Terms of Service

These terms are between you and Morgan Daly, who operates Relay from Queensland, Australia. Using Relay means you accept them. If you don't, don't use it.

You need to be at least 13 years old, and old enough to agree to a contract where you live. If you're under 18, you should have a parent or guardian read these with you.

We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to install and use Relay on devices you own or control, for as long as you follow these terms. That's a licence to use the app, not ownership of it — we keep the rights in the software, the name and the mark.

You may not sell, rent or sublicense Relay, or strip out our branding and pass it off as your own.

An account needs a username and an email address. Keep access to the address — losing it may mean losing access to Relay, and we have no other way to verify you're you.

Your username is public, so choose it carefully. We can reclaim a username that impersonates someone, or that breaks the rules below.

Your encryption keys live on your device. If you lose every device you've used, your message history is gone. We can't recover it, because we never had it. That's a design decision, not an oversight.

Your messages are yours. We claim no ownership of them and no licence to them — we can't read them in any case.

You're responsible for what you send and for having the right to send it. Because messages are encrypted end to end, we can't moderate content, and we don't try to.

Don't use Relay to:

• break the law, or help anyone else do it
• share child sexual abuse material, in any form
• impersonate another person or organisation
• harass, threaten, or send unsolicited bulk messages
• distribute malware, or attack our service or anyone else's
• defeat rate limits or abuse protections, or automate account creation

We can suspend or close an account we have good reason to believe is doing these things. What we can act on is account-level behaviour — we can't see message content, so reports about what someone said are something we're unable to verify or act on.

What you can do, at any time and without asking us, is block the sender in the app. That works whatever we can or can't see.

Testing Relay's security is welcome, and nothing in these terms is meant to discourage it. Report what you find to security@relaymsg.app before disclosing it elsewhere, don't access other people's data, and don't degrade the service for anyone else.

Research done on that basis is authorised, and we won't pursue you for it.

Relay contains strong encryption, and some countries restrict importing, using or re-exporting it. Using Relay is your decision and your responsibility where you are.

You confirm you're not located in a country subject to an applicable trade embargo, and that you're not on a prohibited or restricted party list.

Relay is provided as it is. We don't promise it will be available without interruption, free of faults, or that every message will arrive. A message not collected within its retention window is deleted and won't be delivered.

We may change, suspend or discontinue parts of the service. Where a change materially reduces what Relay does, we'll give notice in the app before it takes effect if we can.

You can stop using Relay and delete your account at any time, from inside the app or by writing to hello@relaymsg.app.

We can end your access if you break these terms, or if we discontinue the service. If we shut Relay down we'll give notice in the app and on this site beforehand where we can. The licence ends when your access does; everything on your own device stays yours.

To the extent the law allows, we aren't liable for indirect or consequential loss, for lost data or lost messages, or for anything arising from how someone you messaged handles what you sent them.

Nothing here limits liability that can't be limited by law — including under the Australian Consumer Law, and for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. Where a consumer guarantee applies that we can't exclude, our liability is limited to supplying the service again.

For a free app, supplying it again means restoring your access to Relay — getting your account working so you can send and receive. It does not mean recovering your messages. Your history exists only on your own devices, so there is nothing on our side to restore it from, and no remedy can conjure it back.

Apple requires us to set these out, and they're worth knowing:

• This agreement is between you and us. Apple isn't a party to it, and we — not Apple — are responsible for Relay and its content.
• Your licence covers Apple-branded devices you own or control, subject to the App Store Terms of Service.
• Support is ours to provide. Apple has no obligation to furnish maintenance or support for Relay.
• If Relay fails to conform to a warranty we've given, you can tell Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price — which is nothing, since Relay is free. Apple has no other warranty obligation.
• We, not Apple, handle any claim about Relay — product liability, a failure to meet a legal requirement, or a consumer protection claim.
• We, not Apple, handle any claim that Relay infringes someone's intellectual property.
• Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms and may enforce them against you.

We may update these terms. If a change materially affects you, we'll say so on this page and in the app before it takes effect. Continuing to use Relay after that means you accept the new version.

These terms are governed by the laws of Queensland, Australia, and disputes go to the courts of Queensland. Nothing here limits your rights under the Australian Consumer Law, and if you're a consumer elsewhere it doesn't remove protections you have where you live.

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands. Not enforcing something straight away doesn't mean we've given it up. These terms and the privacy policy are the whole agreement between us about Relay.

Questions about any of this: hello@relaymsg.app.