Terms of Service

1.Acceptance of these Terms

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") constitute a binding agreement between you (the "User") and Etka Ahmet Bulut, trading as "Civesto", a sole proprietorship established in Türkiye, with its place of business in Niğde ("Civesto", "we", "us", "our").

By creating an account, downloading the App, calling the API, or otherwise accessing or using the Service, you confirm that you have read, understood and accept these Terms. If you do not accept these Terms, you must not use the Service.

2.Eligibility

To use the Service you must:

• be at least eighteen (18) years of age and have full legal capacity under the law of your country of residence;
• be a resident of, or a visitor lawfully present in, a country in which the Service is lawfully accessible (Civesto is in pre-launch and is not yet published in any app store);
• not be barred from receiving the Service under the laws of your country of residence or under any applicable export-control regime;
• provide accurate, current and complete registration information.

3.Service Description

Civesto is a citizen reporting platform that enables Users to submit observations of alleged traffic violations to the geographically competent authority. The Service comprises a mobile application for end users, a public-facing website, and an Enterprise API for authorised institutional subscribers (e.g. municipalities, traffic authorities, insurers).

The Service is provided as an information intermediary within the meaning of Article 4(1) of Directive 2000/31/EC on electronic commerce, as transposed into the law of each Member State concerned, and Article 6 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 (the Digital Services Act).

4.User Account

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. You undertake to notify Civesto without undue delay at [email protected] of any unauthorised use or suspected security breach.

You may register only one account per natural person. You may not transfer, sell or share your account with any other person. You must keep your registration information accurate and up to date.

We reserve the right to refuse registration, to require additional verification (including a one-time mobile-number challenge or government-issued identification through the EUDI Wallet flow, where available), or to suspend any account that we reasonably believe has been compromised.

5.User Conduct

You agree not to use the Service to engage in any of the following:

• False reports. Submitting reports that you know, or could reasonably be expected to know, are inaccurate, fabricated, manipulated, or staged. Submitting a knowingly false report to a public authority may constitute a criminal offence under the laws of most Member States.
• Defamation and harassment. Using the Service to defame, intimidate, stalk or harass any identifiable person, or to wage a personal campaign against a specific individual beyond what is strictly necessary to describe an alleged traffic offence.
• Hate speech and discrimination. Posting content that incites violence or hatred against a person or group on grounds of race, ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or any other protected characteristic.
• Illegal content. Uploading content the possession or dissemination of which is unlawful under EU or national law, including but not limited to child sexual-abuse material and terrorist content.
• Mass surveillance and plate harvesting. Systematic, automated or large-scale collection of vehicle registration plates for purposes other than the genuine reporting of a specific observed traffic violation. The Service is not a private investigation tool, a vigilante tracking system, or a substitute for lawful surveillance carried out by public authorities.
• Reverse engineering and abuse. Reverse engineering, decompiling, scraping at industrial scale, circumventing rate limits, or attempting to gain unauthorised access to any part of the Service or its underlying infrastructure.
• Spam and commercial misuse. Using the Service to send unsolicited commercial communications or to advertise third-party products or services.

Violation of this Section may result in immediate suspension of your account, deletion of the offending content, reporting to the competent authorities, and civil or criminal proceedings.

6.Reporting Liability

You are solely responsible for the accuracy, truthfulness and completeness of every report you submit. By submitting a report, you represent and warrant that:

• the alleged offence took place at the location and time indicated;
• the photographs or videos attached are genuine, unedited and have not been generated or altered by artificial intelligence;
• you have not staged or provoked the alleged offence;
• you accept that the report may be examined by a public authority and that you may be called as a witness in any subsequent administrative or judicial proceedings.

Civesto acts as a neutral intermediary. We do not pre-screen the merits of each report. We do, however, apply automated and human review to detect manifestly false, duplicated or abusive submissions, and to comply with Articles 14 to 17 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 (notice-and-action, internal complaint-handling, transparency reporting).

7.Intellectual Property

The Service, including without limitation the Civesto name, logo, application source code, server source code, documentation, user-interface design, illustrations, icons and audio elements, is the exclusive property of Etka Ahmet Bulut (Civesto) or of its licensors and is protected by copyright, database, trade-mark and other intellectual-property laws.

You retain ownership of the content you submit (photographs, videos, descriptions). By submitting content, you grant Civesto a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to host, store, reproduce, transmit and make available the content to the competent authority and to the limited extent strictly necessary for the operation of the Service, in accordance with the Privacy Policy. This licence terminates upon the deletion of your content, subject to retention periods imposed by law.

