember that everyone else holding the link will see them.

Because uploading is anonymous, there is no account for us to tie your contribution to, which means you cannot delete it yourself. Ask the event organiser to remove it, or write to us and we will help.

What you may not upload or do

Do not use SnapEcho to upload or share anything that:

• is not yours to share, or infringes someone's copyright, trademark or other rights;
• was recorded of someone who did not agree to it, or in a place where they had a reasonable expectation of privacy;
• sexualises a child in any way, or depicts a child in a manner intended to exploit them;
• is intimate or sexual imagery of an adult shared without their consent;
• harasses, threatens, defames or incites violence or hatred against anyone;
• is unlawful where you are, or where the event took place;
• contains malware, or is uploaded to attack or overload the service.

Also, please do not try to break in: no probing for vulnerabilities to exploit them, no attempting to reach events or files you were not given a link to, no bulk-downloading or scraping galleries, and no automated flooding of uploads. If you find a security problem and tell us about it privately, we will thank you rather than come after you.

Your content stays yours

You keep every right you already had in what you upload. We claim no ownership of it.

We do need your permission to run the service, so you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, copy, re-encode and display your uploads, and to create a watermarked JPEG or send stored audio or video when someone viewing the gallery chooses Share, for the sole purpose of operating SnapEcho for you and the people you shared the event with. In practice that means holding the file, converting photos to a web-friendly format and size, generating thumbnails and previews, and showing all of it to people who open the gallery. A photo share image is generated on request, may be cached for up to five minutes while the photo remains in the gallery, and does not replace or modify the stored gallery photo. The cache is cleared when the photo or its event is deleted. Audio and video are shared as stored and are not put into that share-image cache.

That licence goes no further. We will not use your photos, videos or recordings to advertise SnapEcho, sell them, license them to anyone else, or use them to train machine learning models. It lasts only as long as the content is on the service and ends when the upload or the event is deleted.

Choosing Share may send a media copy to another app or save it on a device. SnapEcho cannot control or recall copies after they leave the service, so share only with people and apps you intend to receive the media.

Limits of the service

Some practical boundaries, so they are not a surprise mid-upload:

• 50 MB per file, whatever the type.
• Five minutes maximum length for a video or an audio recording.
• Photos: JPG, PNG, GIF and WebP.
• Audio: MP3, WAV, OGG, M4A and WebM.
• Video: MP4, MOV, WebM, AVI and MKV.

Photos are re-encoded and resized when they are larger than the gallery needs, so the stored copy may not be byte-for-byte what left your device. This also strips embedded metadata, including GPS location — the Privacy Policy explains exactly how far that goes and where it stops.

SnapEcho is not a backup service. We keep your content until it is deleted and we take reasonable care of it, but it is the only copy at your peril. Keep your own copies of anything you would be upset to lose. We may also change or retire features over time, and may set or adjust limits like the ones above.

Removal and suspension

We may remove content, or suspend or close an account, where we reasonably believe these terms have been broken — most urgently for the content listed above, or where leaving something up would put someone at risk or put us in breach of the law.

We would rather ask than act unilaterally, so where circumstances allow we will contact the organiser first and give them the chance to sort it out. Serious cases we act on immediately. If you think we got it wrong, write to us and say so — we will look again.

Deleting things, and leaving

An organiser can delete any individual upload or an entire event at any time. Either removes the underlying files from storage as well as the database records, and it cannot be undone — there is no recycle bin, so check before you confirm. One exception, set out in the Privacy Policy: an upload still being processed when its event is deleted can leave a temporary working copy behind, which we will clear on request.

You can close your account yourself, from your profile page. It deletes every event you own, which removes their files from storage, and then removes your account details — immediately, and with no way back, so take what you want to keep first. The temporary working copy described above is the one exception, and we will clear it on request. You can stop using SnapEcho whenever you like; these terms stop applying to you once your account and content are gone.

What it costs

SnapEcho is currently free to use, and there is nothing to pay for anything described on this page. We may introduce paid plans later. If we do, we will give account holders advance notice by email, we will not start charging for something you are already using without telling you first, and you will be free to close your account instead.

No warranty

SnapEcho is provided as it is, without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. We do not promise the service will be uninterrupted, available at any given moment, free of errors, or that content stored on it will never be lost or corrupted. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain warranties to be excluded, so parts of this may not apply to you.

Limits on our liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential losses, for lost profits or lost opportunities, or for the loss or corruption of content — including photos, video or recordings of an occasion that cannot be repeated. This is the practical reason for keeping your own copies.

Where liability cannot be excluded, our total liability to you for any claim relating to SnapEcho is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or one hundred Canadian dollars. Nothing here excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, and nothing here limits your rights under applicable consumer protection law.

If your use causes us a problem

If someone brings a claim against us because of what you uploaded, how you used SnapEcho, or your breach of these terms, you agree to cover the reasonable costs and damages we incur as a result. We will tell you promptly about any such claim and give you a fair chance to be involved in how it is handled.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as SnapEcho changes. When we do, we will update the date at the top of this page, and we will email account holders about material changes. If you keep using SnapEcho after a change takes effect, that is your acceptance of it; if you would rather not, you can close your account.

The legal fine print

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Alberta and the laws of Canada that apply there, and the courts of Alberta are where disputes about them are heard. If you are a consumer, this does not deprive you of the protection of the law where you live.

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands. Our not enforcing something straight away does not mean we have given up the right to. These terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the whole agreement between us about SnapEcho. You may not transfer your rights under them to someone else without our agreement.

How to reach us

Questions about these terms, a request to remove something, or a report of misuse: snapecho.ca@gmail.com
SnapEcho — Edmonton, Alberta, Canada