Gerany User Agreement & Privacy Notice — United States

Version 2026-09-15

This is the agreement for people who use Gerany from the United States. By creating an account you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to this User Agreement and Privacy Notice. If you do not agree, do not use Gerany.

1. Who we are

Gerany ("Gerany", "we", "us") is a neighborhood social platform. For any privacy request, contact us at [email protected].

2. Definitions

• Service — the Gerany apps, website, and related services.
• Content — posts, comments, events, messages, photos, and any other material you submit.
• Personal information — information that identifies, relates to, or could reasonably be linked with you, as defined by applicable U.S. state privacy law.

3. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract to use Gerany. The Service is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13 (see section 12).

4. The Service

Gerany lets verified residents see and share neighborhood content — posts and events — with people near their current location, and exchange direct messages. Content is shown based on geographic proximity, not on a fixed neighborhood membership.

4.1 Gerany+, payments, and tickets

Gerany+. Gerany+ is an optional paid membership in a single plan, Pro. The price is shown before you buy, on the checkout page (web) or in the App Store (Apple devices); we do not quote it here so that it is always current. Pro differs from the free plan in how far you can widen your feed, how many neighbors you can host on a group video call and for how long, how many anonymous posts you may publish, and how much detail your dashboard shows. A subscription renews automatically until you cancel it, and cancelling takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for; we do not refund part of a period.

Buying a ticket. An organizer may charge for admission to a gathering, and any user may buy a ticket through Gerany. Payments are processed by Stripe — Gerany never stores your card or bank account numbers. You may pay by card or by U.S. bank account; on larger amounts the bank option is offered first. A bank payment takes a few days to clear, and the ticket does not count as paid until it does. The price the organizer sets is what the organizer receives; Gerany's platform fee of 8% of that price plus $0.30 is added on top and charged to you, itemised separately on the payment page before you confirm. Gerany does not hold your payment. As soon as it clears the organizer is transferred their price in full, and we have no ability to take it back — so if a gathering is cancelled or does not happen as described, any refund is owed to you by the organizer, not by Gerany. You may open a Resolution Center dispute (section 14.1): we will help you and the organizer reach an agreement and, if you cannot, we will issue a written decision — but that decision records what should happen, and cannot return funds we do not hold. A chargeback with your own card issuer remains available to you and is decided by the card network. Ticket prices are limited (currently $25 to $2,500, before the fee).

Organizers. Charging for admission requires a U.S.-based payout account with Stripe (subject to Stripe's Connected Account Agreement) and an accurate description of what you are selling admission to. The price you set is the amount you receive: Gerany's fee is charged to the buyer on top of it and is never deducted from your transfer. You are responsible for holding the gathering as advertised, for any licences or permissions it requires, for your own taxes on amounts you receive, and — because you are paid before the gathering takes place — for refunding ticket holders where you have agreed to or are required to do so. Gerany is a neutral platform: we are not a party to the arrangement between you and the people who attend, and we do not guarantee any gathering's quality, safety, or legality.

Payment data. Billing and payout details are processed by Stripe (and Apple, for App Store purchases) under their own privacy terms; Gerany receives only the transaction metadata needed to operate these payments (amounts, status, and where applicable the card brand and last four digits).

Getting paid. Payments you receive are held in your own payout account with Stripe, not by Gerany — we never hold a balance on your behalf. From there you move money to your bank yourself, choosing the amount and the speed each time. A standard transfer is free and usually arrives within one to two business days. If your payout destination supports it, you may instead request an instant transfer, which usually arrives within minutes and costs 1% of the amount transferred, with a minimum of $0.50. That fee is charged to you and comes out of your balance in addition to the amount you move, so a transfer of $100 reduces your balance by $101. An instant transfer can fail after you request it; if it does, the money returns to your balance and is paid out on the standard schedule.

5. Your account

• Accounts are tied to a verified mobile number. You are responsible for activity on your account and for keeping your device and any passcode or passkey secure.
• You agree to provide accurate information and to keep it up to date.

6. Your content and conduct

You retain ownership of your Content. You grant Gerany a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, display, and distribute your Content solely to operate and provide the Service. This license ends when you delete the Content or your account, except for copies retained as required by law or already shared with other users.

You agree not to post content that is unlawful, harassing, hateful, defamatory, fraudulent, sexually explicit, that infringes others' rights, or that violates applicable law. We may remove content and suspend accounts that breach these rules (see section 10).

