1. Who we are and what these terms cover
civfix is a service that lets neighbors report local issues (illegal dumping, graffiti, potholes and broken sidewalks, broken streetlights, flooding and other hazards, overgrown brush, and similar problems) by dropping a pin on a map and attaching a photo or short video. civfix works out which government jurisdiction is responsible for the exact spot and can forward the report to it. civfix also lets people organize and join neighborhood cleanups and coordinate with each other.
civfix is available as a native app for iOS and Android and as a web app in your browser. These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) are a binding agreement between you and Reach Out Los Angeles, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that operates civfix (“Reach Out Los Angeles,” “civfix,” “we,” “us,” or “our”). By creating an account, submitting a report, or otherwise using civfix, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated here by reference. If you do not agree, do not use civfix.
2. Eligibility and accounts
You must be at least 13 years old to use civfix. civfix is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly permit anyone under 13 to create an account or submit a report. By using civfix you confirm that you are 13 or older. If you are in a country that sets a higher minimum age for consenting to online services (in parts of the European Economic Area this is up to 16; in the United Kingdom it is 13), you may use civfix only if you meet that age or have the consent of a holder of parental responsibility. See the Privacy Policy for how this affects the personal information we process.
You can use much of civfix without an account, including submitting reports anonymously (see Section 5). To follow your reports over time, host or join cleanups, use chat, or follow other people, you create an account by signing in with a third-party identity provider (for example Google or Apple). We do not store passwords. You are responsible for keeping access to your sign-in provider secure and for all activity under your account. Sessions remain valid for a limited period and we may revoke them at any time (for example for security reasons or for a breach of these Terms).
3. What civfix is and is not
civfix is a tool that helps you route a report to the government body responsible for a location and helps neighbors organize. civfix is not an emergency service, a government agency, or a guarantee that any issue will be reviewed, accepted, acted on, or resolved by any agency or by anyone else.
If you are reporting an emergency or a situation that threatens life, safety, or property, contact your local emergency services (such as 911 in the United States). Do not rely on civfix.
Jurisdiction routing is based on geographic data and is provided on a best-effort basis. The responsible agency, the agency’s contact information, and whether and how it responds are outside our control. We may forward a report to a public agency, publish it on the public map, hold it for review, or decline to publish or forward it.
4. Your content and the license you grant
“Your Content” means everything you submit to civfix: report photos and videos, the location (pin) you choose, descriptions, cleanup details, chat messages, profile information, and anything else you provide. You keep ownership of Your Content.
Because civfix exists to forward reports to the responsible authorities and to show them to your neighbors, you grant civfix a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, adapt (for example to create thumbnails, strip metadata, and re-encode video), publish, display, and distribute Your Content for the purpose of operating, providing, and improving civfix, including forwarding reports to government agencies and displaying public reports and cleanups on the map. This license continues for content that remains public or that has been forwarded to or relied on by a third party, even after you delete your account, to the extent needed for civfix to operate and to keep an accurate public record.
You represent and warrant that, for everything you submit:
- you have the rights necessary to submit it and to grant the license above; and
- it does not violate any law or any third party’s rights (including privacy, publicity, and intellectual-property rights).
Reports and the media attached to them are publicly visible once published. Be thoughtful about capturing bystanders, faces, license plates, the interiors of homes, or anything else that could identify or embarrass a person. Do not photograph people in a way that is harassing or that they would reasonably expect to be private.
5. Anonymous reports
You can submit a report without an account. We call this an “anonymous” report because it is not tied to a civfix profile. You should understand what that does and does not mean:
- An anonymous report is not linked to a civfix account, and we do not attach your name or email to it.
- To submit anonymously and to let you check the status of your report later, we issue a short-lived token and a per-report claim code. If you later create an account and enter that claim code, the report becomes linked to your account. In that sense an anonymous report can be made retroactively linkable to you.
- As with any online submission, we process technical information such as your IP address to prevent abuse and to perform basic location sanity checks, as described in the Privacy Policy.
- Anonymous reports remain subject to lawful requests. We will respond to valid legal process in accordance with our policies and applicable law.
6. Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- submit false, misleading, fraudulent, or deliberately duplicate reports;
- upload content that is unlawful, defamatory, harassing, hateful, threatening, sexually explicit, or that depicts or exploits minors;
- harass, stalk, dox, impersonate, or threaten any person, including through chat, profiles, follows, or reports;
- submit content that infringes intellectual-property rights or that you do not have the right to submit;
- attempt to defeat, probe, or interfere with civfix’s security, rate limits, abuse controls, anti-bot challenges, or the systems of our service providers, or attempt to access data that is not yours;
- scrape, harvest, or bulk-collect data from civfix, or use automated means to submit content, except as we expressly permit;
- misuse the location features (for example by deliberately falsifying where an issue is), or use civfix to surveil or target an individual; or
- use civfix to break any law or to facilitate anyone else doing so.
We use automated and manual abuse controls (including anti-bot challenges, rate limits, duplicate detection, and content checks). Reports, especially anonymous ones, may be held for review before they are published. We may remove content, take down a report, restrict features, or suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms or that we reasonably believe are abusive, at our discretion.
