The agreement between us and your family.

The agreement

By joining the waitlist, opening an account or using dear18, you agree to these terms and to our privacy policy. You must be an adult, and the parent or legal guardian of each child whose vault you open. If you do not agree, please do not use the service.

What dear18 is

dear18 gives each child a private vault, a phone number and an email address of their own. Family text, email or call the number and leave a voicemail; each memory is kept with its date and time, and the whole vault opens on the child's 18th birthday. A memory can be sealed by whoever sends it, in which case nobody reads it before then.

dear18 is free during early access and no prices are shown. Before anything changes, every account holder hears from us by email with the new terms and the date they take effect, and nobody is charged without agreeing first.

Your account

Keep your sign-in details to yourself and your account details accurate, especially the email address your child's key will be sent to. You are responsible for what happens in your vault, including the senders you approve and the family members you invite. Tell us at hello@dear18.com if you think someone else has used your account.

Your family's content

Everything sent to a vault belongs to the people who made it. You give us only the permission we need to store it, process it, confirm it, back it up and deliver it on the 18th birthday. We never sell it, share it with partners, use it for advertising, analyse it for marketing or use it to train artificial intelligence.

You are responsible for having the right to add what you add, including photos and recordings of other people. Whoever sends a memory decides whether it is sealed, and we honour that choice for everyone, parents included.

Acceptable use

dear18 is for a family's own memories. You may not use it, or let anyone use a number or address you control, to:

• store or send anything illegal, or any sexual content involving a minor, which we report to the authorities;
• harass, threaten or impersonate anyone, or send unwanted messages to people who have not asked for them;
• send malware, or try to break into, overload or interfere with dear18 or with the providers that carry its messages;
• resell the service, run a business through it, or send automated or bulk messages to a vault;
• claim an address or a number in order to mislead, to squat on a name, or to trade it.

If we find a breach we will tell the account holder what we found and, where it is safe to do so, give a chance to put it right before anything else happens.

Addresses and numbers

A dear18 address such as julius@dear18.com, and a dear18 phone number, are licensed to your family for as long as the account is open. They are not owned, and dear18 keeps the final say over every one of them. We may revoke or reassign an address or number after a review or an audit if it is inappropriate or offensive, if it is a reserved or forbidden word that slipped through, if it impersonates a person, a brand or a trademark, if a legal or regulatory request requires it, or if it has gone unused for more than a year.

Before an address or number stops working you get a notice at your account email and at least 30 days to choose a replacement through the same address checker. Anything sent to the old address during that period is still kept in the vault. A revoked address is retired and never issued to another family.

You can appeal a revocation once, by email to hello@dear18.com, and we will answer within 14 days. Our decision after the appeal is final.

Fair use

Texts, pictures, voicemails and storage each cost something to carry, and a family's price covers a family's use. We publish the limits of normal use, per child and per month, for messages, media, voice minutes and storage, and we will adjust them as we learn how families actually use dear18. The first limits are provisional and generous.

If an account goes far beyond normal use, we tell the account holder first, by email, with at least 30 days' notice, and offer a choice: stay on the flat plan with a lower ceiling, or move to pay-as-you-go billing at rates shown in full before you agree. We never charge a family for extra use without that agreement, and no memory is ever deleted for going over a limit.

The 18th birthday

On the 18th birthday the vault opens all at once. The key is emailed to the address you have given us for your child, and a keepsake card with the same code is sent to you to hand over in person. From that day the vault belongs to the young adult it was kept for; they can download everything, keep it with us, or close it. Keep your child's email address up to date, because the key goes there.

Leaving, and ending an account

You can leave whenever you like and take everything with you, in original quality. Close the account and it is deleted as our privacy policy describes.

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms. Unless the law or someone's safety prevents it, we tell you first and give you 30 days to download the vault before it is deleted. We may also stop offering dear18 altogether; if that ever happens, every family gets at least 90 days' notice and a way to take everything with them.

What we promise, and what we cannot

We work hard to keep dear18 running and every memory safe, with backups, exports and recovery switched on from the first day. We cannot promise that the service will never be interrupted, that every text or voicemail a carrier drops will reach us, or that a memory will never be lost; keep your own copies of anything irreplaceable.

To the extent the law allows, dear18 is provided as it is, and we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, or for more than the amount you have paid us in the twelve months before a claim. Nothing in these terms takes away rights that consumer law in your province or country gives you.

Changes to these terms

When these terms change we post the new version here with its date and email the account holder before any change that affects your family takes effect. Using dear18 after that date means you accept the new terms; if you do not, you can close the account and take everything with you.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of British Columbia and the federal laws of Canada that apply there, and any dispute is heard in the courts of British Columbia, unless the consumer law where you live gives you the right to something else.