Terms of Use

These Terms of Use ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the H2H Protocol mobile application and related services (the "Service"). By using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1. Who we are

The Service is operated by H2H Protocol ("H2H," "we," "us"), established in the Sultanate of Oman.

• General support: support@h2hprotocol.com
• Legal notices: legal@h2hprotocol.com
• Privacy enquiries: privacy@h2hprotocol.com

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old to use the Service. If your jurisdiction sets a higher minimum age for services like H2H, that higher minimum applies to you.

By using the Service, you confirm that you meet this age requirement. If the age of majority where you live is higher than 18, you also represent that a parent or legal guardian has authorized your use of the Service.

The Service supports communication between strangers in nearby physical spaces, including features that involve emotional disclosure (Pulses), direct messaging and voice, SOS rooms with strangers who respond, and Free Match. We have set the minimum age accordingly. We do not knowingly permit users under 18 on the Service. If we learn a user is under 18, we will terminate that user's access.

3. Account, device identity, and no verification

The Service may create a local device-based identity and related security material on your device. It may also create an anonymous backend session to support limited network functions. You are responsible for safeguarding your device and controlling who can access the Service on it.

No background checks. No identity verification. No guarantee of age, credentials, honesty, good conduct, or truthfulness. Do not assume any user is safe, genuine, nearby, or acting in good faith.

4. Safety, nearby limitations, and your responsibility

4.1 Strangers and in-person contact

You understand and agree that:

• The Service may introduce you to strangers.
• You alone are responsible for your decisions, communications, file sharing, calls, and any meeting or exchange that follows.
• You should use appropriate precautions, including meeting in public, independently verifying details, avoiding disclosure of sensitive information, telling someone you trust where you are going, and contacting local authorities when appropriate.

ASSUMPTION OF RISK: To the maximum extent permitted by law, you assume all risks arising from your use of the Service and from interactions with other users, including physical harm, harassment, stalking, theft, fraud, extortion, property damage, and other loss.

4.2 Nearby indications are approximate

Nearby presence and distance indicators are approximate only. They may be wrong because of signal-strength limits, radio interference, walls, reflections, device differences, spoofing, replay, relay behavior, software faults, or deliberate misuse.

H2H does not guarantee that a nearby signal reflects a person's exact distance, exact location, current availability, or actual identity.

4.3 No guarantee of authenticity or truthfulness

Users may provide false, misleading, or incomplete information. H2H does not verify whether any user, message, announcement, file, image, or call is authentic, accurate, lawful, harmless, or consistent with what the sender claims.

4.4 Not an emergency or dispatch service

The Service is not a public safety service, law-enforcement service, medical service, dispatch service, or guaranteed response channel. Do not rely on H2H Protocol to obtain urgent help, real-time protection, or immediate intervention.

For real emergencies, contact your local emergency services directly. In genuine medical, criminal, or safety emergencies, dial your country's emergency number (for example, 999, 112, 911, or the equivalent) before or in addition to using H2H. The Announce and SOS features in H2H are provided as a complement to traditional emergency services where nearby help may add value, not as a substitute for them.

SOS in particular: raising an SOS broadcasts a call for help to H2H users in Bluetooth range and, if you are online and allow location, to H2H users in your city. It does not contact any emergency number or authority. H2H does not guarantee that anyone will see your alert, that anyone will respond, or that a responder is able, qualified, or safe. Responders are other users, not professionals. If you respond to an SOS, you do so at your own risk and on your own judgement, and you must never put yourself in danger.

5. Communications, announcements, attachments, and calls

The Service may support nearby announcements, private chat, voice notes, image sharing, file transfer, voice calls, SOS alerts and SOS rooms, and Free Match. Video calling is not available in this version. Nearby discovery is performed using Bluetooth Low Energy ("BLE") — a short-range wireless protocol — and is separate from ordinary message and call delivery, which use other communication paths.

You are solely responsible for what you create, transmit, store, or share, and for obtaining any consent required by law before recording, sending, or disclosing audio, images, video, files, or personal information.

Communication paths may involve:

• direct local transport between two nearby devices,
• extended-range delivery, where nearby phones forward short text messages for each other so a message can reach someone beyond direct radio range,
• relay-assisted delivery through H2H infrastructure when direct paths are unavailable,
• cloud synchronisation of SOS alerts and SOS rooms through H2H infrastructure when a phone is online,
• WebSocket-based messaging over the internet, and
• signaling or relay support for voice calls.