7. Cleanups, chat, and interactions with others
civfix lets anyone host a cleanup and lets others RSVP and coordinate in a group chat tied to that cleanup. You are responsible for your own safety and conduct at any event and for your messages and interactions with other people. civfix does not vet, endorse, or supervise cleanups, organizers, or attendees, and is not responsible for what happens at an event or in a conversation arranged through civfix. Use common sense and follow all applicable laws and local rules.
8. Donation links
civfix does not process donations. An organization, a host or a person can add a donation link - an ordinary external web address of their own choosing - to their profile, their organization page or an event. civfix displays that link and nothing more.
Following a donation link takes you to a site civfix does not operate. Any payment you make there is a transaction between you and whoever runs that site, on their terms and through their payment processor. civfix is not a party to it, never receives, holds or disburses the money, charges no fee on it, and issues no receipt. We do not verify that a linked site belongs to the person or organization that posted it, that it is a registered charity, or that a gift made there is tax-deductible. Check who you are giving to before you give, and direct any question about a payment, a receipt or a refund to the recipient.
Posting a donation link means you confirm it is yours to post and that it is lawful to solicit through it. We may remove a donation link at any time, including immediately and without notice, if it is deceptive, unlawful, unsafe or otherwise breaks these Terms.
9. Messages from event hosts
If you register for an event, the host can send you messages about that event - confirmations, reminders, changes, and updates - through civfix, by push notification and by email. Those messages are relayed by civfix: the host does not receive your email address or phone number unless you separately choose to share it.
Hosts may use this only for their own event. Advertising, fundraising appeals unrelated to the event, political campaigning, selling or renting the list, and any message unrelated to the event you signed up for are prohibited, and we enforce message limits per event. Every host message carries a one-click unsubscribe that takes effect immediately for that event; you can also mute an event from the app. Transactional messages you cannot switch off - a cancellation notice, for instance - are limited to what you need to know about an event you are registered for.
As an attendee you are also giving the host limited information about yourself: your display name, the ticket type and party size you chose, your answers to the host’s registration questions, and whether you checked in. Hosts must use that only to run the event, must keep it confidential, and must not sell it or use it for unrelated marketing. Your email address and phone number are not shown to a host unless you gave them to the host directly - for example by signing up as a guest without a civfix account, where an email address is how the host reaches you.
10. Third-party services
civfix relies on third-party providers to operate, for example for sign-in, hosting, media storage and delivery, maps, email, and push notifications. Your use of those features may also be subject to the third party’s terms. The map basemap is provided by OpenStreetMap contributors and CARTO and is used under their terms and attribution requirements. We are not responsible for third-party services. The providers that process personal data on our behalf are listed in our Sub-processors list.
11. Intellectual property in civfix
civfix, including its software, design, brand, and the “civfix” name and logo, is owned by us and our licensors and is protected by intellectual-property laws. These Terms do not grant you any right to our trademarks, branding, or software except the limited right to use civfix as intended. Map data and tiles are © OpenStreetMap contributors and © CARTO.
12. Disclaimers
civfix is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement, and any warranty arising from a course of dealing or usage of trade. We do not warrant that civfix will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free, or that any report will reach, be accepted by, or be acted on by any agency or person. civfix runs on a single-region infrastructure with a rebuild-from-backup recovery model and no high-availability guarantee; we do not promise any particular level of uptime.
13. Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, civfix and its operators, owners, employees, and providers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, profits, revenue, goodwill, or for any damages arising from your use of (or inability to use) civfix, from any content, from any agency’s action or inaction, or from any interaction with other users or at any cleanup. To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to civfix will not exceed the greater of the amount you paid us to use civfix in the twelve months before the claim (civfix is currently free) or US $100. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain of these limitations, so some may not apply to you.
14. Indemnification
You agree to indemnify and hold harmless civfix and its operators and providers from any claims, damages, liabilities, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of your content, your use of civfix, or your violation of these Terms or of any law or any third party’s rights.
15. Changes, suspension, and termination
We may change, suspend, or discontinue any part of civfix at any time. We may update these Terms; when we make material changes we will update the “Last updated” date and, where appropriate, provide additional notice. Your continued use of civfix after changes take effect means you accept the updated Terms. You may stop using civfix and delete your account at any time; certain provisions (for example the license for content that remains public, disclaimers, limitation of liability, and indemnification) survive termination.
16. Governing law and disputes
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and you and we submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Los Angeles County, California for any dispute, except where applicable law gives you the right to bring a claim elsewhere.
If you are a consumer in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, this choice of law and forum does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory consumer-protection laws of your country of residence, and you may bring proceedings in the courts of that country. Nothing in these Terms (including the disclaimers in Section 12 and the liability limits in Section 13) limits or excludes any right or remedy you have under that mandatory law, or any liability that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded. Your data-protection rights are described in the Privacy Policy.
17. Miscellaneous
These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and us about civfix. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
18. Contact
Questions about these Terms? Email [email protected].