Terms of Use

 

These Terms of Use (or “Terms”) govern your use of Brace and provide information about the Brace Service (the “Service”), outlined below. When you create a Brace account or use Brace, you agree to these terms, including our zero tolerance for objectionable content or abusive users. Included below is information required by the European Electronic Communications Code. These Terms of Use constitute an agreement between you and Brace Social Limited.

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The Brace Service

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We agree to provide you with the Brace Service. The Service includes all Brace products, features, applications, services, technologies, and software that we provide to advance Brace's mission: To provide a social platform that enables people to take full control of their injury recovery journey. The Service is made up of the following aspects:

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• Offering opportunities to connect, communicate, discover and share. No two injuries, conditions or recoveries are the exact same, but we want to strengthen your relationships through the shared experience of the recovery process. As such we want to build a platform that tries to understand who and what you and others care about during this time, and use that information to help create features and connections that matter to you. Part of this may include highlighting new content, features, offers, and accounts which you might be interested in, and offering ways for you to experience Brace, based on things you and others do on Brace.

• Fostering a positive, inclusive, and safe environment. We develop and use tools and offer resources to our community members that help to make their experiences positive and inclusive, including when we think they might need help. We also ensure that we have systems in place that work to combat abuse and violations of our Terms of Use and Community Guidelines, as well as other harmful and deceptive behaviour. We use all the information we have, including your information, to try to keep our platform secure. Where in breach of these policies or the law, we may share information about this misuse or harmful content with law enforcement, as required.

• Developing and using technologies that help us consistently serve our growing community. Organising and analysing information for our growing community is central to our Service. A big part of our Service is creating and using cutting-edge technologies that help us personalise, protect, and improve our Service on an incredibly large scale for a broad global community. Technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning give us the power to apply complex processes across our Service. Automated technologies also help us ensure the functionality and integrity of our Service.

• Ensuring access to our Service. To operate our global Service, we must store and transfer data across our systems. The use of this infrastructure is necessary and essential to provide our Service. This infrastructure is be owned and operated by Brace Social Limited, as well as through using required third party supports.

• Research and innovation. We use the information and data we have to develop, test, and improve our Service and collaborate with others on research to make our Service better and contribute to improvements in rehabilitation practices. This is all done for the well-being of our community. This includes analysing the data we have about our users and understanding how people use our Services, for example by conducting surveys and testing and troubleshooting new features, as well as looking at rehabilitation behaviour and sentiment as a whole.

• Interactions with Others. The Service function as a venue to connect those going through injury in a virtual information place. As a neutral facilitator, Brace is not directly involved in the actual interactions between those using the Service. As a result, Brace has no control over the truth, accuracy, quality, legality, or safety of postings made by each individual using the Service. Brace shall have no responsibility to confirm the identity of all users. Brace shall also have no responsibility to confirm or verify the qualifications, background, or abilities of each individual using the Services. You shall at all time exercise common sense and good judgment when dealing with any individual using the Service.

 

How Our Service Is Funded

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Instead of paying to use Brace, by using the Service covered by these Terms, you acknowledge that we may in time show you ads that businesses and organisations pay us to promote. We may in time use your personal data to show you ads that are more relevant to you. If doing so we will show you relevant and useful ads without telling advertisers who you are. We will never sell your personal data. Instead we may allow advertisers to tell us things like their business goal and the kind of audience they want to see their ads and then show their ad to people who might be interested.

 

We also may provide advertisers with reports about the performance of their ads to help them understand how people are interacting with their content on Brace. For example, we may provide general demographic and interest information to advertisers to help them better understand their audience. We don’t share information that directly identifies you (information such as your name or email address that by itself can be used to contact you or identifies who you are) unless you give us specific permission.

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Additionally we may use consolidated user data to facilitate research and development relevant to improving the recovery process, and again this information will always remain anonymous.

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The Privacy Policy

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Providing our Service requires collecting and using your information. The Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and share information on Brace.

 

Your Commitments

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In return for our commitment to provide the Service, we require you to make the below commitments to us.

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Who Can Use Brace.

We want our Service to be as open and inclusive as possible, but we also want it to be safe, secure, and in accordance with the law. So, we need you to commit to a few restrictions in order to be part of the Brace community.

• You must be at least 13 years old.

• You must not be prohibited from receiving any aspect of our Service under applicable laws or engaging in payments related Services if you are on an applicable denied party listing.