Availability is not guaranteed, and message or call delivery can fail, be delayed, or be interrupted.

6. Prohibited conduct

You agree not to:

• Use the Service for unlawful purposes or in violation of any law or regulation.
• Harass, threaten, stalk, exploit, abuse, dox, extort, or invade another person's privacy.
• Impersonate another person or entity, misrepresent affiliation, or mislead others about your identity, location, availability, or purpose.
• Send deceptive nearby broadcasts, fraudulent messages, malicious files, or harmful media.
• Misuse Announcements, including but not limited to publishing false emergencies, harassment broadcasts, commercial spam, fraudulent solicitations, or repeated non-urgent use of urgent channels. Announcements are intended for genuine community communication and urgent help requests, and abuse of this feature undermines its value for everyone.
• Mock, exploit, or prey on users in vulnerable emotional states, including those reaching out through the Pulses feature. Pulses is a space where users may share that they feel lonely, heavy, lost, or otherwise vulnerable; treating those disclosures with cruelty, predation, or commercial exploitation is a serious violation of these Terms.
• Raise a false SOS, use SOS for anything other than a genuine need for help, or use an SOS room for advertising, harassment, or casual chat. Respond to an SOS in order to locate, follow, harm, rob, or defraud the person who raised it, or anyone who responded to it.
• Use Free Match to advertise commercially, to recruit, or to deceive people about what you need or offer.
• Use H2H to target, locate, or stalk specific individuals, whether or not they are H2H users, including by attempting to triangulate, follow, or surveil people through nearby-discovery signals.
• Attempt BLE spoofing, replay attacks, relay attacks, tracking, surveillance, bulk signal collection, or any effort to identify, follow, or profile users without authorization.
• Reverse engineer, decompile, tamper with, bypass, or interfere with the Service or its protections except where such restriction is prohibited by applicable law.
• Probe, scan, overload, scrape, or disrupt the Service or its infrastructure.
• Upload malware or harmful code.
• Use the Service to distribute, exchange, or solicit content that sexualizes minors, content that constitutes hate speech under applicable law, or content that promotes violence against persons or groups.
• Infringe the intellectual-property, privacy, publicity, or other rights of any person.

7. Your content and license to operate the Service

7.1 Your content

You retain ownership of content you submit or send through the Service ("User Content").

7.2 License to H2H

You grant H2H a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable license to host, store, reproduce, transmit, display, perform, adapt, and distribute your User Content only as necessary to:

• operate and provide the Service,
• deliver the sharing or calling activity you request,
• enforce these Terms, and
• protect the Service and its users.

7.3 Your responsibility for content

You represent that you have the rights needed to submit your User Content and that it does not violate law or another person's rights.

7.4 Service limits

To keep H2H sustainable for the people who use it for genuine human moments, the Service applies the following limits. These values may be adjusted from time to time; material changes will be communicated as described in § 15.

