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Terms of Service

Last updated: August 24, 2024

From everyone at JK Tech, thank you for using our product! We built Hotsock to help you create amazing real-time user experiences. Because we don't know every one of our customers personally, we have to put in place some Terms of Service to help keep the ship afloat.

When we say “Company”, “we”, “our”, or “us” in this document, we are referring to JK Tech, Inc. (JK Tech).

When we say “Service”, we mean any product created and maintained by JK Tech. That includes Hotsock and the associated licensing service, whether it is delivered within a web browser, desktop application, mobile application, or another format. Individual Hotsock installations run privately in your AWS accounts and are governed by our End-User License Agreement (EULA).

When we say “You” or “your”, we are referring to the people or organizations that own an account with our Service.

We may update these Terms of Service in the future.

When you use our Service, now or in the future, you are agreeing to the latest Terms of Service. That's true for any of our existing and future products and all features that we add to our Service over time. There may be times where we do not exercise or enforce any right or provision of the Terms of Service; in doing so, we are not waiving that right or provision. These terms do contain a limitation of our liability.

Account Terms​

  1. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your email account, which is used to verify ownership of your Hotsock account and license(s). The Company cannot and will not be liable for any loss or damage from your failure to comply with this security obligation.

  2. You are responsible for all content posted and activity that occurs under your account. That includes content posted by others who either: (a) have access to your login credentials; or (b) have their own logins under your account.

  3. You must be a human to register for an account. Accounts registered by “bots” or other automated methods are not permitted.

Payment, Refunds, and Plan Changes​

  1. If you are upgrading from the Free Tier to the Paid Tier, we will charge your card immediately and your billing cycle starts on the day of upgrade or at the end of your trial (whichever is later).

  2. If you're on a Paid Tier plan, we'll keep track of and bill you for all usage according to your selected plan and bill you once per month. If you pay annually, we'll calculate the prorated cost for the rest of the year, and bill you monthly for usage over the baseline allowance for your plan.

  3. We generally do not issue refunds. The Free Tier provides ample allowance for a thorough evaluation.

Cancellation and Termination​

  1. You are solely responsible for properly canceling your account. Within our Service, we provide a simple no-questions-asked cancellation link. An email or phone request to cancel your account is not automatically considered cancellation. If you need help cancelling your account, you can always contact support.

  2. Upon cancellation, all of your licenses will be downgraded to the Free Tier. You can contact our support team to permanently delete your data from active systems and logs. We cannot recover this information once it has been permanently deleted.

  3. If you cancel the Service before the end of your current paid up month, your cancellation will take effect at the end of that billing cycle and you will not be charged again. We do not automatically prorate unused time in the last billing cycle.

  4. We have the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of our Services for any reason at any time. Suspension means you and any other users on your account will not be able to access the account or any content in the account. Termination will furthermore result in the deletion of your account or your access to your account, and the forfeiture and relinquishment of all content in your account. We also reserve the right to refuse the use of the Services to anyone for any reason at any time. We have this clause because statistically speaking, out of the hundreds of thousands of accounts that could be on our Service, there could be at least one doing something nefarious.

  5. Verbal, physical, written or other abuse (including threats of abuse or retribution) of Company employee or officer will result in immediate account termination.

Modifications to the Service and Prices​

  1. Sometimes it becomes technically impossible to continue a feature or we redesign a part of our Service because we think it could be better or we decide to close new signups. We reserve the right at any time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, any part of our Service with or without notice.

  2. Sometimes we change the pricing structure for our product. When we do that, we tend to exempt existing customers from those changes. However, we may choose to change the prices for existing customers. If we do so, we will give at least 30 days notice and will notify you via the email address on record. We may also post a notice about changes on our websites or the affected Services themselves.

Uptime, Security, and Privacy​

  1. Your use of the Service is at your sole risk. We provide this Service on an “as is” and “as available” basis. We do not offer service-level agreements for our Service.

  2. We take many measures to protect and secure your data through backups, redundancies, and encryption. We enforce encryption for data transmission from the public Internet.

