# Terms of use

Last updated 25 October 2026

These terms are an agreement between you and Baseline Forge Inc., a company in Ontario, Canada, which runs Sea Pals (“we”, “us”). They cover the Sea Pals apps, the web app and this website. They are written to be read, and they are a binding contract: by making an island or using Sea Pals you agree to them, to the community guidelines and to the child safety standards. The privacy policy explains how we handle your data. If you don’t agree, please don’t use Sea Pals.

If you live in the United States, please read “Arbitration in the United States”: unless you opt out, disputes are settled by individual arbitration, not in court or in a class action.

## Who can use it

The minimum age is 13 in most countries, 16 in Australia and 14 in South Korea. The country of your city decides which minimum applies.

We ask for your birth date. Please give your real birth date. If you are younger than the minimum, you can’t make an island, and if we find out later, we close the account.

You can use Sea Pals only where the law allows it. You can’t use it if you are on a Canadian, UN, EU, UK or US sanctions list, if you act for a government or organisation under sanctions, or for any purpose sanctions forbid; we can close such accounts. New accounts can’t be made in a few countries where Sea Pals is closed; don’t use a VPN or anything else to get round that.

## Two seas

Sea Pals has two seas with a wall between them. People aged 13 to 17 meet only other people aged 13 to 17. People aged 18 and over meet only people aged 18 and over. Letters, bottles and magpies never cross the wall.

The birth date you give decides your sea. If a report makes us doubt that you are an adult, you stay out of the adult sea while a person checks. Your friends are still there.

When you turn 18, you move to the adult sea. Inside their sea, teens have the same features as adults, including photos, with the same rules.

## Your gender and who you meet

You choose your gender (woman, man or non-binary) and who you would like to meet (women, men or everyone). Two new people can meet only if each is in the other’s choice. Friends you add yourself are not affected.

Choose the gender that fits you. You can change it later, with a wait between changes, so don’t switch it to get around other people’s choices. Your gender shows on your profile. Who you would like to meet is never shown to anyone else.

## Parents and guardians

If you are under 18, or under the age of majority where you live, a parent or guardian must agree to these terms for you: read them together before you join. By letting you use Sea Pals, they accept these terms on your behalf and, as far as the law allows, are responsible for how you use it. A parent or guardian can write to hello@seapals.app to ask about, correct or delete a teen’s island.

## Your account

You are responsible for what happens on your island. Keep your sign-in safe, and tell us straight away if you think someone else has used it. One person, one island: don’t make accounts to get around a pause, a ban or a block, and don’t sell, share or hand over your island. Strikes that still count carry over to a new account made with the same sign-in. We can refuse or change a name that breaks these terms.

## Being kind

The community guidelines are part of these terms. In short: be kind, keep things free of sexual content and pressure, and don’t trade contact details or photos with new people until you are chatting.

## Using Sea Pals fairly

Don’t:

- use bots, scripts or other automated ways to use Sea Pals, or to copy or collect anything from it, including information about other people;
- copy, change, take apart or reverse engineer the apps or the site, except where the law lets you;
- get round or probe our security, limits, filters or checks, including the wall between the seas and the countries where Sea Pals is closed;
- overload, disrupt or harm Sea Pals, or upload anything harmful such as malware;
- pretend to be someone else, or to speak for us;
- use Sea Pals to advertise, sell or recruit;
- break the law, or help anyone else do any of these.

## Zero tolerance

We do not allow sexual content or interest towards strangers, anything sexual involving anyone under 18, pretending to be another age or any other attempt to get round the wall between the seas, harassment, hate, threats, encouraging self-harm, scams, spam or anything illegal. We remove such content and the people who share it, and we report what the law requires us to report.

## What we check

Written words a stranger sends go through a rules filter before they reach the other person. It can stop a message that contains contact details, a link or payment details. For a time after two people meet by letter, our servers also check their chat for money requests and other signs of a scam. People can report any person, letter or chat from inside the app, including “seems younger than 18” and “seems to be an adult”, and a person reads the reports.

Some steps are automatic, so harm can be stopped quickly: a clear scam case on a new account can be suspended at once, an age report can pause the reported person’s sea while we check, and reports from several people can bring a warning or limit who can find someone. A person reviews each of these, and the privacy policy says more. We don’t have to watch everything that happens on Sea Pals, and we can’t catch everything.

## Strikes, pauses and appeals

A broken rule earns a strike. Strikes add up over time: first the sea is paused for a while, then the account can be suspended. For serious harm, such as anything sexual involving a minor, threats or scams, we can suspend or close an account straight away, without strikes first. We tell you what we did and why, unless the law or someone’s safety stops us. If you think we got it wrong, you can appeal from the notice we send, and a person looks again. If you live in the EU, you can also take our decision to a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body, or to court.