7. Privacy Notice

7.1 What we collect

• Account data: your mobile number, display name, optional bio and avatar, language preference, and your date of birth, which we use to confirm you meet the minimum age in section 3. - Location data: your current approximate location, used to build your proximity feed and to tag content you create. See section 8. - Content: the posts, comments, events, and messages you create. - Usage & device data: log data, IP address, device identifiers, and interactions needed to operate and secure the Service. - Call data: metadata only for in-app calls (see section 7.8) — we never record call content. - Identity-verification data: your profile photo, live selfie frames (see section 7.9).

7.2 How we use it

We use your information to provide the Service (show nearby content, deliver messages, verify your number), to secure it and prevent fraud and abuse, and to understand and improve it. We process it based on our agreement with you, our legitimate business interests, and your consent where required.

7.3 How we share information — we do not sell it

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We share it only with: (a) service providers who host and operate the Service on our behalf under contract; (b) other users, limited to what you choose to make visible — your display name, avatar, bio, content, and an approximate distance (never your exact coordinates or phone number); and (c) authorities or others where required by law or to protect rights and safety.

7.4 Your controls

You control your information from inside Gerany: Settings → Privacy & data lets you download a copy of the information Gerany holds about you and delete your account — deletion has a 30-day recovery window, after which your account and its information are erased. For any other request about your information, write to [email protected]; we answer every request. We do not sell your information and we do not use it for third-party advertising.

7.5 Retention

We keep personal information only as long as needed to provide the Service, for the purposes described here, or as required by law. When you delete your account it enters a 30-day grace period (section 11), after which your account and content are permanently erased.

7.6 Security

We use technical and organizational measures — including transport encryption, hashed credentials, access controls, and backups — to protect your information. No system is perfectly secure; we will notify you of a breach where the law requires.

7.7 Where information is processed

Gerany operates internationally, and your information may be processed on servers outside your state or the United States. We take steps designed to protect it wherever it is processed.

7.8 In-app calls

When you use in-app voice or video calls, the audio and video travel directly between your device and the other person's device, encrypted (DTLS-SRTP) — we never record or store call content. We keep only call metadata (the participants, whether the call was audio or video, its status, and its start and end times) to operate the feature, for safety, and to understand and improve the Service; we retain this metadata for these purposes. Connection-setup data exchanged to establish a call (which includes network addresses) is deleted within one day. Group calls are relayed through Cloudflare's managed real-time media service (a service provider bound by its own security commitments); content is still never recorded. For every call we also keep, per participant, how long they were connected and (for group calls) a best-effort, device-reported estimate of data used, retained to understand usage and improve the Service and visible only to authorized administrators.

7.9 Identity verification

Gerany is a real-neighbors network, so contacting neighbors directly requires a verified identity; reading stays open without it.

• Profile photo: your account must carry a real photo of your face; we check that it shows one real face.
• The live check: your front camera captures a few moments while you slowly turn your head — first to one side, then the other, in a randomly chosen order. On current apps and on the website this check runs on your own device: the camera photos are analyzed locally, never leave it, and only the check's numeric results are sent to confirm your badge. On older app versions the photos are still uploaded to run the same check; they are used for nothing else and are deleted automatically as soon as the check is decided. The app also proves to Gerany that the check came from a genuine, unmodified copy of the app where the platform supports it.

We do not want your face data, and we do not keep it. No photo from the live check is ever shown to anyone, sold, used for advertising, or used to train anything. What remains after the check is your badge and the decision record — erased when your account is deleted, after deletion's 30-day recovery window. You can withdraw at any time by deleting your account from Settings → Privacy & data; without a verified identity you can still read Gerany, but not contact neighbors.

7.10 Cookies and local storage

We use no advertising cookies, no tracking cookies, and no third-party analytics. There is no advertising network, no marketing pixel, and no cross-site tracker anywhere in Gerany. Because everything we store on your device is strictly necessary to deliver the Service you asked for, we do not show a cookie consent banner — there is nothing optional to consent to.

What we actually store on your device:

• One cookie, `gerany_locale`: the interface language you chose, so pages render in the right language before they finish loading. It holds a language tag and nothing else, expires after one year, and is limited to our own site.
• Local storage in your browser, used to keep you signed in and to make the app work: your sign-in token, whether this device has been seen before, an invite code you arrived with, the country you selected for this agreement, flags recording that we already offered you a passkey or identity verification (so we don't ask twice), and content you are in the middle of sharing into the app.

