Effective: October 15th, 2021

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1. Introduction

In order for Fortress Digital Technologies, Inc. (“Fortress,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) to provide the services (as defined below) through the Fortress and Fortress Kids mobile applications (collectively, “Fortress Applications”) or our website at www.usefortress.com (the “Site”), we need to obtain your agreement to our Terms of Service ("Terms"). The Fortress Applications and Site are collectively referred to herein as the “Services.”

 

By using the Service, you agree to and are subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement. If you do not agree with all of the provisions of this Agreement, please do not use the Service. 

 

This Agreement is the complete and exclusive agreement between you and Fortress with respect to the subject matters hereof (including the Services, Site and the Fortress Applications) and supersedes and merges all prior discussions and agreements between the parties with respect to such subject matters (including any prior End User License Agreements or Terms of Service), with the exception of additional agreements about premium services if and to the extent Fortress does require them to be accepted by users prior to using those services. All users shall still be subject to this Agreement. This Agreement applies to you and any of your Child accounts (“subaccounts”). 

 

To the extent a dispute is not related to the personal data of a Data Subject (as defined below) of the European Union, this Agreement requires the use of arbitration on an individual basis to resolve disputes, rather than jury trials or class actions, and also limits the remedies available to you in the event of a dispute. If you are a Data Subject of the European Union, please refer to our Privacy Policy located at www.usefortress.com/privacy for rights regarding your and your child’s personal data, which is incorporated herein by reference.

 

1.2 Table of Contents

This Terms of Service explains the following:

• About Our Services

• Privacy Policy And User Data

• Acceptable Use Of Our Services

• Third-Party Services

• Licenses

• Reporting Third-Party Copyright, Trademark, And Other Intellectual Property Infringement

• Disclaimers And Release

• Limitation Of Liability

• Indemnification

• Dispute Resolution

• Availability And Termination Of Our Services

• Other

 

2. About our Services

• Our Site contains information about the Fortress Applications and our Services and blogs on topics including but not limited to parenting, technology, and childhood development.

• Fortress Applications currently have the Fortress Chat, a cloud-based mobile messaging application. In addition to creating your own account, you can also add Child Accounts (“subaccounts”) and invite your contacts to join. Fortress provides, and always strives to improve, ways for you to communicate with other Fortress users including through messages, voice and video calls, sending images and video. In the future, we will have (a) Fortress App Management which allows you to monitor the applications on mobile devices under your control by your subaccounts, and (b) Fortress Browser which allows you to whitelist the websites your subaccounts can access.

• Fortress works with partners, service providers, and affiliated companies to help us provide ways for you to connect with their services.

 

NO ACCESS TO EMERGENCY SERVICES: There are important differences between our Services and your mobile phone and a fixed-line telephone and SMS services. Our Services do not provide access to emergency services or emergency services providers, including the police, fire departments, or hospitals, or otherwise connect to public safety answering points. You should ensure you can contact your relevant emergency services providers through a mobile phone, a fixed-line telephone, or other service.

 

2.1 Registration. You must register for our Services using accurate and complete information including your real name, your current mobile phone number, and, if you change it, update your mobile phone number using our in-app change number feature.  By real name, we mean the first name that you use when introducing yourself to friends and colleagues and your legal last name used on your credit cards and other banking or legal documents. You agree to receive text messages and phone calls (from us or our third-party providers) with codes to register for our Services.  We reserve the right to reject and terminate any registrations submitted with false or inaccurate registration information, or otherwise submitted in violation of these Terms. 

Address Book. To make it easier to add or invite contacts to your Fortress community, we ask for access to your mobile address book. If your contacts are not already on Fortress, we will send the contacts SMS messages to invite them to join. We store the invited phone numbers for up to 30 days. If they join within the timeframe, they will be added to your Household or Village once they accept your requests.

 

2.2 Age. You must be at least 13 years old to register for and use our Services (or such greater age required in your country or territory for you to be authorized to register for and use our Services without parental approval). In addition to being of the minimum required age to use our Services under applicable law, if you are not old enough to have authority to agree to our Terms in your country or territory, your parent or guardian must agree to our Terms on your behalf. Please ask your parent or guardian to read these Terms with you.

 

2.3 Devices And Software. You must provide certain devices, software, and data connections to use our Services, which we otherwise do not supply. In order to use our Services, you consent to manually or automatically download and install updates to our Services. You also consent to our sending you notifications via our Services from time to time, as necessary to provide our Services to you.