8.Licence Grant

Subject to your continued compliance with these Terms, Civesto grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable licence to download, install and use the App on a device that you own or control, and to access the Service, for your personal, non-commercial use. The licence is conditional on the payment of any applicable fees for premium features.

Where the App is distributed via the Apple App Store, the Apple End User Licence Agreement applies as a supplemental agreement; Apple Inc. is a third-party beneficiary of these Terms with the right to enforce them against you (Apple's Schedule 1, Section 12). Where the App is distributed via Google Play, the Google Play Terms of Service apply as a supplemental agreement.

9.Premium Features and Billing

Certain features of the Service may be offered on a subscription or one-off purchase basis ("Premium Features"). The price, billing cycle, currency and refund conditions of each Premium Feature are displayed at the point of purchase.

• Right of withdrawal. If you are a consumer resident in the European Union, you benefit from a fourteen (14)-day right of withdrawal under Directive 2011/83/EU. By starting to use a Premium Feature immediately, you expressly waive this right in accordance with Article 16(m) of that Directive; we will remind you of this on the purchase screen.
• Auto-renewal. Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period unless cancelled at least 24 hours before renewal. You may cancel at any time through the Settings of the App or through the relevant app-store account.
• Price changes. Any price change applies only as of the next billing cycle and is notified at least 30 days in advance.
• Payment processing. No paid features are currently offered and no payment channel is in operation. This section will apply only once paid features are introduced.

10.Termination

You may terminate these Terms at any time by deleting your account through the App ("Settings → Account → Delete account") or by writing to [email protected]. Termination is effective immediately and is subject to the retention periods set out in the Privacy Policy.

Civesto may suspend or terminate your account, with or without prior notice, where:

• you breach a material provision of these Terms or of the Privacy Policy;
• your conduct exposes Civesto or any third party to legal, reputational or security risk;
• we are required to do so by a competent authority or under applicable law;
• the account has been inactive for more than 24 consecutive months (with prior 30-day notice).

Provisions which by their nature should survive termination (in particular Sections 6, 7, 11, 12, 13 and 14) shall survive.

11.Disclaimer of Warranties

Save for the statutory warranties that cannot be excluded under applicable EU consumer-protection law (in particular Directive (EU) 2019/770 on the supply of digital content and digital services), the Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranty of any kind, whether express or implied, including but not limited to warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, or non-infringement.

Civesto does not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of harmful components, nor does it warrant any specific outcome of a report (such as the opening of a procedure, the imposition of a fine, or the deterrence of future offences).

12.Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, and except in cases of fraud, gross negligence, wilful misconduct, death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or any other liability that cannot be limited or excluded under mandatory law:

• the provider’s liability is limited only to the extent permitted by applicable law; no monetary cap is asserted, and your mandatory rights as a consumer are not affected;
• Civesto shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, including loss of profits, loss of data, loss of goodwill, or business interruption, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.

Nothing in these Terms shall limit or exclude any right that you have as a consumer that cannot be limited or excluded under the law of your country of residence.

13.Indemnification

To the extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless the provider (Etka Ahmet Bulut) from and against any third-party claim, demand, loss, liability, damage, cost or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to (a) your breach of these Terms, (b) your violation of any applicable law or of any third-party right, or (c) any report or other content that you submit through the Service.

14.Dispute Resolution and Governing Law

These Terms and any non-contractual obligation arising out of or in connection with them are governed by the laws of the Republic of Türkiye, without prejudice to any mandatory provision of consumer-protection law of your country of habitual residence (Article 6 of Regulation (EC) No 593/2008 "Rome I").

Any dispute that cannot be amicably settled shall be submitted to the competent courts of Niğde, Türkiye, where the provider is established. If you are a consumer, you may also bring proceedings before the courts of your country of habitual residence, and nothing in these Terms deprives you of that right.

15.Modifications

We may amend these Terms from time to time. Non-material changes (clarifications, corrections of typographical errors, changes that are favourable to the User) take effect upon publication. Material changes — including any change to fees, to the scope of the licence granted to you, or to the limitation of liability — take effect thirty (30) days after we have notified you by email and through an in-App banner.

Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of the revised Terms constitutes acceptance of the changes. If you do not accept the changes, you may terminate these Terms before the effective date by deleting your account at no cost.

16.Contact