• We must not have previously disabled your account for violation of law or any of our policies.

• You must not be a convicted sex offender.

• You must also demonstrate no tolerance for objectionable content or abusive users, and should flag any such behaviour and we will facilitate the blocking and potential permanent account suspension of such users.

 

How You Can't Use Brace.

Providing a safe and open Service for a broad community requires that we all do our part.

• You can't impersonate others or provide inaccurate information. You don't have to disclose your identity on Brace, but you must provide us with accurate and up to date information (including registration information), which may include providing personal data. Also, you may not impersonate someone or something you aren't, and you can't create an account for someone else unless you have their express permission.

• You can't do anything unlawful, misleading, or fraudulent or for an illegal or unauthorised purpose.

• You can't violate (or help or encourage others to violate) these Terms or our Community Guidelines.

• You can't do anything to interfere with or impair the intended operation of the Service. This includes misusing any reporting, dispute, or appeals channel, such as by making fraudulent or groundless reports or appeals.

• You can't attempt to create accounts or access or collect information in unauthorised ways. This includes creating accounts or collecting information in an automated way without our express permission.

• You can’t sell, license, or purchase any account or data obtained from us or our Service. This includes attempts to buy, sell, or transfer any aspect of your account (including your username); solicit, collect, or use login credentials or badges of other users; or request or collect Brace usernames or passwords.

• You can't post someone else’s private or confidential information without permission or do anything that violates someone else's rights, including intellectual property rights (e.g., copyright infringement, trademark infringement, counterfeit, or pirated goods). You may use someone else's works under exceptions or limitations to copyright and related rights under applicable law. You represent you own or have obtained all necessary rights to the content you post or share.

• You can’t modify, translate, create derivative works of, or reverse engineer our products or their components.

• You can't use a domain name or URL in your username without our prior written consent.

• You can't act engage with the platform in an objectionable or abusive way. Brace have zero tolerance for such content and those who breach this requirement will be have the content removed and may have their account disabled as outlined below, pending our content filtering review.

 

Permissions You Give to Us.

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As part of our agreement, you also give us permissions that we need to provide the Service.

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• We do not claim ownership of your content, but you grant us a license to use it. Nothing is changing about your rights in your content. We do not claim ownership of your content that you post on or through the Service and you are free to share your content with anyone else, wherever you want. However, we need certain legal permissions from you (known as a “license”) to provide the Service. When you share, post, or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights (like photos or videos) on or in connection with our Service, you hereby grant to us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content (consistent with your privacy and application settings). This license will end when your content is deleted from our systems. You can delete content individually or all at once by deleting your account.

• Permission to use your username, profile picture, and information about your relationships and actions with accounts, ads, and sponsored content. You give us permission to show your username, profile picture, and information about your actions (such as likes and comments) or relationships (such as follows) next to or in connection with accounts, ads, offers, and other sponsored content that you follow or engage with without any compensation to you. For example, we may show that you liked a sponsored post created by a brand that has paid us to display its ads on Brace. As with actions on other content and follows of other accounts, actions on sponsored content and follows of sponsored accounts can be seen only by people who have permission to see that content or follow.

• You agree that we can download and install updates to the Service on your device.

• You are solely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of the password associated with your account and for restricting access to your password, your computer and mobile device while logged into the Services. You accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your account or from your computer and mobile devices. We endeavour to use reasonable security measures to protect against unauthorised access to your account. We cannot, however, guarantee absolute security of your account, your Content or the personal information you provide, and we cannot promise that our security measures will prevent third-party “hackers” from illegally accessing the Services or its contents. You agree to immediately notify Brace of any unauthorised use of your account or password, or any other breach of security, and confirm that you understand all risks of unauthorised access to your Data and any other information or content you provide to Brace.

 

Additional Rights We Retain

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• If you select a username or similar identifier for your account, we may change it if we believe it is appropriate or necessary (for example, if it infringes someone's intellectual property or impersonates another user).

• If you use content covered by intellectual property rights that we have and make available in our Service (for example, images, designs, videos, or sounds we provide that you add to content you create or share), we retain all rights to our content (but not yours).

• You can only use our intellectual property and trademarks or similar marks if expressly permitted.

• You must obtain written permission from us or under an open source license to modify, create derivative works of, decompile, or otherwise attempt to extract source code from us.

