Terms of service

Last updated October 20, 2026

1. Who can use Circles

You must be at least 13 years old to create an account, and older if the law where you live requires it. If you are under 18, you confirm that a parent or guardian has agreed to these terms. Accounts of users under 18 start out private (only approved followers see their posts) and accept messages only from friends. You may not use Circles if we have previously banned you, or if you're barred from receiving services under applicable law.

You're responsible for your account. Keep your password and your recovery key safe, and turn on two-factor authentication.

2. End-to-end encryption and your keys

Private messages, private circle posts, private media, and calls are encrypted on your device with keys that never reach our servers. This has consequences you agree to:

• We cannot reset your encryption. If you lose all signed-in devices and your recovery key, encrypted content you can no longer decrypt is gone. Resetting your password does not restore it.
• We can't moderate what we can't see. We rely on reports from people who can read the content. When you report an encrypted item, you may choose to disclose that single item to us so we can verify it.
• Public content is not encrypted. Public profiles, public circle pages, public posts, and the previews creators choose for paid content are visible to anyone and may be scanned for illegal material.

How encryption works explains the design and its known limitations.

3. Your content

You keep ownership of everything you create. You grant Circles a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, transmit, and display your content solely to operate the service for you and the people you share it with — for example, storing encrypted copies in multiple data centres and showing your public posts to visitors. For encrypted content, this licence covers only the ciphertext we hold. The licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except where we are legally required to preserve it (see section 8).

You promise that you have the rights to what you post and that it doesn't break the law or these terms.

4. What's not allowed

• Child sexual abuse material, or any sexualisation of minors. We report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and preserve evidence as the law requires.
• Threats, harassment, doxxing, hate directed at protected groups, or encouraging self-harm.
• Non-consensual intimate imagery, or sexual content involving anyone who hasn't consented.
• Scams, fraud, impersonation, spam, or selling things that are illegal where you or the buyer are.
• Content that infringes someone else's copyright or trademark.
• Malware, attempts to break into accounts or our systems, or to bypass rate limits, payments or access controls.
• Using automated means to create accounts or to scrape other people's data.

5. Creators, payments and payouts

Circles uses Stripe Connect to process payments and pay creators. To receive money you need a Stripe account and must accept Stripe's terms; Stripe handles identity verification, payouts and tax forms. We never see full card numbers.

• Buyers pay the price shown at checkout. We charge a platform fee on each sale, shown in your creator settings, and pass the rest to the circle owners according to their revenue split, minus Stripe's processing fees.
• Access to paid content is granted only after Stripe confirms the payment. Subscriptions renew monthly until you cancel; canceling keeps access to the end of the paid period.
• Refunds and chargebacks may reverse the related payout to the creator.
• Creators are responsible for their own taxes and for delivering what they sell, including paid 1:1 sessions.
• If a deployment of Circles has no payment provider configured, paid features are switched off entirely.

Promotions (ads) target circles only by their public categories. Ads never use the contents of your messages or private circles — we can't read them.

6. Reports, moderation and enforcement

Anyone can report content or accounts. Our trust & safety team reviews reports by severity; child-safety reports are always top priority and are never automatically dismissed. Depending on what we find, we may warn you, remove content, issue a strike, suspend or ban your account, or remove a circle. Every moderation action is recorded in an audit log and, except for legal holds, you'll be told what happened and why.

7. Copyright

We respond to notices under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Submit a notice at our copyright page. If your content is removed, you can file a counter-notice from Settings → Your data. Accounts that receive three active copyright strikes within a year are terminated.

8. Legal compliance and preservation

When required by law — including for reports of child sexual exploitation, which US law requires us to preserve for one year — we may place content and account information under a legal hold. Held data is kept even if you delete it or your account, and is released when the obligation ends. We respond to valid legal process, but we can only ever produce what we have: for encrypted content, that is ciphertext and the limited metadata described in our privacy policy.

9. Leaving Circles

You can export your data and delete your account at any time in Settings. We may suspend or end your access if you seriously or repeatedly break these terms, if the law requires it, or if your account creates risk for others. If we end paid services for reasons other than your breach, we'll refund any prepaid period you haven't used.

10. Disclaimers and liability

Circles is provided “as is”. We work hard to keep it available and secure, but we can't promise it will always be uninterrupted or error-free. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, or for loss of encrypted data caused by lost keys, and our total liability is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the past 12 months or US$100. Nothing in these terms limits rights you have as a consumer that can't be waived by contract.

11. Changes

We'll give you notice in the app at least 30 days before material changes take effect, unless a change is required sooner by law. If you keep using Circles after changes take effect, the new terms apply.

12. Contact

Questions about these terms can be sent through the support address listed by the operator of this Circles server. Copyright notices go to our designated agent via the DMCA form.