## What you write

What you write and the photos you share stay yours. So that Sea Pals can work, you give us a worldwide, free, non-exclusive licence to store, copy, process, adapt (for example, to resize a photo or make a card), show and send your content, to run, secure, moderate and improve Sea Pals and to obey the law. Our service providers can do this for us. The licence ends when your content is deleted, except for copies other people kept with your permission (such as memories in a friend’s book) and what we must keep for safety or the law.

You are responsible for what you send. Only send what you have the right to share, and don’t share other people’s private information or photos without their permission. Ideas and feedback you send us can be used to improve the app, freely and without payment; only our team reads them.

## Our app

Sea Pals, Mochi, the island, the art, the words, the code and our names and logos belong to Baseline Forge Inc. or to those who license them to us, and are protected by law. We give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence, which we can withdraw, to use the Sea Pals apps and site for yourself under these terms. You can share the cards and links the app makes for sharing. Nothing else in Sea Pals is yours to copy, sell or reuse without our written permission.

## Copyright and other complaints

If you think something on Sea Pals breaks your copyright or other rights, write to hello@seapals.app with who you are and how to reach you, what your work is, where it is on Sea Pals, and a statement that you believe in good faith the use isn’t allowed, that your notice is accurate, and that you own the rights or may act for the owner. We may remove the content and tell the person who sent it, who can reply. We close the accounts of people who infringe again and again.

If an intimate image of you is shared on Sea Pals without your consent, report it in the app or write to hello@seapals.app saying where it is. We remove it, and any copies we know of, within 48 hours of a valid request.

## Other people and meeting in person

Sea Pals lets you write to people you don’t know. We don’t run background checks, check identities or verify ages, and we can’t promise that people are who they say they are. You are responsible for how you deal with other people, on Sea Pals and off it.

Never send money, gift cards or bank details to anyone you meet on Sea Pals, whatever the story. Think before you share personal details. Sea Pals is for writing, not for meeting in person: if you choose to meet someone anyway, that is your decision and your risk, so meet in a public place and tell someone you trust. If you are under 18, never meet someone from Sea Pals without a parent or guardian.

Sea Pals is not an emergency service. If you or someone else is in danger, call your local emergency number.

## No selling of reach

Nobody can pay for more letters, more visibility or more bottles. There are no ads.

## Other services

Sea Pals works with services that belong to others: the app stores, Apple and Google sign-in, Apple Weather, Spotify song links and your phone’s share sheet. Their own terms apply to them, and we aren’t responsible for them or for what you do there. Weather, translations and distances in the app are approximate; don’t rely on them for anything important.

## Apple and Google

If you got Sea Pals from the App Store or Google Play, these terms are between you and us, not Apple or Google, and we, not they, are responsible for Sea Pals and its content. The store’s own rules also apply when you use its version of the app.

For the App Store version: Apple has no duty to provide maintenance or support for Sea Pals. If it fails to meet a warranty that applies to it, you may tell Apple, which will refund the price you paid (Sea Pals is free, so there is none); Apple has no other warranty duty. Apple is not responsible for any claim about Sea Pals, including product liability, failing to meet a legal or regulatory requirement, consumer protection, privacy or intellectual property claims. You confirm that you are not in a country under a US government embargo or named by the US as supporting terrorism, and that you are not on a US government list of prohibited or restricted parties. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms and can enforce them against you.

## The service

We make Sea Pals with care, but offer it “as is” and “as available”. As far as the law allows, we give no promises or warranties about it beyond those in these terms, including that it will suit a particular purpose, always be available, be free of mistakes or keep your content forever. We may change, pause or stop any part of Sea Pals, or all of it, at any time; if we stop it, we will try to tell you first so you can download your data. We are not responsible for what other people write or do, though we work to keep it kind. Keep your own copy of anything that matters to you.

## Limits on our responsibility

In these terms, the “Sea Pals parties” are Baseline Forge Inc. and its affiliates, and the directors, officers, shareholders, employees, contractors, agents and service providers of each.

As far as the law allows, the Sea Pals parties are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive loss, or for loss of data, profits, goodwill or opportunity, arising from Sea Pals or these terms, even if we were told it was possible. Nor are they liable for what other people say or do, on Sea Pals or off it, or for anything outside our reasonable control. The total liability of all the Sea Pals parties together, for all claims about Sea Pals, is limited to the greater of 100 Canadian dollars and what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that the law does not let us limit, such as for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for gross negligence or wilful misconduct, and nothing takes away rights you have as a consumer that a contract can’t change. If you live in the EU or the UK, we are responsible for loss you suffer that was a foreseeable result of our breaking these terms or failing to use reasonable care.

## Disputes with other people, and claims against us

- Disputes with other people. You deal with other people on Sea Pals at your own risk. As far as the law that applies to you allows, you release the Sea Pals parties from all claims, demands and losses, known or unknown, arising from or connected with disputes between you and other people on Sea Pals. This release doesn’t cover claims arising from our own fraud, gross negligence, wilful misconduct, or breach of the law or of these terms. If you live in California, you waive California Civil Code section 1542 to the same extent; it says: “A general release does not extend to claims that the creditor or releasing party does not know or suspect to exist in his or her favor at the time of executing the release and that, if known by him or her, would have materially affected his or her settlement with the debtor or released party.”
- Claims only against the company. As far as the law allows, any claim about Sea Pals or these terms may be brought only against Baseline Forge Inc., and not personally against any of its directors, officers, shareholders, employees or contractors.

