Draft

This is an unreviewed draft and it is not a contract. It has not been read by a lawyer, the operating entity and governing law are not settled, and the warranty and liability sections in particular may not be enforceable as written. Nobody should rely on it, including us. The questions it depends on are listed here.

Legal · terms of service

The deal, in plain terms.

Avano is pre-release software offered as it is, to people who want to try it early. These terms say what you can expect from us and what we expect from you.

Status: draft, not yet effective. Applies to: the avano.app website and the Avano messenger application (pre-release).

1. Who we are

Avano is a metadata-minimizing communications tool. The operating legal entity and its jurisdiction are not yet settled and are therefore not named here. Naming a party we have not confirmed would make this document worse than blank. See the imprint.

2. Pre-release, and provided as it is

  • Avano is early-access, pre-release software. It may contain defects, it will change, and it may be interrupted or discontinued. Described capabilities that this site marks as planned or in progress are not available today.
  • The service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, to the fullest extent the law allows. We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure against every adversary — the threat model sets out precisely what we do and do not claim, and it is part of what you are agreeing you have been told.
  • Nothing on this site or in the app is a guarantee of anonymity. We do not promise that any communication is untraceable or impossible to intercept, and we ask you not to read anything we publish that way.
  • There is no backup and no export. If you lose your device, your messages are gone and we cannot recover them. Your recovery phrase restores your identity, not your history.
  • There are no notifications. Messages do not arrive while the app is closed. If timely delivery matters to you, Avano may not be the right tool.

3. Acceptable use

Avano is a lawful communications tool and you agree to use it lawfully. You must not use it to:

  • break a law that applies to you, or facilitate serious harm to another person;
  • attack, overload or attempt to compromise a relay, the network, or other users — except for good-faith security research conducted under our disclosure policy, which we actively want;
  • distribute modified builds as official, or represent something we have not endorsed as endorsed by us.

Because of how Avano is built, we cannot see how you use it and we cannot monitor content. That is deliberate and it is not going to change. Responsibility for lawful use is therefore yours, and stating this is not a way of avoiding a duty — it is a description of a capability that does not exist.

4. Your keys and your device

  • Your identity rests on a key and a recovery phrase held on your device. If you lose them we cannot recover anything — there is no account on our side, no reset, and no support process that could verify you. Anyone claiming to offer one is not us.
  • The security of your device is your responsibility. As the threat model says plainly, a compromised device defeats any messenger, this one included.

5. Fees

The messenger is free. There is nothing to buy today. Cover traffic — the feature that hides how much you send — is free and enabled by default for everybody, deliberately and permanently, because a privacy feature only some people have marks the people who have it.

If a paid tier is ever offered, it will cover things that do not change your traffic shape, and its terms and price will be presented before any purchase. What consumer rights would attach to such a purchase, given that we deliberately do not know who the customer is, is an unanswered question.

6. Intellectual property and licence

The Avano name and branding belong to the operating entity. The source code is licensed AGPL-3.0-or-later; it is not yet published, and when it is, that licence governs it. These terms do not grant you rights in our trademarks.

7. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising from your use of pre-release software, and total liability is limited to the amount you have paid us — which, for a free product, is nothing. Some jurisdictions do not permit these limitations, and where that is so they do not apply to you.

This section in particular requires review. Consumer-protection rules in several jurisdictions limit what a contract may exclude, and a clause that is void is worse than a narrower one that holds.

8. Ending it, and changing it

You can stop using Avano at any time, and erasing your identity in the app removes everything on your device. There is nothing on our side to close. We may modify, suspend or discontinue the service — particularly while it is pre-release — and we may update these terms as it matures. Material changes will be posted here with a date.

9. Governing law

To be determined by counsel. This follows directly from the entity question in section 1 and cannot be drafted before it. We are not going to name a convenient jurisdiction we have not confirmed.

10. Contact

Questions about these terms: hello@avano.app.

Before this can be published as terms

Counsel must settle: the operating entity and its jurisdiction; whether the warranty disclaimer and liability cap are enforceable against consumers and what must be carved out; how to word acceptable use without implying a monitoring duty we cannot discharge; whether intermediary-liability obligations apply and whether they require a designated contact point and a notice mechanism; governing law and dispute resolution; and what attaches if a paid tier launches. All on the register.