Terms of Service

Welcome. The Fairphone forum at https://forum.fairphone.com (the “Forum”) is a place for our community to share ideas, ask questions, help each other, and talk about fairer electronics. It is operated by FairPhone B.V., a company incorporated under the laws of the Netherlands with its registered office in Amsterdam (“Fairphone,” “we,” “us,” or “our”).

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) form a binding agreement between you and Fairphone governing your access to and use of the Forum. By creating an account or otherwise accessing or using the Forum, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms.

1. Who can use the forum

You may use the Forum only if you are 16 years of age or older. If you are under 16, you may use the Forum solely with the prior consent and supervision of a parent or legal guardian who agrees to these Terms on your behalf and accepts responsibility for your use. Your permission to use the Forum is personal to you, non-transferable, and revocable. If we notify you, directly or otherwise, that you may no longer use the Forum, you must stop doing so immediately.

2. Your account

Certain features require an account. When you register, you agree to provide accurate and complete information, at a minimum a valid email address, and to keep it current. You must choose a secure password and keep it confidential.

You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your account, whether or not authorised by you, until you close the account or notify us that it has been compromised. You agree to notify us without undue delay at community.manager@fairphone.com if you suspect any unauthorised use of your account. You may close your account at any time by contacting us at the same address. We may suspend, restrict, or terminate your account, with or without notice, where we reasonably believe you have breached these Terms or where we are required to act on a valid legal, regulatory, or intellectual-property complaint.

3. The spirit of the forum

This is a community built on respect. The simplest rule is to treat other people the way you would want to be treated. More concretely, when you post you agree to:

• Be respectful — no harassment, hate speech, threats, bullying, or personal attacks.
• Keep it lawful and honest — nothing illegal, defamatory, or deliberately misleading.
• Respect others’ rights — do not post content that infringes any person’s intellectual property, privacy, or confidentiality, and do not share others’ personal information without their consent.
• Stay on the level — no spam, advertising, chain messages, scams, or harvesting members’ details for mailing lists.
• Keep it safe — do not upload viruses or any other malicious or harmful code.

4. Things you must not do

To keep the Forum secure and fair for everyone, you further agree that you will not, and will not attempt to, and will not permit or assist any third party to:

• Use another person’s account without permission, or impersonate any person or organisation, or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or organisation;
• State or imply that you are affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Fairphone when you are not;
• Buy, sell, or trade usernames or other unique identifiers;
• Access, scrape, crawl, harvest, or otherwise collect data from the Forum by automated means, except that a publicly available search engine you operate may index the Forum; no bots, scripts, plug-ins, or other programs substituting for a standard web browser are permitted;
• Circumvent, disable, or otherwise interfere with any security feature or access control of the Forum;
• Impose an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure, or otherwise disrupt or impair the Forum or any other member’s use of it;
• Frame the Forum, embed or hotlink its images or content on other sites, or remove any proprietary or ownership notice from materials you obtain from the Forum; or
• Use the Forum in violation of any applicable law or regulation, or encourage or enable any third party to do any of the foregoing.

5. Your posts and content

You retain all ownership rights in the content you submit to the Forum (“Your Content”). These Terms do not transfer any ownership of Your Content to us, nor do they grant you any ownership of Fairphone’s trademarks, brand, software, or other materials.

To operate, promote, and improve the Forum, you grant Fairphone a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt, publish, translate, display, and otherwise use and make available Your Content to other users of the Forum, and to moderate, edit, or remove it in accordance with these Terms. This licence exists solely to enable us to operate the Forum and make Your Content available to the community.

You represent and warrant that you own or have all necessary rights, licences, and permissions to submit Your Content and to grant the licence above, and that Your Content, and our use of it as permitted here, does not and will not infringe or violate the rights of any third party or any applicable law. You are solely responsible for Your Content, and you must not represent that it is endorsed or approved by Fairphone.

We are under no obligation to store, maintain, or provide copies of Your Content. When Your Content is deleted by you or removed by us, the licence granted above terminates once the last copy has been purged from our active systems and routine backups. Where you have additionally released Your Content under a separate licence, such as a Creative Commons licence, that licence may continue independently and may permit others, or us, to continue using Your Content. We are not responsible to you for any use of Your Content by other members or third parties, including any use that breaches the terms on which you have licensed it.

6. Moderator and enforcement

Our moderators are community members who volunteer their time to help keep the Forum healthy, and we’re thankful for their contributions. They are not employees, agents, or representatives of Fairphone and act independently in a personal capacity. As such, their views, decisions, and statements are their own and do not represent Fairphone’s official position.

We reserve the right, at our sole discretion and without obligation, to monitor the Forum and to edit, hide, move, refuse, or remove any content, and to restrict, suspend, or terminate any account, where we reasonably believe these Terms have been breached or where we are required to do so by law. We will aim to act fairly and proportionately. We may also investigate suspected breaches and cooperate with, and disclose information to, law enforcement or regulatory authorities as required or permitted by applicable law. If you become aware of content that breaches these Terms, please report it to us.

7. Reporting illegal content and appealing decisions

If you consider that content on the Forum is illegal or breaches these Terms, you may notify us at community.manager@fairphone.com or through any reporting tool we make available. Please describe the content, its location (such as a link), and why you believe it is illegal or in breach, together with your contact details. We will handle valid notices in a timely, diligent, and non-arbitrary manner in accordance with the EU Digital Services Act. Where we act on a notice, we will, where required, inform the person who provided the content and the person who submitted the notice of our decision.