• First contact requires consent. When a new peer reaches you for the first time, you see a short request (with an optional 120-character note) and choose Accept, Block, or Report. No chat thread, voice message, or call from a new peer can reach you until you Accept.
• Block, Report, and 24-hour cooldown. Block stops a peer's messages, voice messages, and calls on your device. Report submits the case to our moderation team and also triggers a 24-hour cooldown that drops the reported peer's frames at your device. These protections are device-local for v1; a server-side ban list is on the roadmap for a future release.
• Abuse protection. The Service applies per-peer and per-sender rate limits on both the device and our relay server. These limits are sized so a normal user never hits them; a tampered client cannot bypass the server-side limits.
• Voice notes are limited to 30 seconds. The recorder stops automatically.
• Photos are limited to a maximum size of 600 KB per image. The Service automatically compresses photos to fit this limit before sending. Photos count against your offline message queue with other recipients (1000 messages or 10 MB total per recipient, whichever fills first).
• Files are limited to a maximum size of 1 MB per file. Only the following document types are accepted: PDF (.pdf), Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx), Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx), Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx), and plain text (.txt). Other file types — including images sent as files, audio, video, executables, archives, and arbitrary binary content — are not accepted. Files count against your offline message queue with other recipients (1000 messages or 10 MB total per recipient, whichever fills first).
• Voice calls are limited to 10 minutes per call. A 30-second warning precedes auto-end.
• Video calling is not available in this version of the Service. We expect to add it in a future release. Until then, the video-call button shows a "coming soon" notice with a one-tap voice-call fallback.
• Each user may make up to 30 calls per day. The daily counter resets at your device's local midnight.
• Messages destined for offline recipients are queued for up to 30 days, then permanently deleted. Per-recipient queues are limited to 1000 messages or 10 MB total, whichever is reached first.
• SOS sessions last 2 hours and can be extended in 1-hour steps while live. You can have one live SOS at a time. An alert carries up to 480 characters of text, one photo, and one voice note; room messages are short text (up to 1000 characters), quick phrases, photos, voice notes, and location cards. Over Bluetooth only text travels; photos, voice notes, and location cards need an internet connection. An SOS reaches H2H users in Bluetooth range and, if you allow location, up to about 25 km using a ~5 km city area. Ended rooms are deleted 90 days after they end.
• Free Match entries hold up to 3 topics, one role, and up to 120 characters of your own words. An entry publishes only when you tap Done. City matches expire after 24 hours unless refreshed.
• Extended-range messages and announcements. In crowded venues, your device may receive announcements and short connect requests from H2H users beyond direct Bluetooth range, forwarded through other nearby H2H devices. These short messages are end-to-end encrypted and capped at 140 characters per message; multiple messages are allowed. Voice notes, photos, files, and video never travel over the extended-range network — full media stays on direct connections or the cloud relay.
• Extended-range chat replies are short replies only (up to 140 characters). To send longer messages or media, you and the other user must be in direct range or on the cloud relay.
• You can opt out of forwarding packets for other users at any time in Settings → Privacy → Help nearby people connect. Forwarding is on by default to keep the extended-range network useful for everyone.

7.5 No tolerance for abuse

H2H Protocol has zero tolerance for abusive content, harassment, threats, impersonation, sharing of intimate images without consent, child sexual abuse material, content promoting violence or self-harm, hate speech, or any conduct that violates applicable law or these Terms. Users who engage in such conduct may have their access to the Service permanently revoked at our sole discretion. We may report illegal conduct to relevant authorities and cooperate with law enforcement investigations.

7.6 Report response commitment

We commit to reviewing every report submitted through the in-app reporting tool within 24 hours of receipt. We will take appropriate action — which may include warning the reported user, restricting features, suspending the account, or permanently removing access — based on the nature and severity of the violation. We will not disclose the identity of users who submit reports. Reports filed from an SOS room are reviewed the same way.

7.7 Right to remove content and accounts

We reserve the right to remove content, restrict features, suspend accounts, or terminate access to the Service at any time, without prior notice, if we determine in good faith that a user has violated these Terms or that such action is necessary to protect the safety and integrity of the H2H community.

8. Blocking, suspension, and termination

We may investigate conduct and take action at any time, including removing content, limiting visibility, disabling features, blocking delivery paths, suspending access, or terminating accounts or device identities if we believe you violated these Terms, created risk, or exposed H2H or others to harm or legal liability.

We may take these actions with or without prior notice where permitted by law. Where reasonably practicable and not prohibited by law or by safety considerations, we will:

• inform the affected user of the action taken,
• describe the reason in plain language,
• and explain how to appeal the decision by contacting legal@h2hprotocol.com.

We aim to review user reports and appeals within a reasonable time consistent with our operational capacity. We are a small team and review may not be instant, but we treat reports of harassment, vulnerable-user exploitation, Announce abuse, and false SOS alerts as priority cases.

9. Third-party services

The Service relies on third-party services and operating-system frameworks, including:

• mobile operating-system providers (Android and iOS) and their nearby-radio frameworks,
• local network and Bluetooth capabilities provided by your device,
• cloud infrastructure, relay services, and diagnostic services as described in our Privacy Policy,
• push-notification providers,
• and call-networking components for voice calls.

H2H is not responsible for outages, delays, security incidents, or acts or omissions of those third parties. Your use of the Service may also be subject to the third-party terms and privacy policies of those providers, including Google Play and Apple App Store terms where applicable. For a list of the specific third-party processors currently in use, see Section 4.2 of our Privacy Policy.

