Terms of Service

Via is provided by Via Messaging, d.o.o., Avčinova ulica 6, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia (“Via”, “we”, “us”), registration number 7459807000, tax number 21415617. You can reach us on +386 31 205 226, at support@viamessaging.eu for support, safety reports and complaints, and at legal@viamessaging.eu for legal enquiries and privacy requests. Our website is viamessaging.eu.

You accept these Terms through the account-registration flow before using messaging. You can read and save them before accepting, and access the current version through the app and the website.

You must be at least 16 years old. Supply your actual date of birth. We check the date you provide; we do not independently verify your age. Accounts that have not completed the eligibility and profile steps cannot use messaging or contact discovery. Underage and abandoned onboarding records are handled as described in the Privacy Policy.

You must also have legal capacity to enter this agreement. If local law requires a parent or guardian’s authorisation for a 16- or 17-year-old to do so, obtain it before registering. Parental authorisation does not permit someone under 16 to use Via.

Registration uses a phone number you are entitled to use and an SMS verification code. At launch that number must carry an EU country code. Keep control of the number, and take reasonable steps to protect your device, your verification codes and your account. Tell support promptly if you believe your account has been compromised or you have lost control of the number. You are responsible for your own conduct; these Terms do not automatically make you liable for every unauthorised use of your account.

Via supports one active device per account. Activating a replacement device ends the old device’s access and establishes the replacement device’s encryption setup. It does not transfer your old message history or private conversation keys. Messages still queued for the old device are deleted.

Changing the phone number on an existing account is not a launch feature. Contact support before deleting your account to register with another number; a new account does not automatically inherit the old account’s history, identity or group memberships. A recycled phone number must not give a new owner access to an earlier owner’s private history.

Provide accurate account information, and use a profile that does not deceptively impersonate someone else. A display name does not have to be your legal name.

Via provides direct and private-group messaging and image sharing on supported iOS and Android devices. A group can have up to 25 members. Images are compressed for delivery and may lose quality. Launch does not include calls, video calls, arbitrary file attachments, a web app, linked devices or a Via-operated conversation-backup feature. Announcements about future features are plans, not promises that a feature will arrive on a particular date.

Price. The launch service is free of charge. Your mobile operator or internet provider may charge for connectivity or messages under your own plan. We will not introduce a charge or subscription without explaining its price and conditions and obtaining your express agreement before charging you.

Contacts and notifications. Address-book discovery requires your permission; saved contact names stay on your device. You can also find an account by entering its full phone number. Someone who knows your number may find your Via account. Notifications depend on your preferences, your device settings, Apple or Google, and connectivity. As explained in the Privacy Policy, the alert our servers send is generic and discloses routing identifiers to the push provider; it does not contain the sender’s name, the chat text or the image.

Emergency use. Via is not an emergency communications service. Reports and support messages are not monitored as an emergency hotline. Use your local emergency services where immediate assistance is needed.

Ordinary messages, chat images and group photos are end-to-end encrypted. Via does not hold the private conversation keys needed to read them. Encryption does not conceal all routing or account metadata, protect an unlocked or compromised device, or stop another participant copying or reporting material.

We temporarily queue encrypted copies where necessary for delivery. A queued copy is deleted from the active queue after the recipient’s app acknowledges receiving and saving it. This acknowledgement does not mean the person has read it. Each group recipient’s copy is handled independently.

Queued copies expire 30 days after queuing and are removed by hourly cleanup, normally within one further hour. Expired copies are not delivered. Temporary delivery storage is not a backup service. Routine recovery backups exclude queued conversation content and report content.

Your readable conversation history and private conversation keys remain on your device. Losing or replacing the device, reinstalling the app, resetting it or deleting local data may permanently remove them. Via cannot reconstruct that history or restore those keys. These technical limitations do not waive any remedy you have if we fail to meet our legal or contractual obligations.

Deleting a chat locally does not remove other participants’ copies, or necessarily remove associated server metadata. Deleting your account does not recall messages already sent. Section 11 and the Privacy Policy explain the exceptions and the retention periods.

Your first name, any surname you provide and your profile photo are not end-to-end encrypted and are readable by Via. A surname and a photo are optional. Any signed-in Via user who knows your account identifier can see your name and your photo. Viewing a photo requires an authenticated account; we do not serve them through publicly accessible links. Blocking does not restrict this profile access.

Choose your profile photo with that visibility in mind. You can remove your surname or your photo, but removal cannot erase copies someone else has saved. Your date of birth is not shown to other users.

