NOTE: Open items to confirm before App Store / Play Store submission:

1. Governing law and venue. This document proposes the laws of the Federative Republic of Brazil and the courts of the Comarca de São Paulo, SP, Brazil, on the assumption that the founder is Brazilian and that Brazil is the primary launch market. If incorporation moves to another jurisdiction (Delaware, Portugal, etc.) before launch, change section 11 accordingly.
2. Service operator. This document names “Luan Guimaraes” as the natural person operating the service. If a legal entity (LLC, Ltda, etc.) is created before launch, replace every “we” reference with the entity name and add the registration number.
3. Minimum age. Section 3 sets a minimum age of 13. If you want a higher floor (16 to align with GDPR’s default consent age), say so here and in the privacy policy “Children” section.

ReadRats Terms of Service

Effective date: 2026-04-25 Last updated: 2026-04-25

These are the terms of service for ReadRats. They are a contract between you and Luan Guimaraes (the operator of ReadRats; “we” in this document). By creating an account, signing in, or using ReadRats in any way, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, do not use ReadRats.

We wrote these terms in plain language. We tried to be honest about what you get and what you give up. If anything is unclear, write to privacy@readrats.app and we will explain it.

1. What ReadRats is

ReadRats is a social reading app. You log reading sessions, optionally attach a photo and a note, and join time-bound challenges with other readers. Your sessions count toward the leaderboards of every challenge you joined that is currently active.

ReadRats is currently in Phase 0, which means:

• The app is free. There is no paid tier and no in-app purchase.
• We do not show ads and we do not run analytics or tracking SDKs.
• Some features that the marketing materials describe (persistent groups, group chat, push notifications, third-party authentication) are on the roadmap but not yet shipped.
• Service availability is best-effort. We do not promise uptime.

2. Your account

You need an account to use ReadRats. To create one, give us an email address you control, a display name, and a password. You are responsible for:

• Keeping your password secret.
• The activity that happens under your account.
• Keeping your email address current so we can reach you about your account.

You may have only one account at a time per email address. You may not create an account on behalf of someone else without their permission.

You may delete your account at any time by writing to privacy@readrats.app (during Phase 0; in-app self-serve deletion is on the roadmap). When you delete, we delete your sessions, notes, and photos within five business days. Deleted data may persist in our daily backups for up to 30 days, after which it rotates out.

3. Who can use ReadRats

You must be at least 13 years old to create an account. If you are between 13 and the age of majority in your country, you confirm that a parent or guardian has agreed to these terms on your behalf. ReadRats is not designed for children under 13, and we do not knowingly accept their accounts.

You may not use ReadRats if you are barred from doing so under the laws of your country, including by export-control or sanctions regulations.

4. Acceptable use

ReadRats is a friendly, low-volume app. The following are not acceptable, and any of them may result in your account being suspended or terminated under section 7:

• Harassment or abuse of other users, by message, photo, note, challenge name, or display name.
• Hate speech, threats, or incitement of any kind.
• Sexually explicit content, including in session photos.
• Illegal content of any kind, including child sexual abuse material, content that infringes copyright, or content that glorifies violence.
• Impersonation of another person, brand, or organization.
• Spam, scams, phishing, or any attempt to deceive other users.
• Automated abuse: scraping, mass account creation, mass session creation, brute-forcing the API, or any attempt to circumvent rate limits.
• Probing or attacking the service: vulnerability scanning, attempting to access another user’s data, exploiting bugs to gain privileges, or interfering with other users’ use of the service. (Responsible disclosure is welcome at privacy@readrats.app.)
• Reverse engineering the app or the API beyond what local law permits as a non-waivable right.
• Reselling or redistributing ReadRats access to a third party.

If you find content that violates these rules, write to privacy@readrats.app with the user’s display name and the time you saw the content. We respond within five business days.

5. Your content, our license

You own everything you create on ReadRats: your reading sessions, your notes, your photos, your challenges, your messages. We do not claim ownership of any of it.

