Terms of UseTerms of Use

These Terms of Use are an agreement between you and Udayan Sethuramalingam (“we” or “us”), who runs Hotline. They cover the app and this website.

The screen in the app where you enter your phone number says that by continuing you agree to these terms and the Privacy Policy and confirm you are 18 or older. Continuing from that screen, or using this website, means you agree.

The Privacy Policy, the SMS Terms and the Community Guidelines are part of these terms too. If there’s anything in them you can’t accept, please don’t use the app or this website.

Please read the Privacy Policy. It is part of these terms, and it lists what we collect, why, who handles it and how long we keep it.

In the app, people who can see you get your five pictures, how far away you are and how long you’ve been around (“Here 5 min”), but never your names, phone number, city or location. We don’t sell your personal information, and we never share your phone number with anyone for marketing.

Hotline is new and will keep changing, and these terms will change with it. When they do, we’ll post the new version on this page and change the date at the top. For bigger changes, we’ll put a notice at the top of this page at least 14 days before they apply.

The new version applies from the date at the top. If you don’t want it, you can delete your account; carrying on with the app counts as accepting it.

We may also add, change or remove features, or pause or stop the app, at any time.

You may use the app only if:

• you are 18 or older
• you are in the United States, where all of the app’s cities are
• the law lets you accept these terms and use the app
• we haven’t removed you from Hotline before

We don’t ask for your age or check it: you confirm you’re 18 or older when you sign up. If we learn that someone is under 18, we’ll delete their account.

Your phone number is your account. Each number can have one account, and each person may have only one. To sign in, you enter your number, a 6-digit code we text you, and your password. Those texts follow the SMS Terms.

You choose your password when you first sign up, and it has to be strong. We keep it only in a scrambled form that can’t be turned back, so nobody on our team can see it. If you forget it, sign in with your number and code, then tap “Make a new one”.

You’re responsible for what happens on your account:

• Keep your password to yourself, and don’t let anyone else use your account.
• Use a phone number that is yours. If you give the number up, delete your account first, because whoever has the number can get your codes.
• If you think someone else got into your account, make a new password the same way and tell us at udayan@gethotline.app.

Hotline is free, and on iPhone for now. A person on our team looks at every new profile before it goes live. That is not a criminal background check. Until the app opens to everyone (planned for December 25, 2026), we let people in a few at a time, and we may choose not to approve a profile.

Once you’re in:

• You see people nearby who are who you’re looking for and who are looking for someone like you. They see your five pictures and how far away you are.
• You can pull someone’s string. If they pull back, a string appears between you.
• You then have 24 hours to finish one five-minute voice call, which you can split across calls. On a string between a woman and a man, she makes the call; between two women or two men, either of you can.
• After the call, you each choose in private to keep the string or loosen it. If you both keep it, you get 7 days of voice notes, up to 60 seconds each. If not, it loosens, and nobody is told who chose what.
• Either of you can let a string go at any time. Two people who have had a string never see each other nearby again.

These limits are how the app works, and we don’t extend them. Calls are voice only, and we don’t record them.

The app needs your location while it’s open. It’s rounded to about 200 m before it’s saved, and other people only ever see how far away you are. If you allow notifications, we’ll let you know when you’re approved. When someone on a string calls you, your iPhone rings like a phone call, and the caller shows as “Someone nearby”. The Privacy Policy has the details.

Your content is what you share on Hotline: your five pictures and your voice notes. It stays yours.

You give us a free, worldwide, non-exclusive license to store your content, copy it, adapt it (for example, resizing a picture and removing hidden details like where it was taken), and show or play it to the people the app shows it to. We, and the companies that run our systems, use this license only to run the app and keep people safe. It ends when your content is deleted.

Keep in mind:

• Only share what you have the right to share, and make sure anyone else in your pictures is happy to be there.
• People who have had a string with you, even one that loosened, can keep seeing your pictures until one of you deletes your account, unless one of you blocked the other.
• Once a voice note is sent, it can’t be unsent or deleted. It stays with both of you until one of you deletes your account, and then every voice note on that string is deleted.
• Your content must follow these terms and the Community Guidelines, and we may remove anything that doesn’t.

Hotline has zero tolerance for objectionable content and abusive people. The Community Guidelines are part of these terms and set out the rules in full; these are the main ones.

Never:

• harass, threaten, bully or demean anyone, or attack people for their race, ethnicity, religion, disability, sex, gender, sexual orientation or anything else about who they are
• put nudity or sexual content in your pictures, or push anything sexual on someone who hasn’t clearly said yes
• share or ask for anything that sexualizes or endangers someone under 18
• pretend to be someone else, pass off another person’s pictures as yours, or keep more than one account
• record, save or share someone’s call or voice notes without their consent
• ask for money, run scams, sell or advertise anything, or send spam
• try to work out exactly where someone is, follow them, or use the app to stalk anyone
• break the law, or help or encourage anyone else to break these rules
• fake your location, use bots or scrapers, copy or reverse engineer the app, get around a block or a removal, or try to get into accounts or systems that aren’t yours

To block or report someone, tap “Block or report” (the flag) on their profile or on the match and chat screens, or “Block or report instead” when you let a string go.

Blocking is private: they aren’t told. You won’t see each other on Hotline again, and any string between you loosens. A block can’t be undone in the app.

To report someone, pick what’s wrong, such as “Rude or harassing” or “I felt unsafe”. Only our team sees reports, and reporting someone also blocks them.

We review every report within 24 hours. We look at each new profile before it goes live, but we can’t promise to catch everything people share after that. If we believe someone broke these terms or the law, we may remove their pictures, end their strings, keep their profile from going live, or close their account for good, with or without warning. If you think we got it wrong, write to udayan@gethotline.app within 30 days. A person on our team looks at it again and answers within 14 days.

Reports stay on record after the accounts involved are deleted, without links to either account. If you were reported and then delete your account, we keep your phone number so we can recognize the account if it comes back.

If an intimate picture of you is shared here without your consent, write to udayan@gethotline.app. We’ll remove it, and close the account that shared it, within 48 hours of your request, as the federal TAKE IT DOWN Act requires.

We aren’t an emergency service. If you’re in danger, call 911.

HOTLINE DOES NOT CONDUCT CRIMINAL BACKGROUND SCREENINGS OR CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECKS OF ITS MEMBERS.

There is no substitute for acting with caution when communicating with any stranger who wants to meet you.

• Never include your last name, email, home address, phone number, workplace or any other identifying information in your pictures, your call or your first voice notes.
• Stop communicating with anyone who pressures you for personal or financial information or tries in any way to trick you into revealing it, and report them. Anyone who is able to commit identity theft can also falsify a dating profile.
• If you choose to meet someone in person, always tell a friend or family member where you’re going and when you’ll be back.
• Never agree to be picked up at home. Get there and back on your own, meet in a public place with many people around, and leave if anything feels wrong.

Nothing in the app costs money today.

If that changes, we’ll add the prices and payment terms here before anything goes on sale. Anything you buy through Apple’s App Store also follows Apple’s own rules on paying, renewals, cancelling and refunds.

These points apply when you get the app from the App Store or use it on an Apple device:

• These terms are between you and us only, not Apple. We, not Apple, are solely responsible for the app and what’s in it.
• We give you a personal license to use the app on Apple devices you own or control, as the Usage Rules in Apple’s Media Services Terms and Conditions allow (including Family Sharing). You can’t transfer it, and you may not copy, change, resell or reverse engineer the app, except where the law allows.
• Looking after the app and helping you with it is our job alone. Apple doesn’t have to do either.
• If the app falls short of a warranty that applies to it, you can let Apple know, and Apple will give back what you paid for the app (nothing, since it’s free). Beyond that, and as far as the law allows, Apple owes you nothing under any warranty for the app, and any other claim, loss or cost from a broken warranty is ours to deal with.
• Any claim from you or anyone else about the app, or about your having and using it, is ours to answer, not Apple’s. That includes product liability claims, claims that the app breaks a legal or regulatory rule, and claims under consumer protection, privacy or similar laws.
• If someone says the app, or your having and using it, infringes their intellectual property, looking into that claim, defending it, settling it and resolving it falls to us, not to Apple.
• You confirm that your country isn’t under a US government embargo or on its list of countries that support terrorism, and that you aren’t on any US government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• You must follow the terms of your phone carrier and data plan when you use the app, since calls and voice notes use your data.
• Apple and its subsidiaries can enforce these terms against you as third-party beneficiaries, from the moment you accept them.
• Questions, complaints or claims about the app go to us, not Apple: see Contact us.

If you believe something in the app infringes your copyright, send a notice to udayan@gethotline.app with:

• which of your works you say was copied
• where it appears in the app, in enough detail for us to find it
• how to reach you: your name, address, phone number and email
• a statement that you believe in good faith the use isn’t allowed by the copyright owner, their agent or the law
• a statement that your notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you own the copyright or may act for its owner
• your signature, handwritten or electronic

We may take the material down, and we’ll close the accounts of people who keep infringing.

The app relies on services run by other companies, like Apple for the App Store and notifications, and your phone carrier for texts and data. The Privacy Policy lists the companies that handle data for us.

If the app or this website links to a site or service we don’t run, we don’t control it and aren’t responsible for it or what it does. Its own terms and privacy policy apply.

You can delete your account in the app:

1. Open the Me tab, or, while your profile waits for approval, the waiting screen.
2. Tap “Delete my account”, under “Sign out”.
3. Tap “Delete for good”.

Your account is deleted right away, and it can’t be undone. Delete your account explains what goes, what we keep and why. Signing out doesn’t delete your account.

If you stopped partway through signing up, or no longer have the app, write to udayan@gethotline.app and we’ll delete your account for you, as Delete your account explains. We do it by hand within 7 days and reply when it’s done.

We may suspend or close your account if you break these terms or the Community Guidelines, if we need to protect someone, or if we stop running Hotline. Some parts of these terms keep applying after your account ends, such as the limits on the app license, No guarantees, the limits on our liability and how disputes are handled.

We offer the app and this website as they are and as available.

We can’t promise that:

• the app will always be available, fast or free of mistakes
• you’ll find anyone nearby, that anyone will pull back, or that you’ll like who you meet
• distances are exact, since locations are rounded
• people are who they seem, since a person looking at a profile is not a criminal background check
• the app will keep working the way it does now

We aren’t responsible for how anyone behaves, in the app or when you meet. As far as the law allows, we give no other promises about the app, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement. Some states don’t allow these limits, so they apply only as far as your state’s law allows.

As far as the law allows, we aren’t liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive losses, for lost data, profits or goodwill, or for anything another person does in the app or when you meet.

As far as the law allows, our total liability for any claim about the app or this website is limited to what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or $100, whichever is more.

If someone makes a claim against us because you broke these terms or the law, or because of what you shared, you agree to cover our reasonable losses and costs from it, as far as the law allows.

Nothing in these terms limits any liability that the law doesn’t let us limit.

These terms are governed by the laws of California, setting aside its rules on which state’s law to use.

If you have a problem with the app or with us, please write to us first at udayan@gethotline.app so we can try to fix it. If we can’t settle it, either of us can bring a claim in small claims court, or otherwise in the state or federal courts in San Francisco County, California.

Nothing in these terms takes away rights you have under the laws of the state where you live.

• These terms, with the Privacy Policy, the SMS Terms and the Community Guidelines, are the whole agreement between you and us about the app and this website.
• If a court finds that part of them can’t be enforced, the rest still applies.
• If we don’t enforce a part straight away, we haven’t given it up.
• You can’t transfer your account or these terms to anyone else. We may transfer them, for example to a company formed to run Hotline or one that takes it over.
• The app and this website, including the Hotline name and the way they look, belong to us, apart from parts others license to us, like fonts and open-source code. Using them doesn’t give you any right to them.
• If you send us ideas or feedback, we may use them without owing you anything.
• We may give you notices by posting them on this page. Notices to us go to udayan@gethotline.app.
• Nothing in these terms makes us partners, or makes either of us the other’s employee or agent.

Write to us about these terms or anything in the app:

• Udayan Sethuramalingam
• Email: udayan@gethotline.app