Do not use Via to:

• share illegal material, facilitate crime, or make credible threats of harm;
• sexually abuse, exploit, groom or endanger a child, or create, solicit or distribute child sexual abuse material;
• harass, stalk, extort or deceptively impersonate someone, or share intimate material without consent;
• incite violence or hatred against people based on protected characteristics;
• infringe another person’s intellectual-property, privacy or other legal rights;
• send spam, conduct scams, distribute malware or mislead people to obtain credentials or money;
• harvest account information or phone-number matches, automate bulk discovery, bypass rate limits or evade a restriction imposed under these Terms;
• gain unauthorised access to accounts or systems, interfere with delivery or encryption, or knowingly disrupt the service;
• knowingly make a false report or maliciously misuse reporting tools.

A good-faith report that we cannot substantiate is not itself misuse. These rules do not prohibit lawful criticism or the good-faith reporting of wrongdoing. Report suspected security vulnerabilities privately to legal@viamessaging.eu; do not access other people’s data or disrupt the service to demonstrate a problem. Mandatory legal rights remain unaffected.

Blocking. You can block another user in the app. Our relay then stops their messages reaching you, including messages they send to a group you are both in. It does not erase existing messages or their saved copies, and it does not hide your profile, which stays visible to signed-in users as described in section 6. Group membership and security updates continue so that the group’s encrypted state stays consistent. We do not notify them of the block.

Reporting. You can report a person from your chat with them, or from their profile in a group you share. You select a reason — spam, harassment or abuse, threats, sexual exploitation, or other — and may add a description. That reason, your description if you write one, the two account identifiers and the time are what the report sends.

A report carries no part of the conversation: no messages, no images, no group messages and no group roster. Submitting one gives Via no access to your chat or its private keys, and does not weaken its encryption. Include only what is necessary in the description, and avoid unnecessary third-party personal data. You can also contact support if you cannot use the in-app report flow. Do not send suspected illegal imagery by ordinary email; ask for appropriate reporting instructions.

Authorised reviewers triage reports daily and prioritise urgent safety issues. We do not promise that every investigation will be completed within 24 hours. Reports and appeals may take longer depending on their complexity. We handle reports and reporter information with restricted access, but cannot promise absolute anonymity where disclosure is legally necessary.

We may investigate credible reports and other lawfully available evidence of violations. Ordinary encrypted conversations are not available to us for content review, and a report contains no copy of them: it is the reporter’s account of what happened. We assess it against the other signals available to us rather than treating any report as proven.

Depending on the seriousness, repetition, evidence and risk, we may issue a warning, restrict a feature, remove a profile asset we host, temporarily suspend access or terminate an account. We use measures proportionate to the circumstances. We cannot remotely erase every copy of a message held by recipients.

We may act immediately where reasonably necessary to address serious safety risks, child exploitation, fraud, an attack on the service, or a binding legal requirement. For other cases, we normally explain the issue and give you an opportunity to respond or correct it where appropriate.

We give the affected user an explanation of the action, its reason and how to appeal, unless and only for as long as law or a concrete safety, security or investigation risk justifies withholding details. We avoid unnecessarily disclosing the reporter’s identity or other people’s information.

You can appeal to support@viamessaging.eu, including if a suspension prevents you signing in. Explain why you believe the action was mistaken and provide relevant information. A human reviewer reconsiders the decision, using a different reviewer where practicable, and communicates the outcome. We aim to acknowledge an appeal within seven days and decide it within 30 days; if more time is needed, we explain why and provide an update. These targets do not extend any shorter legal deadline or restrict your legal remedies.

You keep any ownership rights you hold in your content. You give Via only the non-exclusive, royalty-free permission necessary to transmit and temporarily store it, display profile material according to its stated visibility, and read the description you submit in a report. This permission lasts only as long as needed for those purposes and for the applicable retention or legal obligations, including delivery of messages already sent. It permits necessary service-provider involvement; it does not permit unrelated advertising use, and it does not transfer ownership to Via. It does not itself supply a legal basis for processing personal data, or overcome end-to-end encryption.

Via and its licensors retain rights in the app, the branding and the service software. Subject to these Terms and applicable app-store rules, you may use the app for its intended purpose. Your permission ends when this agreement is lawfully terminated, subject to mandatory rights.

Do not sell or redistribute the proprietary app, misappropriate our branding, or modify proprietary components without permission. These restrictions do not override mandatory exceptions, including applicable interoperability rights, or rights granted by an open-source licence. Open-source components remain governed by their respective licences, and we make the applicable notices available with the app.

App-store terms may also govern your download. They do not remove Via’s obligations to you.

You may stop using Via at any time and delete your account in the app. If you cannot access it, contact legal@viamessaging.eu for appropriately verified assistance. Uninstalling the app alone does not delete your account.

