Terms and Conditions

The important parts

• AlphaSecure is not an emergency service. It alerts the people in your household. It does not contact the police, an ambulance, the fire brigade or armed response.
• An alert can fail or arrive late. Never rely on AlphaSecure as your only way to get help.
• Only raise an alarm when you need to. False alarms and other abuse can lead to your account being closed.
• Our liability is limited. See “Our liability to you” for what that means. Please read these parts carefully.

Who we are

AlphaSecure is operated by [Registered company name], registration number [registration number], of [registered address]. You can reach us on [telephone number] or at [email protected].

Not an emergency service

In a life-threatening emergency, contact emergency services directly. In South Africa, call 10111 for the police, 10177 for an ambulance, or 112 from a mobile phone.

AlphaSecure has no monitoring centre, and nobody at AlphaSecure watches alarms or sends help. An alarm only notifies your household.

Household members are ordinary people, not trained responders. We can’t promise that anyone will see an alert, respond, arrive on time or be able to help.

When alerts can fail

AlphaSecure depends on things outside our control. An alarm or alert may be delayed or not delivered because of:

• A flat battery, or a phone that’s off, damaged or out of reach.
• No mobile signal, Wi-Fi or data.
• Notification or location permissions that are off, or silent, focus or battery-saving settings.
• Delays or outages at Apple, Google, our service providers or network operators.
• Maintenance or faults in our own systems.

Locations may also be wrong or out of date. An alarm starts from your household’s saved home address, which may not be where you are. Live positions appear only once people are sharing them in the panic room, and sharing can stop if a phone or the app is closed.

Please test your setup with your household, and check that everyone receives alerts.

Who can use AlphaSecure

You must be 18 or older, or have the consent of a parent or guardian. A parent or guardian who gives consent accepts these terms for the child and is responsible for how the child uses AlphaSecure.

Give us accurate details and keep them up to date. Keep your login private, and tell us straight away if you think someone else is using your account. You’re responsible for what happens on your account unless it wasn’t your fault.

Your household

Only invite people you trust, and who have agreed to be part of your household. Members can see your name, your role and your device’s status, and everyone in a panic room can see responders’ live positions, chat and evidence.

Anyone in a household can raise an alarm or end one. Labels such as “family” or “child” describe a person’s relationship to the household and don’t limit what they can do.

If you own a household and delete your account, the household closes for everyone in it.

Using alarms responsibly

• Raise an alarm only if you honestly believe you or someone else needs help.
• If you raise one by accident, end it and tell your household as soon as you can.
• You don’t have to respond to an alarm. Never put yourself in danger to do so.
• Obey the law when you respond, including the rules of the road. AlphaSecure doesn’t give anyone the right to enter property, detain people or use force.

Chat and evidence

You keep ownership of the messages, photos and notes you add. You give us permission to store them, show them to the people allowed to see them and use them to run AlphaSecure, deal with abuse and meet our legal duties.

You’re responsible for what you add. It must be honest, relevant to the incident and lawful to capture and share. Take care with images of other people, especially children.

Evidence can’t be edited once added. Corrections sit alongside the original. Evidence is kept for 12 months after an incident closes, and longer under legal hold, so we may not be able to remove it when asked.

A fingerprint shows that a file hasn’t changed since it was uploaded. It doesn’t prove that the content is true or complete, and we can’t promise that a police station, insurer or court will accept it. AlphaSecure doesn’t give legal advice.

What counts as abuse

You must not use AlphaSecure, or help anyone else use it, to:

• Raise false alarms on purpose, or repeatedly raise alarms without good reason.
• Harass, threaten, stalk, intimidate or discriminate against anyone.
• Monitor or control someone without their genuine agreement, including by pressuring them to join a household or share their location.
• Add fake, altered or misleading evidence, or accuse someone falsely.
• Share someone’s location, details or evidence outside AlphaSecure to embarrass, harm or expose them.
• Add anything unlawful, including sexual content involving children, which we will report to the authorities.
• Plan or organise violence, vigilante action or any other crime.
• Pretend to be someone else, or use someone else’s account without permission.
• Break, overload, copy, reverse engineer or get around the security of AlphaSecure, or access data you’re not allowed to see.
• Resell AlphaSecure or use it to run a commercial service.

To report abuse, email [email protected].

Account suspension and closure

We may suspend or permanently close your account, or remove you from a household, if we find that you’ve abused AlphaSecure or broken these terms. We may do the same where we need to protect someone’s safety, protect AlphaSecure or comply with the law.

• How we decide: we look at the information available to us and what’s proportionate, including how serious the abuse is and whether it has happened before. We may limit your account while we investigate.
• Telling you: we’ll normally tell you why and give you a chance to respond. We may act first if there’s a safety risk, if the abuse is serious, or if telling you would harm an investigation.
• During an alarm: where we can, we’ll avoid closing an account during an active alarm.
• What happens next: you lose access to AlphaSecure and will stop receiving alerts, so make other safety arrangements. If you own a household, it may close for everyone in it. You may not open a new account unless we agree.
• Your records: we handle your information as set out in our Privacy Notice. We may keep what we need to deal with the abuse or a legal claim, and may give it to the authorities where the law allows or requires.

If you think we got it wrong, email [email protected] and we’ll review the decision.

Closing your own account

You can delete your account in the app, under Edit profile. Your account is suspended straight away and permanently deleted after 7 days, unless you cancel first. You can’t schedule deletion during an active alarm.

Fees

AlphaSecure is currently free. If we introduce paid plans, we’ll tell you the price and terms first, and you won’t be charged unless you agree. Your network operator may charge you for data.

Our app and changes to it

AlphaSecure and its name, logo, software and design belong to us or our licensors. We give you a personal, non-transferable right to use the app on your own devices under these terms.

We may update, change or withdraw features, and may need to take AlphaSecure offline for maintenance. We’ll try to give you notice of changes that matter. If we stop offering AlphaSecure altogether, we’ll give you reasonable notice so you can make other arrangements.

Our liability to you

Please read this section carefully. It limits our responsibility to you and may affect your rights.

We’ll provide AlphaSecure with reasonable care and skill. Because of the limits described in these terms, we can’t promise that it will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that it will keep you safe.

As far as the law allows, we’re not responsible for injury, death, loss or damage caused by:

• An alarm or alert that’s delayed, not delivered or not seen.
• A location that’s wrong, late or unavailable.
• Anyone not responding, or how they respond.
• Something another person does or adds to AlphaSecure.
• Events outside our reasonable control.

We don’t exclude liability for gross negligence, deliberate wrongdoing or anything else that can’t be excluded by law. Nothing in these terms takes away your rights under the Consumer Protection Act or other laws that protect you.

Your privacy

Our Privacy Notice explains how we handle your personal information, and forms part of these terms.

Apple and Google

These terms are between you and us, not Apple or Google, and we’re responsible for AlphaSecure and its support. If you downloaded the app from the App Store, Apple has no duty to support or maintain it. Apple and its subsidiaries may enforce these terms against you as third-party beneficiaries. Your use of the app must also follow the rules of the store you got it from.

Changes to these terms

We’ll update these terms when our service or the law changes, and revise the date at the top. If a change significantly affects you, we’ll tell you in the app before it takes effect. If you don’t agree with a change, you can stop using AlphaSecure and delete your account.

Complaints and governing law

If something goes wrong, please email [email protected] first so we can try to fix it. You can still go to the National Consumer Commission, the Information Regulator or a court.

These terms are governed by the laws of South Africa. If part of these terms can’t be enforced, the rest still applies.