Terms of Use

Who we are, and what this is

Pidge is a dating app for students at the University of Cambridge, operated by Thomas Thomson (admin@pidgeapp.com). These terms are the agreement between you and us. By creating an account you accept them. If you do not, do not create one.

How your personal data is handled is a separate document, the Privacy Policy, and it is worth reading properly rather than scrolling past.

Who can use Pidge

You must be 18 or over. You must hold a University of Cambridge email address ending in exactly @cam.ac.uk; departmental and college subdomains are not accepted, which is a deliberate choice rather than an oversight. You must verify your age with a photo ID document before you can use the app. One person, one account.

If we have banned your account before, you may not create a new one.

How Pidge works

Each day you are shown a small set of profiles in your pigeonholes, and you can pidge a limited number of them. Nothing is revealed to the other person unless you both pidge each other. When you do, a chat opens and stays open for 48 hours from the moment you match, after which it and every message in it are deleted permanently.

The limits, the daily cycle and the 48-hour window are the product, not bugs. We may change how matching works, how many pidges you get, or how long chats last, as the app develops.

Your account

Keep the information on your profile accurate and keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for what happens on your account. Do not let anyone else use it, and do not use an account that is not yours.

Your date of birth is taken from the document you verify with, and cannot be edited afterwards. That is what stops someone verifying as an adult and then presenting themselves as a teenager.

What you must not do

Do not harass, threaten, stalk or abuse anyone. Do not send sexual content to someone who has not asked for it. Do not impersonate anyone or misrepresent who you are. Do not post anything unlawful, hateful, or involving anyone under 18. Do not use Pidge to advertise, recruit, solicit money or run a scam.

Do not scrape the app, automate it, or try to work around the daily limits, the cooldowns, the age gate or the blocking system. Do not attempt to access data belonging to other users.

Content involving the sexual abuse or exploitation of children is reported to the National Crime Agency and the account is banned. There is no warning and no appeal for this.

Your photos and what you write

Your photos and your profile text remain yours. By putting them on Pidge you give us permission to store them and show them to other users, for as long as your account exists, purely so the app can work. We do not use them for anything else, we do not sell them, and we do not use them in advertising.

Only upload photos you actually have the right to use, and only of yourself. Delete a photo, or your account, and that permission ends with it.

Safety, and what we do not check

We confirm two things about the people on Pidge: that they have a Cambridge email address, and that a photo ID says they are over 18. We do not run criminal record checks and we do not vet anyone. Verification is not a character reference.

If you meet someone from Pidge, meet in a public place, tell a friend where you are going, and make your own way there and back. Trust your instincts and leave if something feels wrong.

What happens between users, on the app or in person, is between them. We are not a party to it and we are not responsible for it. That is not us disclaiming a duty we could realistically meet; it is a description of what an app can and cannot know.

If you are in immediate danger, call 999. The University also runs support services, and reporting something to us does not stop you reporting it to them or to the police.

Reporting and moderation

There is no tolerance here for objectionable content, or for people who abuse others. Every report is reviewed within 24 hours. Where we find content that breaks these rules we take it down, and we remove the account that posted it.

You can report a profile or a conversation from inside the app. Reports go to the app administrator. When several different people report the same account, it is flagged for review automatically.

Beyond that, depending on what we find, we may warn an account, suspend it, or ban it. We aim to be proportionate, and we will get it wrong sometimes; if you think we have, email admin@pidgeapp.com and a person will look again. Where content is illegal we may be required to preserve evidence and pass it to law enforcement, and in some cases we are not permitted to tell you that we have.

Pidge Gold

Pidge Gold is an optional paid membership costing GBP 3.99 per week. It gives you more pidges each day, shows you who has pidged you, and gives your profile more reach. It does not let you message anyone who has not matched with you, and it does not exempt you from these terms.

It renews automatically every week until you cancel. Payment is taken by the App Store or Google Play, not by us, and your card details never reach Pidge. Cancel or manage the subscription in the store you bought it from; deleting the Pidge app does not cancel it. Cancelling stops the next renewal and you keep Gold until the period you have paid for runs out.

Refunds are handled by the store under their policy, because they took the payment. Nothing here affects your statutory rights as a consumer, including any right to cancel under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013.

If we change the price, we will tell you before it applies to you.

Ending things

You can delete your account at any time from Settings, and what that does and does not remove is set out in the Privacy Policy.

We can suspend or close your account if you break these terms, if we reasonably believe you are putting other users at risk, or if you are no longer eligible to use Pidge. Where it is safe and lawful to tell you why, we will. If you have paid for Gold and we close your account for something that is not your fault, you can ask the store for a refund of the unused part.

Pidge is a small operation

We do not promise that the app will always be available, that matching will always run on time, or that it will be free of bugs. Features may change or be withdrawn. We will not deliberately lose your data, but you should not treat Pidge as somewhere to keep anything you would be upset to lose - chats in particular are deleted after 48 hours by design, and are not recoverable.

Our responsibility to you

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that the law does not allow us to exclude. Your statutory rights as a consumer stand whatever these terms say.

Beyond that, we are not liable for things outside our reasonable control, for what other users do, or for losses that were not a foreseeable result of us breaking these terms.

Changes to these terms

We will tell you in the app if we change these terms in a way that matters. Continuing to use Pidge after that means you accept the new version. If you do not, you can delete your account.

Law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If you live elsewhere in the UK you keep the right to bring proceedings in your own country.

Contact

admin@pidgeapp.com