Deletion removes the active account, the profile photo, device and session records, associated keys, block relationships, the incoming queue and your links in active conversation metadata. Group departure is attempted so that remaining members can update their encrypted state.

Copies already queued for other recipients may still be delivered, and remain until acknowledgement or their original expiry. Other people’s device copies are unaffected. Reports, necessary enforcement records, correspondence, limited logs and restricted recovery copies follow their separate retention schedules in the Privacy Policy. Necessary legal preservation may also apply. We do not promise immediate deletion of every record, or restoration of local history.

Suspension does not necessarily delete the account immediately; we may need to investigate or process an appeal. Termination and subsequent deletion follow the same disclosed retention rules. Ownership provisions, accrued claims and obligations that need to continue for legitimate retention or dispute resolution survive only to that extent.

We maintain the service with reasonable care and skill, and provide security and other updates required by applicable law. Install necessary updates to keep using Via safely. Where an update changes compatibility, we explain the requirement and any material consequences. Network failures, device settings, provider outages and maintenance can affect delivery; we do not guarantee uninterrupted service or a particular delivery time.

We may change the service for a valid reason: legal compliance, security, compatibility, necessary technical maintenance, proportionate prevention of abuse, or improvements to functionality and usability. This is not an unrestricted right to remove the core service. Changes beyond those needed to maintain conformity will not impose an additional charge under this agreement.

For a change with more than a minor negative effect, we explain its nature, timing and your options in advance, in a form you can keep unchanged, such as a downloadable notice provided to your account. We ordinarily give at least 30 days’ notice. Urgent legal or security circumstances may require shorter notice; mandatory rights remain intact.

Where the applicable digital-service rules provide it, you may terminate without charge within 30 days of receiving the notice or the change taking effect, whichever is later, unless you can retain the unchanged, conforming service without extra cost. Other mandatory remedies remain available.

We change these Terms only for the reasons above, or to accurately explain changes to the service or our legal arrangements. We identify the change and its effective date, and give advance notice of materially detrimental changes. We seek express agreement where required; silence or continued use does not automatically waive your rights. New purposes for personal data must independently satisfy data-protection law.

Mandatory consumer rights remain in force, including applicable Slovenian and EU rules concerning digital services. If the service fails to meet applicable requirements, you may have rights to correction, termination and, where relevant, a refund or price reduction. Contact support to request a remedy. A free service is not automatically exempt from consumer law; the applicable statutory scope determines your rights.

We remain responsible for loss for which applicable law makes us liable. We do not exclude responsibility for fraud, intentional wrongdoing, gross negligence, death or personal injury where liability cannot lawfully be excluded, breach of mandatory consumer rights, or other non-excludable obligations. There is no blanket exclusion for loss of data, and no cap reducing your remedy to the price of a free account.

Third-party acts or technical limitations do not automatically excuse our own failure to meet an obligation. Responsibility, causation and recoverable loss are assessed under applicable law. You are not required by these Terms to indemnify Via against every claim concerning your account.

Any statutory withdrawal right, including its required information and the procedure for exercising it, remains unaffected by the account deletion options described above.

If we decide to close Via permanently, we ordinarily give at least 30 days’ advance notice with the planned date and the consequences for accounts and data. Exceptional legal or security circumstances, or circumstances beyond our reasonable control, may prevent that notice. This does not remove a mandatory remedy or excuse a failure to act with required care.

We explain the available ways to retain information before closure, and fulfil applicable retrieval or portability obligations for data we hold. We cannot reconstruct readable conversation history held only on your device. We do not promise a full chat-export feature that is not available.

Contact support@viamessaging.eu with a service complaint, or legal@viamessaging.eu with a legal enquiry. We consider complaints fairly and provide a response. You do not have to finish our internal complaint process before exercising a right to go to court or to a competent authority.

Slovenian law governs these Terms, subject to applicable EU law. If you are a consumer, this choice does not deprive you of mandatory protections applicable under conflict-of-law rules in your country of habitual residence. Jurisdiction is determined by applicable law, including consumers’ rights to bring proceedings in their home courts where provided. These Terms do not impose exclusive Ljubljana jurisdiction or compulsory arbitration.

We do not currently recognise any provider of out-of-court consumer dispute resolution as competent to resolve disputes with Via. If we cannot settle a complaint with you directly, you may bring the matter before the competent court, and you may report a suspected infringement of consumer legislation to the Slovenian Market Inspectorate (Tržni inšpektorat Republike Slovenije).

If a clause cannot lawfully be enforced, mandatory law governs and the remaining Terms continue where legally possible. