Terms of Service

Effective: 2026-06-17  ·  Last updated: 2026-06-17

1. Agreement

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of FareWitness — the capture apps, dashboard, verifier, and supporting infrastructure operated by FareWitness Ltd. ("FareWitness," "we," "our," or "us"). By accessing or using FareWitness, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

If you are using FareWitness on behalf of an organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that organization, and "you" refers to both you individually and the organization.

2. The service

FareWitness provides software and infrastructure for creating tamper-evident cryptographic seals on digital files. The current scope includes:

• Mobile capture apps (Android and iOS) that compute file hashes, capture metadata, and obtain hardware-backed signatures.
• A backend that countersigns manifests, applies RFC 3161 timestamps, batches seals into a Merkle tree, and anchors batch roots on a public blockchain testnet.
• A static verifier that allows any recipient to independently check the signatures, timestamp, and on-chain anchor for a given seal.
• A dashboard for managing your account and viewing your seals.

FareWitness is currently in a pilot / early-access phase. Features may change, and uptime is not guaranteed. We will give reasonable notice of material changes that affect existing accounts.

3. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to use FareWitness. You must have legal capacity to enter into these Terms in the jurisdiction where you are located. You may not use the service if you are barred from doing so under applicable law.

4. Your account

FareWitness uses passwordless sign-in via a one-time link sent to your email. You are responsible for maintaining the security of the email account associated with your FareWitness account and for any activity that occurs under your account.

One account per person. You may not share account access. If you suspect unauthorized use, contact us at support@farewitness.com as soon as you reasonably can; we will revoke active sessions and help you secure your account.

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to use FareWitness to:

• Capture, seal, or upload content that violates applicable law, including but not limited to content depicting child sexual abuse material; content that infringes copyright, trademark, trade secret, or other intellectual property rights; content that violates privacy rights; or content that constitutes harassment, threats, defamation, or incitement.
• Misrepresent the source, timing, or origin of evidence — for example, by capturing a scene known to be staged with the intent of presenting the resulting seal as authentic to a real event without disclosure.
• Upload malicious software, exploit code, or content designed to cause harm to FareWitness or its users.
• Attempt to bypass, disable, or interfere with security features of the service, including authentication, rate limiting, or cryptographic verification.
• Reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract source code from FareWitness components, except to the extent expressly permitted by applicable law (for example, EU Directive 2009/24/EC) or by an open-source license we publish.
• Use the service to send unsolicited communications, scrape it at scale, or otherwise interfere with normal operation.
• Use the service to attempt to mint, forge, or otherwise misrepresent evidence with the intent to deceive a court, regulator, insurer, or any other recipient.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that we reasonably believe to be in violation of this section. Where appropriate, we will give notice and an opportunity to cure; in cases involving illegal content or imminent harm, we may act without prior notice.

6. Your content and our role

You retain all rights you have in the content you capture or upload through FareWitness. Submitting content to FareWitness does not transfer ownership of that content to us.

6.1 Hash-only mode (default)

In hash-only mode, the FareWitness backend never receives or stores your file bytes. We receive only a SHA-256 hash, the signed manifest, and the metadata you chose to include. Because we never had the bytes, we cannot produce them in response to legal process, account recovery, or any other request.

6.2 Vault mode (per-upload opt-in)

If you opt into Vault mode for a specific upload, FareWitness stores the file bytes on our infrastructure so that a verifier can retrieve the original file alongside its seal.

When you use Vault mode, you represent and warrant, for each file you upload:

• You own the content, or have a valid license, consent, or other legal right to upload it and to share it via a public URL associated with your seal.
• The content does not violate applicable law in your jurisdiction or in any jurisdiction where you reasonably foresee the seal being shared.
• You understand that, while we will use commercially reasonable measures to protect Vault content, a breach of our infrastructure could expose that content; the hash-only default exists precisely to remove this risk for content where this trade-off is unacceptable.

You grant FareWitness a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, process, transmit, and display content you submit, solely for the purpose of providing the service to you and to any recipient with whom you share a verification URL. This license terminates when you delete the content from Vault or close your account, except to the extent we are required by law to retain a copy or to the extent reasonably required to maintain backups.

7. Sealed certificates are permanent records of what you signed

A FareWitness seal is a cryptographic record that you (or a delegate of yours, via a paired signing token) attested to a particular file's existence at a particular time and place. Once issued, a seal cannot be retroactively unsigned or invalidated by us. If you share a verification URL for a seal you later wish to retract, you can remove access controls on your end but you cannot un-attest the underlying cryptographic record.

For Vault content, deleting the file from Vault removes the content but does not delete the cryptographic seal record itself.

8. Cryptographic verification — what we promise and what we don't

FareWitness uses only standard, publicly-reviewed cryptographic primitives: ECDSA over P-256 for signatures, SHA-256 for hashing, RFC 3161 for trusted timestamping, and standard Merkle-tree batching for on-chain anchors. The verifier source is publicly available so anyone can audit the verification logic.

What this means:

• The mathematical operations performed by the verifier are real. A "verified" seal genuinely was signed by the holders of the keys identified in the seal.
• Whether a court, regulator, insurer, journalist, or other recipient will accept a FareWitness seal as evidence in their own proceedings depends entirely on their own rules and the surrounding context. We do not warrant that any seal will be admissible, persuasive, or sufficient for any specific legal, regulatory, or commercial purpose.
• Cryptographic verification does not authenticate the truth of what was photographed or recorded. A seal proves that what reached the camera sensor at a given moment has not been altered since. It does not prove that the scene in front of the camera was genuine.