 

2.4 Fees And Taxes. You are responsible for all carrier data plans, Internet fees, and other fees and taxes associated with your use of our Services.

 

3. Privacy Policy And User Data

Fortress cares about your privacy. Our Privacy Policy describes our data (including message) practices, including the types of information we receive and collect from you, how we use and share this information, and your rights in relation to the processing of information about you.

 

4. Acceptable Use Of Our Services

4.1 Our Terms And Policies. You must use our Services according to our Terms and posted policies. If you violate our Terms or policies, we may take action with respect to your account, including disabling or suspending your account and, if we do, you agree not to create another account without our permission. Disabling or suspending your account will be in accordance with the "Termination" section below.

 

4.2 Legal And Acceptable Use. You must access and use our Services only for legal, authorized, and acceptable purposes. You will not use (or assist others in using) our Services in ways that: (a) violate, misappropriate, or infringe the rights of Fortress, our users, or others, including privacy, publicity, intellectual property, or other proprietary rights; (b) are illegal, obscene, defamatory, threatening, intimidating, harassing, or instigate or encourage conduct that would be illegal or otherwise inappropriate, such as promoting violent crimes, endangering or exploiting children or others, or coordinating harm; (c) impersonate someone (d) involve sending illegal or impermissible communications such as bulk messaging, auto-messaging, auto-dialing, and the like; or (f) involve any non-personal use of our Services unless otherwise authorized by us.

 

4.3 Harm To Fortress Or Our Users. You must not (or aid and abet others to) directly, indirectly, through automated or other means, access, use, copy, adapt, modify, prepare derivative works based upon, distribute, license, sublicense, transfer, display, perform, or otherwise exploit our Services in impermissible or unauthorized manners, or in ways that burden, impair, or harm us, our Services, systems, our users, or others, including that you must not directly or through automated means: (a) reverse engineer, alter, modify, create derivative works from, decompile, or extract code from our Services; (b) send, store, or transmit viruses or other harmful computer code through or onto our Services; (c) gain or attempt to gain unauthorized access to our Services or systems; (d) interfere with or disrupt the safety, security, confidentiality, integrity, availability, or performance of our Services; (e) create accounts for our Services through unauthorized or automated means; (f) collect information of or about our users in any impermissible or unauthorized manner; (g) sell, resell, rent, or charge for our Services or data obtained from us or our Services in an unauthorized manner; (h) distribute or make our Services available over a network where they could be used by multiple devices at the same time, except as authorized through tools we have expressly provided via our Services; (i) create software or APIs that function substantially the same as our Services and offer them for use by third parties in an unauthorized manner; or (j) misuse any reporting channels, such as by submitting fraudulent or groundless reports or appeals.

 

4.4 Keeping Your Account Secure. You are responsible for keeping your device and your account and any subaccounts safe and secure, and you must notify us promptly of any unauthorized use or security breach of your account or our Services.

 

5. Licenses

5.1 Your Rights. Fortress does not claim ownership of the information that you submit for your Fortress account or through our Services. You must have the necessary rights to such information that you submit for your Fortress account or through our Services and the right to grant the rights and licenses in our Terms.

 

5.2 Our Rights. We own all copyrights, trademarks, domains, logos, trade dress, trade secrets, patents, and other intellectual property rights associated with our Services. You may not use our copyrights, trademarks (or any similar marks), domains, logos, trade dress, trade secrets, patents, and other intellectual property rights unless you have our express permission.

 

5.3 Your License To Fortress. In order to operate and provide our Services, you grant Fortress a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works of, display, and perform the information (including the content) that you upload, submit, store, send, or receive on or through our Services. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating and providing our Services (such as to allow us to display your profile picture and name, transmit and store your messages).

 

5.4 Fortress’ License To You. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, and non-transferable license to use our Services, subject to and in accordance with our Terms. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling you to use our Services in the manner permitted by our Terms. No licenses or rights are granted to you by implication or otherwise, except for the licenses and rights expressly granted to you.

 

6. Reporting Third-Party Copyright, Trademark, And Other Intellectual Property Infringement

We may take action with respect to your account, including disabling or suspending your account, if you clearly, seriously or repeatedly infringe the intellectual property rights of others or where we are required to do so for legal reasons. Disabling or suspending your account will be in accordance with the "Termination" section below.