 

Content Removal and Disabling or Terminating Your Account

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• We can remove any content or information you share on the Service if we believe that it violates these Terms of Use, our Community Guidelines, or we are required to do so by law. We can refuse to provide or stop providing all or part of the Service to you immediately to protect our community or services, or if you create risk or legal exposure for us, violate these Terms of Use or our Community Guidelines, if you repeatedly infringe other people’s intellectual property rights, or where we are required to do so by law. We can also terminate or change the Service, remove or block content or information shared on our Service, or stop providing all or part of the Service if we determine that doing so is reasonably necessary to avoid or mitigate adverse legal or regulatory impacts on us.

• Where we have identified objectionable content or it has been reported by other users, we will act on this objectionable content within 24 hours by removing the content and ejecting the user who provided the offending content. Objectionable content is filtered and reviewed with actions taken as deemed necessary by our team. In some cases when we remove content, we’ll let you know and explain any options you have to request another review, unless you seriously or repeatedly violate these Terms or if doing so may expose us or others to legal liability; harm our community of users; compromise or interfere with the integrity or operation of any of our services, systems, or products; where we are restricted due to technical limitations; or where we are prohibited from doing so for legal reasons.

• If you believe your account has been terminated in error, or you want to disable or permanently delete your account, you can consult us through our website. When you request to delete content or your account, the deletion process will automatically begin no more than 30 days after your request. It may take up to 90 days to delete content after the deletion process begins. While the deletion process for such content is being undertaken, the content is no longer visible to other users, but remains subject to these Terms of Use and our Data Policy. After the content is deleted, it may take us up to another 90 days to remove it from backups and disaster recovery systems.

• Content will not be deleted within 90 days of the account deletion or content deletion process beginning in the following situations:

  • where your content has been used by others in accordance with this license and they have not deleted it (in which case this license will continue to apply until that content is deleted); or

  • where deletion within 90 days is not possible due to technical limitations of our systems, in which case, we will complete the deletion as soon as technically feasible; or

  • where deletion would restrict our ability to:

    • investigate or identify illegal activity or violations of our terms and policies (for example, to identify or investigate misuse of our products or systems);

    • protect the safety and security of our products, systems, and users;

    • comply with a legal obligation, such as the preservation of evidence; or

    • comply with a request of a judicial or administrative authority, law enforcement or a government agency;

  • in which case, the content will be retained for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which it has been retained (the exact duration will vary on a case-by-case basis).

• If you delete or we disable your account, these Terms shall terminate as an agreement between you and us, but this section and the section below called "Our Agreement and What Happens if We Disagree" will still apply even after your account is terminated, disabled, or deleted.

• If  you wish to have your account and some or all of your associated data deleted from the Brace app at any point, you can contact "conor@bracesocial.com" and the request will be completed.

 

Our Agreement and What Happens if We Disagree

 

Our Agreement.

• If any aspect of this agreement is unenforceable, the rest will remain in effect.

• Any amendment or waiver to our agreement must be in writing and signed by us. If we fail to enforce any aspect of this agreement, it will not be a waiver.

• We reserve all rights not expressly granted to you.

 

Who Has Rights Under this Agreement.

• This agreement does not give rights to any third parties.

• You cannot transfer your rights or obligations under this agreement without our consent.

• Our rights and obligations can be assigned to others. For example, this could occur if our ownership changes (as in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets) or by law.

 

Who Is Responsible if Something Happens.

• We will use reasonable skill and care in providing our Service to you and in keeping a safe, secure, and error-free environment, but we cannot guarantee that our Service will always function without disruptions, delays, or imperfections. Provided we have acted with reasonable skill and care, we do not accept responsibility for: losses not caused by our breach of these Terms or otherwise by our acts; losses which are not reasonably foreseeable by you and us at the time of entering into these Terms; any offensive, inappropriate, obscene, unlawful, or otherwise objectionable content posted by others that you may encounter on our Service; and events beyond our reasonable control.

• You expressly agree that your rehabilitation activities carry a certain inherent risk and that you voluntarily assume all known and unknown risks associated with these activities even if caused in whole or part by the action, inaction or negligence of Brace or by the action, inaction or negligence of others.

