Terms of Service

Who operates Herb Alert

Herb Alert is operated by [to be supplied: full legal entity name, entity type, and country/state of incorporation], of [to be supplied: registered postal address for legal notices]. In these terms, "we", "us" and "our" mean that entity, and "you" means the person using the service.

You can contact us at support@herbalert.net.

What Herb Alert is, and what it is not

Herb Alert is an evidence catalog. It summarises published research about herbal and natural substances and the conditions people use them for, and it presents citations, an evidence-strength rating, and safety and interaction warnings.

Herb Alert is not a medical service and is not a healthcare provider. It does not diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any condition. It does not give medical advice, and using it does not create a clinician-patient relationship between you and anybody.

The catalog describes what research has reported. It does not tell you what to take, and an entry in the catalog is not a recommendation to take anything.

The full extent of this limit is set out in the Medical Disclaimer, which forms part of these terms.

Who may use Herb Alert

You must be at least 16 years old to use Herb Alert. The service is not directed to children and accounts belonging to people under 16 will be deleted.

We do not verify your age. Herb Alert has no age gate and does not ask your date of birth, so this is a condition you accept rather than a check you pass. That does not make it optional.

[to be supplied: whether a higher minimum age applies in any jurisdiction the service is offered in, and whether the age of legal capacity to enter a contract is a separate requirement here - for example a minimum age of 18 to purchase a subscription.]

You may not use Herb Alert if you are barred from doing so under applicable law, or if we have previously terminated your account.

Your account

You create an account by signing in with Google or by registering an email address and password. Sign-in is handled by Firebase Authentication.

You are responsible for keeping access to your account secure, and for everything done through it. Tell us at support@herbalert.net if you believe somebody else has gained access.

You agree that the information you give us when registering is accurate, and that you will keep it current.

Some actions that expose or destroy your health information - exporting your data, deleting your account - require you to have signed in recently. This is deliberate and is not a fault.

Subscriptions, billing and cancellation

Parts of Herb Alert require a paid subscription. Subscriptions bought inside a mobile app are sold and processed by the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store, under that store's terms. We do not process your payment and we do not see your card details.

A subscription bought through an app store renews automatically until you cancel it, and it must be cancelled in the store that sold it - deleting your Herb Alert account does not cancel it.

[to be supplied: the subscription tiers offered, what each includes, the price and billing period of each, and whether a free trial or introductory period is offered and on what terms.]

[to be supplied: the refund policy. App store purchases are refunded under Apple's and Google's own policies and we generally cannot refund them directly - but this must be stated accurately, and any statutory right of withdrawal, such as the EU/UK 14-day cooling-off right for digital content, must be addressed rather than disclaimed away.]

A subscription can also be bought on the web. That purchase is processed by Stripe on a checkout page Stripe hosts; we do not handle your card details. A web subscription renews automatically until it is cancelled. [to be supplied: who the merchant of record is for the web route, and the cancellation and refund terms that apply to it - including how a web subscriber cancels, given that the product currently provides no in-app cancellation or billing-portal route for a Stripe subscription.]

[to be supplied: the notice period given before a price change takes effect, and whether an existing subscriber's price is held for the remainder of their term.]

If your subscription lapses, your account and the content in it remain; only the paid features stop.

Acceptable use

When you use Herb Alert, you agree not to do any of the following.

• Present Herb Alert content as medical advice, or use it to advise, diagnose or treat another person in a professional capacity.
• Post content you know to be false, or content that impersonates somebody else.
• Post content that is unlawful, harassing, hateful, threatening, defamatory, or that infringes somebody else's rights.
• Post another person's health information or other personal information without their consent.
• Promote, sell or advertise a product or service through community content.
• Scrape, crawl, bulk-download or systematically extract the catalog, or use it to build or train a competing dataset or model.
• Attempt to breach, probe or circumvent the security of the service, access another user's account or data, or interfere with the service's operation.
• Use the service to build any product that offers medical diagnosis or treatment.
• Use automated means to create accounts, or share, sell or transfer your account to somebody else.

Content you create

The notes, experiences and other content you write remain yours. We do not claim ownership of them.

So that we can operate the service, you grant us a licence to host, store, encrypt, back up, reproduce and display your content - limited to what is necessary to provide Herb Alert to you. That licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for content you chose to publish, as described below.

You are responsible for what you write, and you confirm that you have the right to post it.

Your private notes and narratives are private to your account and are encrypted before they are stored. We do not read them to make product decisions, and we do not send them to an AI or large language model. That encryption is applied by our servers with a key we hold - it is not end-to-end encryption, and the Privacy Policy sets out exactly what that does and does not protect against.

Publishing to the community

Nothing you write is published automatically. You may separately choose to publish an individual experience, and only that specific experience is then submitted.

Content submitted for publication is reviewed by moderation and, if approved, is published in a de-identified form. We may decline to publish anything, edit for de-identification, or remove published content at any time - including content that breaches the acceptable use rules above, or that presents a safety risk.

For content you publish, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to display, reproduce and distribute it within Herb Alert, and to keep it available after publication. You can withdraw a publication at any time, and you may withdraw all of them when you delete your account.

Anyone can read a published experience, including people who are not signed in and have no Herb Alert account, and search engines can reach it. Publishing is publishing to the open internet. Decide on that basis.

Withdrawing a publication removes it from Herb Alert going forward. It cannot recall a copy somebody else has already taken.

Community experiences are individual accounts of what one person says happened to them. They are not evidence, they are not verified, and they are not medical advice. Do not act on them.