## Claims from your use

As far as the law allows, you agree to defend and compensate the Sea Pals parties against claims, losses and costs, including reasonable legal fees, that come from what you send on Sea Pals, from your breaking these terms or the law, or from your violating someone else’s rights. This doesn’t apply where the law where you live doesn’t allow it, or to the extent a loss was caused by us.

## Ending

You can delete your island at any time. We can suspend or close an account, or limit what it can do, if it breaks these terms or the guidelines, if the law requires it, if it puts other people or Sea Pals at risk, or if we stop offering Sea Pals where you live. When an account closes, your licence to use Sea Pals ends. The parts of these terms that by their nature should last, such as those about content, our app, the limits on our responsibility, disputes and claims against us, claims from your use, and law and disputes, keep applying.

## Changes to these terms

We may change these terms as Sea Pals changes, or when the law asks us to. The date at the top shows the latest version. If a change matters, we will say so in the app at least 15 days before it takes effect, unless it has to happen sooner for safety or the law. If you keep using Sea Pals after a change takes effect, the new terms apply; if you don’t agree, you can delete your island. A change to the arbitration section doesn’t apply to a dispute we already knew about.

## Law and disputes

Before making a claim, please write to hello@seapals.app and give us a chance to put things right; most problems can be solved within 30 days.

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada that apply there, without regard to conflict of laws rules. The UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply. Except as the arbitration section says, disputes go only to the courts in Toronto, Ontario, and you and we accept their jurisdiction.

If you live in Quebec, the French version of these terms applies to you, the arbitration section doesn’t apply, you may bring claims before the Quebec courts, and nothing here limits rights you have under Quebec law.

If you are a consumer in the EU, the UK or another country whose law gives you protections a contract can’t change, or the right to go to your own courts, you keep them and may bring a claim where you live.

## Arbitration in the United States

This section applies if you live in the United States. Please read it carefully: it affects your rights.

- Arbitration. You and we agree to settle any dispute about Sea Pals or these terms by final, binding, individual arbitration instead of in court, except that either of us may bring an individual claim in small claims court, and either of us may ask a court to stop the misuse of intellectual property. The American Arbitration Association (AAA) runs the arbitration under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, before one arbitrator, by video or in the county where you live; fees follow those rules, which limit what you pay. If 25 or more similar claims are brought by or with help from the same lawyers or organisations, they are handled under the AAA’s Mass Arbitration Supplementary Rules. The US Federal Arbitration Act governs this section.
- No class actions. You and we each bring claims only for ourselves, not as a plaintiff or class member in a class, collective or representative action, and an arbitrator may not combine different people’s claims. You and we give up the right to a jury trial.
- Opting out. You can opt out of this section within 30 days of first agreeing to these terms, or to the first version that included it, by writing to hello@seapals.app from the email on your account, or with your Sea Pals name, saying “I opt out of arbitration”. Opting out changes nothing else in these terms.
- If part of this fails. If the ban on class actions can’t be enforced for a claim, that claim goes to court, not arbitration. If any other part of this section can’t be enforced, the rest still applies. If you opt out, or a claim isn’t arbitrated, “Law and disputes” applies.

## Everything else

- These terms, with the community guidelines, the child safety standards and the privacy policy, are the whole agreement between you and us about Sea Pals.
- If a court finds that part of these terms can’t be enforced, that part changes only as much as needed, and the rest still applies.
- If we don’t enforce a term straight away, we can still enforce it later.
- You can’t transfer these terms or your account to anyone else. We can transfer them to a company that takes over Sea Pals, and we will tell you if we do.
- Nobody else has rights under these terms, except Apple as described above, and the Sea Pals parties, who may rely on the limits on our responsibility, the release and claims from your use.
- We can send you notices in the app or by email; you can reach us at hello@seapals.app.
- These terms are written in English and translated. If a translation and the English differ, the English version applies, unless the law where you live says otherwise.

## Contact

Baseline Forge Inc. runs Sea Pals. Write to hello@seapals.app. It is also our point of contact for users and for authorities under the EU Digital Services Act, in English.

## Related pages

- [Safety](https://seapals.app/safety)

- [Help](https://seapals.app/help)

[Open in your browser](https://seapals.app/app)
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- [Help](https://seapals.app/help)
- [Privacy](https://seapals.app/legal/privacy)
- [Terms](https://seapals.app/legal/terms)
- [Community guidelines](https://seapals.app/legal/guidelines)
- [Child safety](https://seapals.app/legal/child-safety)
- [About](https://seapals.app/about)
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