Terms of Service

What this agreement is

These terms are the agreement between you and Wiaterra LLC, the California company that runs WAValt. Reading and agreeing when you make an account is what makes it a deal.

Four other documents are part of this agreement, so agreeing here means agreeing to all of them. Each is published on the site and linked in the app:

• Acceptable Use Policy: the rules for what you upload and send.
• Copyright and DMCA Policy: takedown notices, how to answer one, and repeat complaints.
• Privacy Policy: what we collect and what you can ask for.
• Cookie Policy: what sits in your browser.

If you are agreeing for a company or a label, you are saying you may do that, and "you" means the company too.

One thing to know first. In the United States these terms send most disagreements to arbitration instead of court, and you give up the right to join a class action. You can opt out within 30 days.

Who can use WAValt

You need to be at least 13. If we learn an account belongs to someone under 13, we close it and delete what we hold for it.

If you are 13 to 17, a parent or guardian has to read these terms, agree with you, and take responsibility for what you do here.

A paid plan needs an adult either way: the holder is 18 or over, or a parent or guardian agrees and takes responsibility for the payments.

A parent or guardian can ask about a child’s account at hello@wavalt.com.

Do not use WAValt if your local law says you cannot, or if you are on a sanctions list we may not deal with.

Your account

There are no passwords. You sign in with your email address, and we send a six digit code or a link that works once. Your inbox is therefore the key to your account: anyone who can read your email can get to your files.

One person, one account. Do not pass your code or link to anyone, and do not take a display name or username that pretends to be someone else.

How long a session lasts depends on the "Keep me signed in" box at sign-in: checked, 30 days without use and 365 days no matter what; cleared, 12 hours without use and 24 hours no matter what, and closing the browser ends it. If somebody else got in, email hello@wavalt.com straight away.

Your files stay yours

You own your files and everything in them. Uploading changes nothing about who owns what, and we never take a share of your work.

To run the service we need permission to hold and handle your files. It is narrow. Here is every reason we may use it:

• To provide the service: store your files, show them to you, and deliver them to the people you choose.
• To do what these terms allow, when you ask for it.
• To do what the law requires, such as answering valid legal process.
• To respond to an emergency, where someone is at risk of serious harm.

That is the whole list. We do not use your files to promote WAValt and never show them to anyone you did not send them to. Handling is automatic, and nobody at WAValt reads your files out of interest.

The permission ends when you delete. One honest exception: for a while after, copies sit in our hosting provider’s systems and in technical logs until they age out. We do not use them and cannot pull a file back out.

We do not pass this permission on. Our hosting platform and our email sender handle your files only to deliver the service, on our instructions, and the Privacy Policy names them.

We do not train AI on your work

We do not use your audio, your file names, or your metadata to train AI models. Not ours, and not anyone else’s. There is no machine learning anywhere in WAValt today, and we do not hand your files to another company so it can train on them.

If we ever build a feature that needs it, it stays off until you turn it on yourself, and you can turn it off again. We will not read silence as a yes. If this promise changes, it changes as a new version of these terms that you read and accept first.

How your files are protected

Files travel over an encrypted connection and are stored encrypted at rest by our hosting platform. Messages you send in the app are stored as plain text.

WAValt is not end to end encrypted. We hold your files in a form we could read if we had to, for one of the four reasons above. If you need a file only you and your recipient can ever open, protect it yourself before uploading.

If a breach affects your information we will tell you what happened, what was involved, and what to do about it, within 30 days of finding out. That is California’s deadline and we apply it to everyone.

WAValt is not a backup

WAValt is not a backup service and not an archive. There are no earlier versions, no undo, and no trash: deleting a file removes your copy straight away and for good. Keep your own copies of anything you cannot afford to lose, including one somewhere that is not us.

One thing deleting does not reach: a copy somebody kept. If you sent a file and the person you sent it to chose to keep it, that copy is theirs. It stays in their library after you delete yours, after you close your account, and after you revoke the link. You cannot take it back, and neither can we.

Deleting a file does not erase the history around it. The file name, the size, the checksum, the track details, and every delivery receipt stay, which is what keeps the receipts you already saw from going blank.

Sending files, and the people you send to

The people you send to do not need an account: they get a link and download.

A link is a key. Anyone holding it can open it, including anyone your recipient forwards it to.

You have controls. Free links last 7 days; paid plans can pick 7 days, 30 days, or no expiry. You can cap downloads on a link, and revoke it whenever you want.

Revoking only stops what has not happened yet. Once someone downloads a file, that copy is on their machine. We cannot reach it, recall it, or delete it. Nobody can.

The same is true of a copy they kept, even though that one sits on our servers rather than theirs. It is in their library, it counts against their storage, and it is theirs to delete. Revoking your link does not remove it.