To run the service, we need a limited license from you. By posting content to ReadRats, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, and display that content only as needed to operate the service for you and the people you share with. The license lasts for as long as you keep the content on ReadRats. When you delete the content, the license ends (except for backup retention as described in section 2).

We do not use your content to train machine-learning models. We do not relicense it to anyone else. We do not display it in advertising (we do not run advertising at all).

You are responsible for the content you post. You confirm that you have the right to post it, and that posting it does not infringe anyone else’s rights.

6. The book metadata you see

When you search for a book by title or author, the result list comes from the Google Books API. Book covers, descriptions, page counts, and ISBNs are sourced from Google Books and the underlying publisher data. We do not control that data and we cannot fix it at the source. If a book is missing or wrong, you can use the “Can’t find it?” option to add it manually.

7. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your account, with or without notice, if:

• You materially breach these terms (especially section 4).
• A court order, government order, or applicable law requires us to.
• Continued service to you would expose other users or us to legal risk.
• The service itself is being shut down (we will give at least 30 days' notice on the marketing site at readrats.app if this happens).

If your account is suspended or terminated, you may appeal by writing to privacy@readrats.app within 30 days. We will reply within five business days with the reason for the action and whether we will reverse it.

You may terminate your own account at any time, for any reason, by writing to privacy@readrats.app. See section 2 for what happens to your data.

8. Service is provided as-is

ReadRats is provided as-is and as-available. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranty arising from the course of dealing or trade.

We do not promise that ReadRats will be uninterrupted, error-free, free of viruses, or that it will meet your specific requirements. We do not promise that the data you post will never be lost. We make daily backups, but you should keep your own copies of anything you would be sad to lose.

This section does not waive any non-waivable warranty in your local consumer law.

9. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, neither we, nor our service providers, will be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or other intangible losses, arising out of or in connection with your use of ReadRats.

Our total liability for any claim arising out of these terms or your use of ReadRats is limited to fifty Brazilian reais (BRL 50) or the equivalent in your local currency at the time of the claim. This is a Phase 0 cap that reflects the fact that the service is free and operated by an individual.

This section does not waive any liability that local law does not allow to be waived (for example, liability for gross negligence, willful misconduct, fraud, or death and personal injury caused by our negligence).

10. Indemnity

If you break these terms or break the law while using ReadRats, and that causes us to be sued or to incur expenses, you agree to cover our reasonable costs of defending the claim and any settlement or judgment that results. You will not pay this if local law does not allow us to ask for it.

11. Governing law and dispute resolution

These terms are governed by the laws of the Federative Republic of Brazil, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.

If you have a dispute with us, please write to privacy@readrats.app first. We will try to resolve it within 30 days. If we cannot, you may bring the dispute to the courts of the Comarca de São Paulo, SP, Brazil, which the parties agree have exclusive jurisdiction, except where local consumer-protection law gives you the right to bring the dispute in your home jurisdiction.

For consumers in the European Union, you may also use the European Commission’s online dispute-resolution platform at https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr/. For consumers in Brazil, the Procon of your state and consumidor.gov.br remain available.

12. Changes to these terms

If we change these terms, we will update the “Last updated” date at the top of the page and post a short note in the app’s Profile screen the next time you open it. For changes that materially affect your rights or obligations, we will give you at least 30 days’ notice before the change takes effect, and you may close your account during that window if you do not agree.

If you keep using ReadRats after the notice period, you accept the new terms.

13. Miscellany

• Severability: if any provision of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest remain in force.
• No waiver: if we do not enforce a provision once, we have not given up the right to enforce it later.
• No assignment by you: you may not assign these terms or your account to anyone else without our written agreement. We may assign these terms to a successor in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, with notice to you.
• Entire agreement: these terms, together with the privacy policy, are the entire agreement between you and us about ReadRats.

14. Contact

Email: privacy@readrats.app Operator: Luan Guimaraes (individual; Phase 0)

For general support questions, see the support page.

Changelog