Terms of Service

CampusZen is built for students. You must be at least 13 years old. If you are 13–17, a parent or lawful guardian must approve your account before it can be used: we email them a 6-digit code and record their consent. Accounts for children under 13 are not permitted. Provide accurate information at signup — display name, username, email, password and date of birth. New accounts are limited to gmail.com or proton.me email addresses. Usernames must be unique and may not impersonate others. Email verification via a 6-digit OTP is required before posting, following or receiving notifications. We may suspend accounts that violate these rules.

• You are responsible for keeping your password secure. Passwords are hashed and must never be shared.
• We use HTTP-only cookies for sessions, per-route rate limiting and Zod validation on sensitive endpoints. Sessions are tracked per device and can be revoked individually from your settings.
• Verify your email via OTP to activate posting, following and notifications. Password reset also uses a 6-digit OTP.
• Your date of birth, if you set it, is recorded once and cannot be changed. It is used for the age gate and the 18+ content gate. If you are under 18, the account stays read-only until your guardian approves it.
• You can withdraw consent at any time. Withdrawing core consent deactivates the account and schedules it for deletion; optional analytics consent can be withdrawn without deleting the account.
• Do not attempt to access or modify another user's account.

The service supports text posts (up to 500 characters), multi-attachment media (images, GIFs and short video with posters), 2–4 option polls, long-form articles (up to 50,000 characters), replies, reposts, bookmarks, likes, following, search for users and posts, in-app and push notifications, hashtags, mentions, interest hubs (coding, design, cybersecurity, devops, drawing, business), college pages, and anonymous hub posts. Keep content respectful and lawful. Don't post spam, hate, harassment, or copyrighted material you don't own.

• 18+ content: you may mark a post as sensitive. Viewers opt in to revealing such content in their settings, and only after recording a date of birth of 18+.
• Anonymous hub: posts are masked in public output, but the real author is retained for moderation. Don't use anonymous posts to evade these terms.
• Privacy controls: you can make your account private, restrict who can reply or mention you, and control visibility of college, course and academic year.

Still out of scope: DMs, communities, stories, clips, payments, and any feature listed under V1–V3 of the roadmap. Those do not affect these terms until they ship.

You can report posts and users (with a reason and optional details) and block users. Reports are handled by a moderation queue; accounts may be limited, restricted (read-only for a set period), suspended or banned after review. You can appeal report decisions, suspensions and post removals. Admins may also send in-app announcements. We may remove content or suspend accounts after review; no automated advanced moderation is promised.

You retain ownership of posts you create. You grant CampusZen a non-exclusive license to host and display your posts within the service for the purpose of operating the feed, search, notifications and analytics. You can edit or delete your own posts at any time. Edited posts are marked as edited. View counts are recorded for your own analytics.

Our data practices are described in the Privacy Policy. We process account data on the basis of your consent, which you give at signup or in the consent screen. You can access, correct, erase, withdraw consent, nominate a person and raise a grievance as described in the notice. The Grievance Officer is available at privacy@campuszen.tech; we respond within 30 days (and no later than 90).

CampusZen relies on third-party infrastructure to run: MongoDB for data storage, Appwrite for file storage (avatars, covers, post media), Resend or Gmail SMTP for OTP email delivery, Web Push (VAPID) for OS-level notifications, and Vercel for hosting and performance analytics. Your use of the service is also subject to those providers' terms and privacy policies.

We may update these terms as we ship new features. Continued use after an update means you accept the new terms. Questions? Contact support@campuszen.tech. For data and privacy requests, including guardian consent and withdrawal, see the Privacy Notice or email the Grievance Officer at privacy@campuszen.tech. For security issues contact user-synax@proton.me.