  3. When you use our Service, you entrust us with some of your data. We take that trust to heart. You agree that JK Tech may process your data as described in our Privacy Policy and for no other purpose. We as humans can access your data for the following reasons:

    • To help you with support requests you make. We'll ask for express consent before accessing your account. Due to the privacy goals of our Services, it's possible that we are partially or entirely unable to access your data.
    • On the rare occasions when an error occurs that stops an automated process partway through. We get automated alerts when such errors occur. When we can fix the issue and restart automated processing without looking at any personal data, we do. In rare cases, we have to look at a minimum amount of personal data to fix the issue. In these rare cases, we aim to fix the root cause as much as possible to avoid the errors from reoccurring.
    • To safeguard the Services. We'll look at logs and metadata as part of our work to ensure the security of your data and the Services as a whole. If necessary, we may also access accounts as part of an abuse report investigation.
    • To the extent required by applicable law. As a US company with all data infrastructure located in the US, we only preserve or share customer data if compelled by a US government authority with a legally binding order or proper request under the Stored Communications Act. If a non-US authority approaches JK Tech for assistance, our default stance is to refuse unless the order has been approved by the US government, which compels us to comply through procedures outlined in an established mutual legal assistance treaty or agreement mechanism. If JK Tech is audited by a tax authority, we only share the bare minimum billing information needed to complete the audit.

  4. We use third party vendors and hosting partners to provide the necessary hardware, software, networking, storage, and related technology required to run the Service.

  5. Under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), JK Tech is a “service provider”, not a “business” or “third party”, with respect to your use of the Service. That means we process any data you share with us only for the purpose you signed up for and as described in these Terms of Service and Privacy policy. We do not retain, use, disclose, or sell any of that information for any other commercial purposes unless we have your explicit permission. And on the flip-side, you agree to comply with your requirements under the CCPA and not use JK Tech’s Service in a way that violates the regulations.

Copyright and Content Ownership​

  1. All content posted on the Service must comply with U.S. copyright law.

  2. We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Service. All materials uploaded remain yours.

  3. We do not pre-screen content, but reserve the right (but not the obligation) in our sole discretion to refuse or remove any content that is available via the Service.

  4. The names, look, and feel of the Service are copyright© to the Company. All rights reserved. You may not duplicate, copy, or reuse any portion of the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or visual design elements without express written permission from the Company. You must request permission to use the Company's logo or any Service logos for promotional purposes. Please email us requests to use logos. We reserve the right to rescind this permission if you violate these Terms of Service.

  5. You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell or exploit any portion of the Service, use of the Service, or access to the Service without the express written permission by the Company.

  6. You must not modify another website so as to falsely imply that it is associated with the Service or the Company.

Features and Bugs​

We design our Service with care, based on our own experience and the experiences of customers who share their time and feedback. However, there is no such thing as a service that pleases everybody. We make no guarantees that our Service will meet your specific requirements or expectations.

We also test all of our features extensively before shipping them. As with any software, our Service inevitably has some bugs. We track the bugs reported to us and work through priority ones, especially any related to security or privacy. Not all reported bugs will get fixed and we don't guarantee completely error-free Service.

Liability​

We mention liability throughout these Terms but to put it all in one section:

You expressly understand and agree that the Company shall not be liable, in law or in equity, to you or to any third party for any direct, indirect, incidental, lost profits, special, consequential, punitive or exemplary damages, including, but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, goodwill, use, data or other intangible losses (even if the Company has been advised of the possibility of such damages), resulting from: (i) the use or the inability to use the Service; (ii) the cost of procurement of substitute goods and services resulting from any goods, data, information or services purchased or obtained or messages received or transactions entered into through or from the Service; (iii) unauthorized access to or alteration of your transmissions or data; (iv) statements or conduct of any third party on the service; (v) or any other matter relating to this Terms of Service or the Service, whether as a breach of contract, tort (including negligence whether active or passive), or any other theory of liability.

In other words: choosing to use our Service does mean you are making a bet on us. If the bet does not work out, that's on you, not us. We do our darnedest to be as safe a bet as possible through careful management of the business; investments in security, infrastructure, and talent; and in general giving a damn. If you choose to use our Service, thank you for betting on us.

If you have a question about any of the Terms of Service, please contact our Support team.