A recipient gets access and a download, nothing more. Receiving a file gives no right to use it, release it, sell it, sample it, register it, or make money from it. Whatever rights they have come from you, never from the arrival of a file.

We are not part of your deal. Splits, credits, fees, and permission are between you and them.

Recipients agree to nothing with us. There is no tick box at the download page, so if somebody leaks your file we have nothing to enforce against them for you. What protects you is copyright law and your judgment about who you send to.

What the receipts tell you

We record an open when someone opens your download page, and a download when one finishes. You see both, with the address you sent to. It is a sign a link is moving, not proof of anything:

• An open is not proof a person listened, or even looked, and email scanners and link preview tools can trigger one that no human made.
• A download that starts and does not finish records no download. Previewing does not use up a download and does not record one.
• Repeat opens of one link inside an hour are recorded once.

The address you send to is stored with the send and written into every receipt, and receipts outlive both the link and the file. If your recipient would not expect that, tell them.

Our security log also records technical details of a download request, such as an IP address. It is written when the download starts, so it lands even if the download is cancelled, and it is not shown in your receipt.

Plans, storage, and limits

Everyone starts free: 1 GB of storage, files up to 500 MB each, 5 sends in any rolling 24 hours, and links fixed at 7 days. Paid plans lift those limits and add your choice of link expiry, and we show what a plan costs before you pay.

A send is one delivery: twelve stems to one person is one send. Making a link counts as a send too, whether you email it, text it, or copy it yourself, because the link is how the delivery travels. There is no separate limit on how many links you can have.

The send count is a daily rate, not a number of slots. It is counted when you send, and revoking or expiring a link afterwards does not give it back. The rolling 24 hours is what resets it.

A plan described as unlimited is fair use, and we will get in touch before acting on an account far past what its plan was built for.

Hitting a limit takes nothing away. You can still sign in, play, and download what you have; new uploads and sends wait until you free space or move up.

Paying, canceling, and refunds

WAValt is free right now. There are no paid plans and we are not taking payments. This is how billing will work when it starts.

Prices are shown before you pay. A subscription renews on its own until you cancel, and canceling stops the next renewal. You keep the plan until the end of the period you paid for. A payment company handles the card.

We do not refund part of a period you already paid for, unless your local law says otherwise, or we got something wrong, or we shut the service down. A price rise gets at least 30 days notice. If a paid plan ends and your files are over the free limits, we will give you a fair chance to clear space first.

Acceptable use

The Acceptable Use Policy is part of this agreement, so breaking it is breaking these terms. The short version: send only what you have the right to send, do not harm anyone, do not upload anything unsafe, and do not try to get around the limits.

You are responsible for everything that goes out of your account, including anything sent by somebody else using it.

Copyright

The Copyright and DMCA Policy is part of this agreement. It explains how a rights owner sends a takedown notice, how you answer one, and what happens to an account that keeps getting complaints.

If we get a proper notice about something in your account, we can switch off the file and every link to it, and an account that keeps getting complaints can be closed.

If a rights owner tells us an unreleased recording is going out without permission, we can switch it off while we look into it. If it turns out to be yours to send, it goes back.

The WAValt name and logo

The WAValt name, the logo, and the look of the app belong to Wiaterra LLC, and using the service gives you no right to any of them.

Do not use them as your own, or in a way that suggests we endorse you or made your work.

Saying that you use WAValt, or that a file came through it, is fine.

Suspending or closing an account

We can suspend or close an account for these reasons:

• You broke these terms or the Acceptable Use Policy.
• Repeat copyright infringement.
• Use that puts a person at risk, or threatens the service or other people’s accounts.
• The law requires it of us.
• The account belongs to someone under 13, or to someone aged 13 to 17 with no parent or guardian behind it.
• A paid plan went unpaid.

We start small where we can: taking down one file or disabling one link usually comes first.

We will tell you what happened and why, unless the law stops us or telling you would make a problem worse. If you think we got it wrong, reply and a person looks again. We keep the records of any account we close over a rules problem.

We can also stop offering WAValt. If we shut it down we will give at least 30 days notice by email, so you can get your files out, and refund any paid time you did not use.

Getting your data out, and closing your account

Download my data gives you one file with everything WAValt holds about you except the audio: your account, track details, packs, sends and who they went to, share links, receipts, connections, messages, sessions, and consent history. Three exports a day.