• You expressly agree that Brace is not. providing medical advice via the service. Thee content provided through the service, including all text, photographs, images, illustrations, graphics, audio, video and other materials, whether provided by us or by other account holders or third parties is not intended to be and should not be used in place of (a) the advice of your physiotherapist, physician or other medical professionals, (b) a visit, call or consultation with your physiotherapist, physician or other medical professionals, or (c) information contained in any product packaging or label. Should you have any health related questions, please call or see your physiotherapist, physician or other medical professionals promptly. You should never disregard medical advice or delay seeking medical advice because of any content presented on the services, and you should not use the services or any content on the services for diagnosing and treating a health problem. Additionally, the transmission and receipt of our content, in whole or in part, or communication via the internet, email or other means does not constitute or create a doctor-patient, physiotherapist-patient or other healthcare professional relationship between you and Brace.

• You expressly agree to release Brace, its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents, representatives, employees, partners and licensors (The "Released Parties") from any and all liability in connection with your activities and/ or use of the Brace mobile application, website, content, services and products and promise not to sue the released parties for any claims, actions, injuries, damages, or losses associated with such use.

 

How We Will Handle Disputes.

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If a claim or dispute arises out of or relates to your use of the Service as a consumer, both you and us agree that you may resolve your individual claim or dispute against us, and we may resolve our claim or dispute against you, in any competent court in the country of your main residence that has jurisdiction over your claim or dispute, and the laws of that country will apply without regard to conflict of law provisions. If a claim or dispute arises between us that relates to use of the Service in any other capacity, including, but not limited to, access or use of the Service for a business or commercial purpose, you agree that any such claim or dispute must be resolved in a competent court in Ireland and that Irish law will apply without regard to conflict of law provisions.

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Unsolicited Material.

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We always appreciate feedback or other suggestions, but may use them without any restrictions or obligation to compensate you for them, and are under no obligation to keep them confidential.

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Updating These Terms

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We may change our Service and policies, and we may need to make changes to these Terms so that they accurately reflect our Service and policies. Unless otherwise required by law, we will notify you (for example, through our Service) at least 30 days before we make changes to these Terms and give you an opportunity to review them before they go into effect. Then, if you continue to use the Service, you will be bound by the updated Terms.

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European Electronic Communications Code (Directive (EU) 2018/1972)

European Electronic Communications Code

The European Electronic Communications Code (Directive (EU) 2018/1972) (the “EECC”) requires us to provide applicable users with the following information about the electronic communication service that we provide as part of our messaging services in Brace. This information supplements the terms of use for those services. Applicable users include micro-enterprises or small enterprises or not-for-profit organisations, unless they have explicitly agreed to waive all or parts of those provisions.

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Our quality of service

We work hard to provide the best service we can. However, we cannot guarantee any minimum levels of quality of service and make no guarantees that our messaging services will always function without disruptions, delay or errors. A number of factors beyond our control may also impact your experience in using our messaging services, and may result in the disruption of your communication with other users including but not limited to: your local network, firewall, your internet service provider, the public internet, and power supply.

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Price

We do not charge for using our messaging services. All users of our messaging services are responsible for carrier data plans, Internet access fees, and other fees and taxes associated with use of the service.

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Duration

Our users can terminate their relationship with our service at any time for any reason by deleting their account. We may modify, suspend or terminate your access to or use of our messaging services for the reasons described in the Terms of Use.

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The security we provide on our messaging services

We work to protect the safety, security, and integrity of our messaging services by appropriately dealing with abusive people and activity violating our Terms of Use. We work to prohibit misuse of our service including harmful conduct towards others. We operate systems to improve our ability to detect incidents, threats, or vulnerabilities that may harm the security of our service. If we learn of activity like this, we will take appropriate action, such as removing that activity or contacting law enforcement.

 

Data provided by you

When you sign up for our Brace service as a new user, we may ask you to provide your birthday (so that we may provide the right experience for your age) and your email address. You can find more information on the data that is collected and processed by Brace in the context of the provision of the service in our Privacy and Data Policy.

Information on handling disputes

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If you are unhappy with our messaging services, you can raise a complaint by writing to us at:

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Brace Social Limited,

Guinness Enterprise Centre,

Taylor's Lane,

The Liberties,

Dublin 8,

Ireland.

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You may also report an issue with your use of Brace through the contact function on our website (www.bracesocial.com).

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Lastly, you may be entitled to refer disputes in relation to matters covered by the EECC to an independent body for dispute resolution appointed in your country. A list of competent independent bodies for dispute resolution in EU countries and links to their websites is available at the European Union’s Online Dispute Resolution website: Online Dispute Resolution | European Commission.

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