 

7. Disclaimers And Release

You use our services at your own risk and subject to the following disclaimers. We are providing our services on an “as is” basis without any express or implied warranties, including, but not limited to, warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, and freedom from computer virus or other harmful code. We do not warrant that any information provided by us is accurate, complete, or useful, that our services will be operational, error free, secure, or safe, or that our services will function without disruptions, delays, or imperfections. We do not control, and are not responsible for, controlling how or when our users use our services or the features, services, and interfaces our services provide. We are not responsible for and are not obligated to control the actions or information (including content) of our users or other third-parties. You release us, our subsidiaries, affiliates, and our and their directors, officers, employees, partners, and agents (together, the “Fortress Parties”) from any claim, complaint, cause of action, controversy, dispute, or damages (together, “claim”), known and unknown, relating to, arising out of, or in any way connected with any such claim you have against any third-parties. Your rights with respect to the Fortress Parties are not modified by the foregoing disclaimer if the laws of your country or territory of residence, applicable as a result of your use of our services, do not permit it. If you are a United States resident, you waive any rights you may have under California Civil Code §1542, or any other similar applicable statute or law of any other jurisdiction, which says that: a general release does not extend to claims that the creditor or releasing party does not know or suspect to exist in his or her favor at the time of executing the release, and that if known by him or her would have materially affected his or her settlement with the debtor or released party.

 

8. Limitation Of Liability

The Fortress Parties will not be liable to you for any lost profits or consequential, special, punitive, indirect, or incidental damages relating to, arising out of, or in any way in connection with our terms, us, or our services (however caused and on any theory of liability, including negligence), even if the Fortress Parties have been advised of the possibility of such damages. Our aggregate liability relating to, arising out of, or in any way in connection with our terms, us, or our services will not exceed the greater of one hundred dollars ($100) or the amount you have paid us in the past twelve months. The foregoing disclaimer of certain damages and limitation of liability will apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law. The laws of some states or jurisdictions may not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages, so some or all of the exclusions and limitations set forth above may not apply to you. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in our terms, in such cases, the liability of the Fortress Parties will be limited to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law.

 

9. Indemnification

If anyone brings a claim ("Third-Party Claim") against us related to your actions, information, or content on Fortress, or any other use of our Services by you, you will, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, indemnify, and hold the Fortress Parties harmless from and against all liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses of any kind (including reasonable legal fees and costs) relating to, arising out of, or in any way in connection with any of the following: (a) your access to or use of our Services, including information and content provided in connection therewith; (b) your breach of our Terms or applicable law; or (c) any misrepresentation made by you. You will cooperate as fully as required by us in the defense or settlement of any Third-Party Claim. Your rights with respect to Fortress are not modified by the foregoing indemnification if the laws of your country or territory of residence, applicable as a result of your use of our Services, do not permit it.

 

10. Dispute Resolution and Governing Law

10.1 Dispute Resolution. You agree that any claim or cause of action you have against Fortress relating to, arising out of, or in any way in connection with our Terms or our Services, and for any claim or cause of action that Fortress files against you, you and Fortress agree that any such claim or cause of action (each, a “Dispute,” and together, “Disputes”) will be resolved exclusively by arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association in accordance with its Commercial Arbitration Rules. The tribunal shall have the power to rule on any challenge to its own jurisdiction or to the validity or enforceability of any portion of the Terms to arbitrate. The parties agree to arbitrate solely on an individual basis, and that these Terms do not permit class arbitration or any claims brought as a plaintiff or class member in any class or representative arbitration proceeding. The arbitral tribunal may not consolidate more than one person's claims, and may not otherwise preside over any form of a representative or class proceeding.

 

Without prejudice to the foregoing, you agree that, in our sole discretion, we may elect to resolve any Dispute we have with you that is not subject to arbitration in any competent court in the country in which you reside that has jurisdiction over the Dispute.

 

10.2 Governing Law. The laws of the State of California govern our Terms, as well as any Disputes, whether in court or arbitration, which might arise between Fortress and you, without regard to conflict of law provisions. If the arbitration in this section provision is found unenforceable or not to apply for a given dispute, then the proceeding must be brought exclusively in a court of competent jurisdiction in the county of San Diego, California.

 

10.3 Time Limit To Bring A Claim Or Dispute. These terms also limit the time you have to bring a claim or dispute, including the time to start an arbitration or, if permissible, a court action or small claims proceeding to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law. We and you agree that for any Dispute (except for the Excluded Disputes defined below) we and you must bring Claims (including commencing an arbitration proceeding) within one year after the Dispute first arose; otherwise, such Dispute is permanently barred. This means that if we or you do not bring a Claim (including commencing an arbitration) within one year after the Dispute first arose, then the arbitration will be dismissed because it was started too late.