None of that is used to profile you, is sold, or leaves your device except to operate the Service. Clearing your browser's site data removes all of it and signs you out.

Payment pages. When you subscribe to Gerany+ or pay a neighbor for a service, the payment page is operated by Stripe, which sets its own storage on that page to process the payment and prevent fraud. That storage is governed by Stripe's own privacy notice. We do not receive or store your card details (see section 4.1).

Your choices. You can block or delete cookies and local storage in your browser settings at any time. Doing so will sign you out and reset your language preference, but the Service will otherwise keep working. Because we run no tracking, there is nothing to opt out of, and we honor Global Privacy Control signals by default simply by never selling or sharing personal information (see section 7.3).

8. Location data

Gerany is a proximity service, so it needs your location. Your device shares your current location only when you grant permission; you can turn it off at any time in your device or browser settings (which will limit the feed). We store your location to build your feed and to tag content you post, and we expose only a coarse distance to other users — never your exact coordinates.

9. Intellectual property

The Service, including its software, design, and trademarks, belongs to Gerany and its licensors. We respond to valid DMCA notices of claimed copyright infringement and terminate repeat infringers; send notices and counter-notices to [email protected].

10. Moderation and enforcement

We may remove Content and restrict, suspend, or terminate accounts that violate this agreement or applicable law, or to protect the Service and its users. You can report content and block other users in the app.

11. Suspension and deletion

You can delete your account at any time in Settings → Delete my account; deletion enters a 30-day grace period, after which your account and content are permanently erased. We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate this agreement.

12. Children

The Service is for adults (18+). We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13; if you believe a child has provided us data, contact [email protected] and we will delete it.

13. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind, to the fullest extent permitted by law. Gerany is not responsible for user Content or for interactions between users, including in-person meetings or transactions arranged through the Service — use your own judgment and take normal safety precautions. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Gerany will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, and our total liability for any claim will not exceed one hundred U.S. dollars ($100). Some states do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

14. Governing law, arbitration, and dispute resolution

Governing law. Your use of the Service is governed by the Federal Arbitration Act, applicable United States federal law, and the laws of the U.S. state in which you reside, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.

Binding individual arbitration. You and Gerany agree to first try to resolve any dispute, claim, or controversy between you and us arising out of or relating to this agreement or the Service informally by contacting [email protected]. If it is not resolved within 60 days, it will be finally resolved by binding, individual arbitration administered by a recognized U.S. arbitration provider (such as the American Arbitration Association) under its consumer arbitration rules, before a single neutral arbitrator, rather than in court. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this arbitration agreement. Either party may instead bring an eligible individual claim in a U.S. small-claims court, and either party may seek injunctive relief to protect intellectual property or to stop misuse of the Service.

Class-action and jury-trial waiver. To the fullest extent permitted by law, you and Gerany waive any right to a jury trial and agree that claims may be brought only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, consolidated, or representative action. A court — not the arbitrator — decides the enforceability of this waiver; if it is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim (and only that claim) is severed and may proceed in court.

30-day opt-out. You may opt out of this arbitration agreement by emailing [email protected] within 30 days of first accepting this agreement, stating your name and that you opt out of arbitration. Opting out does not affect the rest of this agreement.

14.1 Resolving disputes between neighbors (Resolution Center)

Disputes between neighbors — for example over a gathering — are handled through Gerany's Resolution Center, and by using the Service both neighbors agree to the following process:

1. Negotiate first in good faith using the Resolution Center's private thread before asking Gerany to review.

2. Submit a settlement. If you agree, you submit the terms to Gerany; once ratified, they are the recorded resolution.

3. Internal review. If you cannot agree, either neighbor may ask Gerany to review; Gerany gives both a fair opportunity to present their side and issues a decision applying a consistent, documented standard with written reasons.

4. Effect. A Resolution Center decision is final within Gerany's process and enforced through platform measures. It is not a court judgment or a legal arbitration award; it does not replace the arbitration process in section 14 or any mandatory rights you have.

5. Independent review. For certain disputes — such as those affecting reputation or feedback, or high-value claims — a neighbor may ask Gerany to refer the matter to an independent third party where available.

Gerany acts as an administrator of this process, not as a court or a neutral arbitrator, and is not responsible for the underlying dispute between neighbors.

15. Changes to this agreement

We may update this agreement. When we make a material change we will publish a new version and ask you to accept it before you continue using the Service. The version and date appear at the top of this document.

16. Contact

Questions: [email protected]. Privacy requests: [email protected].