Where we remove, disable, restrict, or otherwise act on your content or account, we will, to the extent required by applicable law, provide you with a clear statement of reasons for our decision. You may challenge that decision free of charge by contacting us at community.manager@fairphone.com within six (6) months, setting out why you believe the decision was wrong. We will review your complaint without undue delay, under the supervision of appropriately qualified staff and not solely by automated means, and inform you of the outcome. Where the law provides, you may also be entitled to refer the dispute to a certified out-of-court dispute-settlement body, or to the courts.

8. Your responsibility (indemnity)

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Fairphone and its affiliates, and their respective directors, officers, employees, and agents, from and against any and all third-party claims, demands, proceedings, damages, losses, liabilities, costs, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or relating to: (a) your breach of these Terms; (b) Your Content; (c) your use or misuse of the Forum; or (d) any breach of these Terms through your account by another person. We will notify you of any such claim without undue delay, and you agree to cooperate in its defence. We reserve the right to assume the exclusive defence and control of any matter subject to indemnification, in which case you agree to cooperate with us; we will not settle any claim in a way that imposes a non-financial obligation on you, or admits fault on your behalf, without your prior written consent. Nothing in this section limits any mandatory right you have as a consumer under Dutch or EU law.

9. Privacy and your data

We process your personal data in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and applicable data protection law. The personal data we collect, the purposes and legal bases for processing it, and the rights available to you, including the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, and objection — are described in the Fairphone Privacy Policy, which forms part of, and applies alongside, these Terms.

10. Disclaimers

The Forum is a free community service provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Fairphone and its suppliers disclaim all warranties, conditions, and representations of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability, satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement.

Without limiting the foregoing, we do not warrant that the Forum will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free, that defects will be corrected, or that any content posted by members is accurate, complete, lawful, or reliable. Any reliance you place on such content is at your own risk. The Forum may link to or integrate third-party websites and services that we do not control and for which we accept no responsibility; your use of those services is governed by their own terms.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any warranty, right, or remedy that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law, including the mandatory rights of consumers under Dutch or EU law.

The Forum may allow you to interact, communicate, or arrange transactions with other members. Any such interaction is solely between you and the other member. Fairphone is not a party to, and accepts no responsibility or liability for, any dealings, disputes, or transactions between members, and we are under no obligation to become involved. You are responsible for exercising your own judgement and caution when dealing with others.

11. No official support or professional advice

The Forum is a community space. Information, opinions, and advice posted here, including by members and moderators, and on topics such as repair, modification, software, and battery care, are not provided or verified by Fairphone and do not constitute official Fairphone support or professional, technical, or legal advice. Any reliance you place on such information is at your own risk. The Forum is not a channel for warranty or support requests, and nothing posted on it creates any warranty or other obligation on the part of Fairphone, or varies the terms of any product warranty or purchase agreement. Carrying out repairs or modifications yourself, or acting on advice from the Forum, may affect your statutory or commercial warranty. For official support or warranty claims, please use the official Fairphone support channels.

12. Use of Fairphone names and logos

“Fairphone,” the Fairphone logo, and our other names, logos, and brand features are trademarks of FairPhone B.V. These Terms do not grant you any right to use them, except that you may make fair, accurate, descriptive references to Fairphone and its products in your posts. You must not use our trademarks in a way that is misleading, that suggests an affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement that does not exist, or that disparages Fairphone or its products.

13. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Fairphone will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or other intangible losses, arising out of or relating to your use of, or inability to use, the Forum, whether based in contract, tort (including negligence), or any other legal theory, and whether or not we have been advised of the possibility of such damages. We are not liable for content posted by other members or for the acts or omissions of any third party.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, and except for the liability described in the following paragraph that cannot be excluded, the total aggregate liability of Fairphone and its suppliers for all claims arising out of or relating to the Forum or these Terms will not exceed any amount you have paid to Fairphone for use of the Forum. As the Forum is provided free of charge, this means that, save for liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law, Fairphone’s liability to you is excluded to the fullest extent the law allows.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability where it would be unlawful to do so, in particular, for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for our intentional misconduct or deliberate recklessness (“opzet of bewuste roekeloosheid”), for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any liability that cannot be excluded or limited under mandatory Dutch or EU law, including the mandatory rights of consumers.

14. Governing law and disputes

If you have a concern, please contact us first so that we can try to resolve it informally; most matters are settled quickly that way. The parties agree to attempt in good faith to resolve any dispute through informal negotiation before commencing formal proceedings.

These Terms, and any dispute or claim (including non-contractual disputes or claims) arising out of or in connection with them or your use of the Forum, are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Netherlands, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The competent courts of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, will have jurisdiction to settle any such dispute. If you are a consumer, nothing in this section deprives you of the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of the country in which you reside, or of any right you may have to bring or defend proceedings before the courts of that country; where available, you may also use an alternative dispute-resolution scheme.

15. Termination and general terms

You may stop using the Forum at any time, and we may terminate or suspend your access at any time in accordance with these Terms. Upon termination, your permission to use the Forum ends. The following sections survive termination: Your posts and content, Your responsibility (indemnity), Disclaimers, Limitation of liability, and Governing law and disputes.

If any provision of these Terms is held to be invalid or unenforceable, it will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable or, if it cannot be so modified, severed, and the remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect. No failure or delay in exercising any right under these Terms operates as a waiver of that or any other right. You may not assign or transfer your rights or obligations under these Terms; we may assign ours to an affiliate within the Fairphone group or to a successor that acquires the business or assets relating to the Forum. These Terms, together with the documents referred to in them, constitute the entire agreement between you and Fairphone regarding the Forum and supersede any prior agreements on that subject.

16. Get in touch

For questions, notices, or feedback, please email us at community.manager@fairphone.com. We may give you notices under these Terms using the email address associated with your account, or by posting a notice on the Forum. We welcome your suggestions; you agree that we may use any feedback you provide freely and without obligation to you, so please do not send us anything you regard as confidential or proprietary.