 

11. Availability And Termination Of Our Services

11.1 Availability Of Our Services. We are always trying to improve our Services. That means we may expand, add, or remove our Services, features, functionalities, and the support of certain devices and platforms. Our Services may be interrupted, including for maintenance, repairs, upgrades, or network or equipment failures. We may discontinue some or all of our Services, including certain features and the support for certain devices and platforms, at any time. Events beyond our control may affect our Services, such as events in nature and other force majeure events.

 

11.2 Termination. Although we hope you remain a Fortress user, you can terminate your relationship with Fortress anytime for any reason by deleting your account and any subaccounts. You can do so by contacting us using the information in the Contact section below. Deleting your account removes all messages, media, contacts and every other piece of data you store in the Fortress cloud. 

 

11.3 Service Access. We may modify, suspend, or terminate your access (and any applicable subaccounts’ access) to or use of our Services anytime for any reason, such as if you violate the letter or spirit of our Terms or create harm, risk, or possible legal exposure for us, our users, or others. We may also disable or delete your account if it does not become active after account registration or if it remains inactive for an extended period of time. The following provisions will survive any termination of your relationship with Fortress: "Licenses," "Disclaimers And Release," "Limitation Of Liability," "Indemnification," "Dispute Resolution," "Availability And Termination Of Our Services," and “Other”

 

12. Other

• Unless a mutually executed agreement between you and us states otherwise, our Terms make up the entire agreement between you and us regarding Fortress and our Services, and supersede any prior agreements.

• We reserve the right to designate in the future that certain of our Services are governed by separate terms (where, as applicable, you may separately consent).

• Our Services are not intended for distribution to or use in any country or territory where such distribution or use would violate local law or would subject us to any regulations in another country or territory. We reserve the right to limit our Services in any country or territory.

• You will comply with all applicable United States and non-United States export control and trade sanctions laws ("Export Laws"). You will not, directly or indirectly, export, re-export, provide, or otherwise transfer our Services: (a) to any individual, entity, territory, or country prohibited by Export Laws; (b) to anyone on United States or non-United States government restricted parties lists; or (c) for any purpose prohibited by Export Laws, including nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, or missile technology applications without the required government authorizations. You will not use or download our Services if you are located in a restricted country or territory, if you are currently listed on any United States or non-United States restricted parties list, or for any purpose prohibited by Export Laws, and you will not disguise your location through IP proxying or other methods.

• Our Terms are written in English (United States).

• We may amend or update these Terms. We will provide you notice of material amendments to our Terms, as appropriate, and update the "Last modified" date at the top of our Terms. Your continued use of our Services confirms your acceptance of our Terms, as amended. We hope you will continue using our Services, but if you do not agree to our Terms, as amended, you must stop using our Services by deleting your account.

• All of our rights and obligations under our Terms are freely assignable by us to any of our affiliates or in connection with a merger, acquisition, restructuring, or sale of assets, or by operation of law or otherwise, and we may transfer your information to any of our affiliates, successor entities, or new owner. In the event of such an assignment, these Terms will continue to govern your relationship with such third-party. We hope you will continue using our Services, but if you do not agree to such an assignment, you must stop using our Services by deleting your account after having been notified of the assignment.

• You will not transfer any of your rights or obligations under our Terms to anyone else without our prior written consent.

• Nothing in our Terms will prevent us from complying with the law.

• Except as contemplated herein, our Terms do not give any third-party beneficiary rights.

• If we fail to enforce any of our Terms, it will not be considered a waiver.

• If any provision of these Terms is found to be unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed amended to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, and if it cannot be made enforceable then it shall be deemed severable from our Terms and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of the remaining provisions of our Terms, and the remaining portion of our Terms will remain in full force and effect.

• We reserve all rights not expressly granted by us to you. In certain jurisdictions, you may have legal rights as a consumer, and our Terms are not intended to limit such consumer legal rights that may not be waived by contract.

• We always appreciate your feedback or other suggestions about Fortressa and our Services, but you understand that you have no obligation to provide feedback or suggestions and that we may use your feedback or suggestions without any restriction or obligation to compensate you for them.

 

13. Contacts for Questions or Concerns

If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy or Terms of Use, please contact us at privacy@usefortress.com. To terminate your account or other questions, please contact us at support@usefortress.com.

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