[to be supplied: the moderation appeal process - how a user contests a removal, a rejected publication, or a suspended account, and what the response commitment is. Several jurisdictions, including the EU Digital Services Act, require a stated internal complaint mechanism. Note for whoever writes this: no appeal route exists anywhere in the product today - there is no contest button, no appeal endpoint and no appeal record - so this needs a mechanism built, not only a paragraph written.]

Our content and intellectual property

The Herb Alert catalog, its summaries, evidence ratings, safety warnings, software, design and branding are owned by us or by our licensors, and are protected by intellectual property law.

You may use the service for your own personal, non-commercial use. You may not copy, republish, redistribute or create derivative works from the catalog except as these terms allow or the law permits.

Underlying research papers and their abstracts belong to their own authors and publishers. Herb Alert cites and summarises them; it does not grant you rights in them.

[to be supplied: a copyright complaint route. If the service is offered in the United States, a DMCA designated agent and the agent's registered contact details are needed to rely on the safe harbour. An equivalent notice-and-action route is required in the EU.]

Links to other sites and products

Herb Alert may link to other websites, including publishers of the research it cites. We do not control those sites and we are not responsible for their content, their products or their privacy practices.

A link is not an endorsement. Herb Alert does not endorse, sell or supply any herb, supplement or product.

Herb Alert has an affiliate product feature built into it, and it is switched off. No merchant is enabled, no merchant credentials are configured, and no product link is shown to anyone, so there is nothing here on which we earn a commission today.

Where the product would show those links, it already carries the disclosure that would apply to them: that product links on that page are affiliate links, that the app may earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you, and that shopping ratings are feedback from shoppers rather than evidence of safety or effectiveness. If the feature is ever switched on, that disclosure stays where it is - beside the links themselves, as the US Federal Trade Commission requires - and the affiliate section of the Privacy Policy will be completed in the same change.

Availability and changes to the service

We aim to keep Herb Alert available, but we do not guarantee that it will be uninterrupted or error-free. We may suspend it for maintenance, and we may change, add or remove features.

The catalog is updated as research changes. An entry you read today may say something different tomorrow, and that is the point of the product rather than a defect in it.

We may discontinue the service. If we do, we will give reasonable notice where we can, and you will have an opportunity to export your data first.

Disclaimer of warranties

Herb Alert is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, whether express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the catalog is complete, current or free from error, that a safety warning or interaction is listed, or that any information in it is suitable for your situation. Research is summarised from published sources and those sources can themselves be wrong, contested or superseded.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties. Where that is the case, the exclusions above apply only so far as the law allows, and nothing in these terms removes a consumer right that cannot lawfully be removed - including, where they apply, the statutory consumer guarantees under UK, EU and Australian consumer law.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data or lost goodwill, arising from your use of Herb Alert.

[to be supplied: the aggregate liability cap - conventionally the greater of the amount you paid in the preceding twelve months or a fixed sum. The figure and the formulation must be chosen by counsel and checked for enforceability in each jurisdiction.]

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. Given what this service is about, that carve-out is deliberate and should not be narrowed.

You are responsible for decisions you make about your own health. Herb Alert gives you information; a qualified clinician - not this app - is who you should be deciding with.

Indemnity

You agree to indemnify us against claims, losses and reasonable costs arising from content you post, from your breach of these terms, or from your misuse of the service, except to the extent the claim arises from our own act or omission.

[to be supplied: confirm whether an indemnity from a consumer is enforceable in the target jurisdictions. In several consumer-protection regimes a broad indemnity given by a consumer is unfair and unenforceable, and including one can taint surrounding clauses.]

Suspension and termination

You can stop using Herb Alert at any time, and you can delete your account from within the app. Deletion is permanent and is described in the Privacy Policy.

We may suspend or terminate your account if you breach these terms, if your use puts the service or another person at risk, or if we are required to by law. Where it is reasonable and lawful to do so, we will tell you why and give you a chance to respond.

If we terminate your account without cause, we will give you a reasonable opportunity to export your data.

The sections on content licences for published material, intellectual property, disclaimers, liability and governing law survive termination.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The effective date and last updated date at the top of this page reflect the current version, and the version you accepted is recorded on your account.

For a material change we will give you notice before it takes effect. If you continue to use Herb Alert after that, you accept the updated terms; if you do not accept them, stop using the service and delete your account.

[to be supplied: the notice period for a material change to these terms, and how notice is given. Note that an app store may impose its own requirement here.]

Governing law and disputes

[to be supplied: the governing law of this agreement, and the courts or forum that have jurisdiction over a dispute.]

[to be supplied: whether disputes are subject to binding arbitration and a class-action waiver, or resolved in court. This is a deliberate commercial decision, not a default. If arbitration is chosen, the clause must be conspicuous, must name the arbitration provider and rules, and must respect the consumer-protection limits of the jurisdictions involved - it is unenforceable against consumers in much of the EU and UK.]

If you are a consumer in the EU or the UK, nothing here deprives you of the protection of the mandatory law of the country you live in, or of your right to bring proceedings there.

[to be supplied: whether the EU Online Dispute Resolution platform or another alternative dispute resolution body must be referenced for EU consumers.]

General

If any provision of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest remains in force and the unenforceable provision is applied so far as it lawfully can be.

Our not enforcing a provision on one occasion is not a waiver of it.

You may not assign these terms. We may assign them to a successor in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets.

These terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the Medical Disclaimer, are the entire agreement between you and us about Herb Alert.

These terms are written in English. [to be supplied: whether a translation is offered and which language version prevails in the event of a conflict.]

Contact

Questions about these terms go to support@herbalert.net.

Postal address for formal legal notices: [to be supplied: postal address for legal notices.]