For uses where legal admissibility matters, consult qualified legal counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. FareWitness is a tool, not a substitute for that advice.

9. Tokens and hardware

FareWitness uses paired hardware signing tokens (currently: a companion Android phone app or a TruthCoin NFC card) whose private keys are generated inside a hardware secure element and never leave that element. This is the property that makes FareWitness seals strong.

It is also the property that makes lost tokens unrecoverable. If you lose a token, the cryptographic identity tied to it is gone — we cannot extract its key, replicate it, or otherwise help you sign as the lost token. New seals will need to be made with a different token. Previously-issued seals signed by the lost token remain verifiable for their existing cryptographic content but cannot be reissued.

TruthCoin hardware cards may be sold or provided separately under their own terms; nothing in these Terms creates a warranty by FareWitness covering hardware manufactured by third parties.

10. Service availability and modification

FareWitness is provided on a commercially reasonable, best-effort basis. We do not guarantee specific uptime, performance, or feature availability. We may temporarily suspend the service for maintenance, security incidents, or operational reasons. We may modify, add, or remove features over time. Where changes materially affect existing accounts, we will provide reasonable notice.

11. Beta / pilot status

FareWitness is currently in a pilot or early-access phase. You should expect that features may change rapidly, that bugs may exist, and that the operational posture may be lighter than that of a mature production service. You should not rely on FareWitness as the sole evidentiary mechanism for matters whose loss you could not tolerate.

12. Fees

Most current use of FareWitness is free of charge. We reserve the right to introduce paid tiers in the future and will give you notice and a reasonable migration path before requiring payment for features you currently use without charge. Any specific paid feature will be governed by additional terms presented at the point of purchase.

13. Termination

You may stop using FareWitness at any time and request account deletion by emailing support@farewitness.com. Deletion is processed within 30 days as described in the Privacy Policy.

We may suspend or terminate your account if we reasonably believe you have materially violated these Terms, or if required by law. We will use reasonable efforts to notify you of suspension or termination and the basis for it, unless prevented by law or by safety considerations.

Sections of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination — including disclaimers, limitations of liability, indemnification, and dispute resolution — will continue to apply.

14. Intellectual property

FareWitness and its components — including the apps, dashboard, backend, brand assets, and documentation — are the property of FareWitness and its licensors and are protected by intellectual property laws. We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the service in accordance with these Terms. No other rights are granted by implication, estoppel, or otherwise.

Certain components — including our verifier source code and our public documentation — are made available under open-source licenses. Where an open-source license applies to a specific component, that license governs your use of that component, and these Terms do not override it.

You retain ownership of the content you submit, subject to the license you grant us in section 6.

15. Disclaimers

FareWitness is provided "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" without warranty of any kind, whether express, implied, statutory, or otherwise. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, FareWitness disclaims all warranties, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, and any warranties arising out of course of dealing or usage of trade.

Without limiting the foregoing, FareWitness does not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure; that defects will be corrected; or that the service or its outputs will meet your specific requirements.

FareWitness does not warrant or represent that any seal will be admissible in any court or proceeding, accepted by any insurer or regulator, or sufficient evidence for any specific purpose. As described in section 8, FareWitness provides cryptographic mechanism; downstream acceptance is governed by the rules of the receiving party and is outside our control.

16. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event will FareWitness, its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, agents, suppliers, or licensors be liable to you for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, including but not limited to damages for loss of profits, revenue, goodwill, use, or data, arising out of or relating to your use of or inability to use the service, even if FareWitness has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, FareWitness's total cumulative liability arising out of or relating to these Terms or the service will not exceed the greater of (a) the amounts you have paid to FareWitness in the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred U.S. dollars (USD $100).

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages. In those jurisdictions, the limitations in this section apply only to the extent permitted by applicable law.

17. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless FareWitness and its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, agents, suppliers, and licensors from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or related to: (a) your use of or access to the service; (b) your violation of these Terms; (c) your violation of any rights of a third party, including intellectual property or privacy rights; or (d) content you submit, including any claim that such content infringes or violates the rights of any third party or any law.

18. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Colorado, United States, without regard to its conflict of laws principles. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the service will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts of competent jurisdiction located in Denver County, Colorado, and the parties consent to personal jurisdiction in those courts. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

Before filing any claim, the parties agree to attempt in good faith to resolve the dispute informally by contacting support@farewitness.com. If informal resolution does not succeed within 30 days, either party may proceed under this section.

19. Changes to these Terms

We may modify these Terms from time to time. If we make a material change, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top and, where the change materially affects existing accounts, give you notice through the service or by email. Continued use of FareWitness after a material change becomes effective constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not agree to the updated Terms, your remedy is to stop using the service.

20. Miscellaneous

Entire agreement. These Terms and the documents they incorporate by reference (including the Privacy Policy) constitute the entire agreement between you and FareWitness with respect to the service and supersede all prior agreements.

Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held to be invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect.

No waiver. A failure by FareWitness to enforce any right or provision of these Terms is not a waiver of that right or provision.

Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, sale of assets, or by operation of law.

Relationship. Nothing in these Terms creates an agency, partnership, employment, or joint venture relationship between you and FareWitness.

No third-party beneficiaries. These Terms are for the benefit of you and FareWitness only and do not confer rights on any third party.

21. Contact

For questions about these Terms, account issues, or any other matter covered here, email support@farewitness.com. We acknowledge within 48 hours and respond substantively within 30 days.