Delete my account closes it, and you type DELETE to confirm. Take your export first, because the moment you confirm:

• You are signed out on every device and cannot sign back in.
• Every share link you handed out is revoked immediately and for good. It does not come back, even if the account does.
• Thirty days later everything we hold for your account is permanently removed, your files included.
• What goes includes things partly belonging to somebody else: a whole conversation with both halves in it, the line in another person’s send history naming you, and the receipts showing you opened or downloaded something.
• What stays: security audit records, which carry account ids rather than email addresses, and rate limit counters, which are keyed on an IP address. Anything a recipient already downloaded stays on their machine, and a file you sent that somebody chose to keep stays in their library, because that copy became theirs when they kept it.

Inside those 30 days you can ask us to undo it at hello@wavalt.com, from the address the account uses. There is no self-serve undo, so somebody who got into your account cannot delete it and put it back. After 30 days nothing of your account is left to restore.

Leaving never depends on accepting a new version of these terms.

The service is provided as it is

We give you WAValt as it is. There is no uptime guarantee and no promise that nothing is ever lost. We run on Cloudflare, so if it has a bad day, so do we.

We can add features, change them, or take them away. If we take away something you are paying for and rely on, tell us: you can cancel and we will refund the part you did not use.

Beyond what these terms say, nothing else is promised. Some places do not allow that, so if your local law gives you rights this cannot take away, you keep every one of them.

Limits on what we owe you

If we get something wrong and it costs you money, there is a limit on what we have to pay: the larger of what you paid us in the 12 months before the problem, or 100 dollars.

We are not responsible for indirect losses, meaning lost profits, a deal that fell through, lost time, lost data, or harm to your reputation. The limit applies however a claim is framed.

Some things cannot be limited by law and we do not try, including our own fraud and, where the law says so, injury caused by our carelessness. If your local law does not allow these limits, they do not apply.

If something you do costs us

If someone brings a claim against us because of what you uploaded, what you sent, or how you used WAValt, you agree to cover the cost of it, including reasonable legal fees.

We will tell you promptly if such a claim arrives, and you can take charge of defending it. We will not settle it in a way that puts an obligation on you without asking first.

If you use WAValt as a private individual rather than for a business, this reaches only as far as your local law allows.

Changes to these terms

We can change these terms, and every version carries its own date. For a change that matters, meaning anything that affects your rights or takes something away, we will email the address on your account before it takes effect. Small changes, like fixing a typo, take effect when we post them.

The mechanism, straight: when a new version goes live, the app asks you to read and accept it the next time you sign in, and nothing opens until you do.

Your account keeps a record of which version you accepted and when, and a new acceptance adds to it rather than replacing it.

If you do not accept, you cannot keep using WAValt. Declining signs you out and leaves your account and files exactly as they are. You can sign in and accept later, or take your data out and close the account.

Sorting out a disagreement

Start by telling us. Email hello@wavalt.com with what went wrong and what you want, and give us 60 days. This comes before either of us starts anything formal.

If you are in the United States and that does not fix it, what is left goes to arbitration, one claim at a time, instead of court.

What that means. One arbitrator decides in private instead of a judge and a jury, and you give up a jury trial and the right to bring or join a class action. That is why you can opt out.

How to opt out. Email hello@wavalt.com within 30 days of first accepting these terms, say you are opting out of arbitration, and include the address on your account.

What is carved out. Either of us can use small claims court, or go straight to court to protect intellectual property such as copyright, trademarks, or trade secrets.

How it runs. The American Arbitration Association handles it under its consumer rules, or another service we both agree on, on paper, by video, or in person in the county where you live. For a claim under 10,000 dollars we pay the fees, unless the arbitrator finds it was not brought in good faith.

If the class action part is ever found unenforceable, that claim goes to court instead and the rest of this section stands. Outside the United States none of it applies to you, and you keep whatever rights your local law gives you.

Governing law

California law governs this agreement, without regard to its conflict of law rules. Anything not going to arbitration, including if you opted out, is heard in the state and federal courts in California.

If you are a consumer somewhere else, this does not take away the protections of your local law, including any right to bring a claim in your own courts.

The rest of the small print

Email hello@wavalt.com for anything: the app, these terms, a parent asking about an account, opting out of arbitration, undoing a deletion, and legal notices. A person reads it. Copyright notices go to their own address, in the Copyright and DMCA Policy. We send notices to the address on your account, so keep it current.

• These terms, with the four documents named at the top, are the whole agreement about WAValt, and they replace anything said before.
• If one part is unenforceable, the rest still applies. If we do not enforce something straight away, we have not given it up.
• You cannot hand your account or this agreement to anyone else without our written agreement. We can transfer it if WAValt is sold or reorganized.
• Nobody outside the two of us gets rights under these terms.
• While something outside our control is stopping us, such as an outage or a natural disaster, we are not in breach.
• Some sections keep working after this agreement ends: who owns your files, the limits on what we owe you, covering our costs, sorting out a disagreement, and governing law.