10. Disclaimers

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE."

H2H DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

H2H DOES NOT WARRANT THAT:

• the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free,
• nearby detection or distance estimates will be accurate,
• messages, files, or calls will be delivered,
• an SOS alert will reach anyone, or that anyone will respond to it,
• communications will be available in any particular transport mode,
• any user or content will be truthful, safe, lawful, or authentic, or
• any meeting, exchange, or interaction will be safe or successful.

11. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW:

• H2H WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, LOST DATA, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, PERSONAL INJURY, OR PROPERTY DAMAGE ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE, INCLUDING RELIANCE ON AN SOS ALERT OR ON ANY RESPONSE TO IT.
• H2H WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR HARMS CAUSED BY OTHER USERS OR THIRD PARTIES, INCLUDING ASSAULT, HARASSMENT, FRAUD, THEFT, STALKING, MISREPRESENTATION, SIGNAL SPOOFING, OR FILE OR MEDIA ABUSE.
• H2H WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY FAILURE OR DELAY CAUSED BY EVENTS BEYOND ITS REASONABLE CONTROL, INCLUDING DEVICE FAILURES, OS RESTRICTIONS, RADIO INTERFERENCE, INTERNET OUTAGES, CLOUD OUTAGES, POWER LOSS, OR FORCE MAJEURE EVENTS.
• EXCEPT WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW, H2H'S TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE EQUIVALENT OF USD $100 IN YOUR LOCAL CURRENCY OR (B) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID TO H2H, IF ANY, IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM.
• THIS LIMITATION APPLIES IN AGGREGATE TO ALL CLAIMS, NOT PER CLAIM.
• NOTHING IN THESE TERMS LIMITS LIABILITY FOR DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY CAUSED BY OUR NEGLIGENCE, FRAUD, OR ANY OTHER LIABILITY THAT CANNOT BE LIMITED OR EXCLUDED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions or limitations. In those jurisdictions, the above limitations apply only to the maximum extent permitted by law.

12. Indemnification

To the maximum extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless H2H, its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, and agents from and against claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses arising out of or related to:

• your use of the Service,
• your User Content,
• your interactions with other users, or
• your violation of these Terms or applicable law.

13. Governing law and dispute venue

To the extent permitted by applicable law, these Terms are governed by the laws of the Sultanate of Oman, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.

Informal resolution: before filing any formal claim, you agree to first contact us at legal@h2hprotocol.com with a description of the dispute. We will work in good faith to resolve the matter informally within 30 days of receipt of your notice.

Formal proceedings: if a dispute cannot be resolved informally within 30 days, it must be brought in a court of competent jurisdiction in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman, unless mandatory consumer protection law in your place of residence requires that disputes be brought in another forum, in which case those mandatory rules apply.

EU and UK consumers: if you are a consumer resident in the European Union, the United Kingdom, or another jurisdiction with mandatory consumer-protection rules on choice of law and forum, those mandatory rules apply notwithstanding the above, and nothing in these Terms reduces the protections you are entitled to under your local law.

14. Export and sanctions compliance

You agree to comply with applicable export-control and sanctions laws. You may not use the Service if you are prohibited from doing so under applicable law.

15. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will post the updated version at the same public URL and revise the "Last updated" date.

For material changes — changes that meaningfully affect your rights, your obligations, or the nature of the Service — we will provide reasonable advance notice through an in-app notice that requires acknowledgment before continuing to use the Service. We will give you at least 14 days to review material changes before they take effect.

Continued use of the Service after the effective date of revised Terms constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms. If you do not agree to revised Terms, you may stop using the Service and request deletion of your account.

16. Contact

• General support: support@h2hprotocol.com
• Legal notices, dispute notices, and appeals: legal@h2hprotocol.com
• Privacy enquiries: privacy@h2hprotocol.com

Postal address (for formal legal notices): P.O. Box 3104, P.C. 111, South Al Hayl, Al Seeb, Muscat Governorate, Sultanate of Oman.

This Terms of Use document should be read together with our Privacy Policy and Community Guidelines. The plain-language summary of how H2H handles data is available in the Privacy & Data page within the app. To delete your account, see our account deletion guide.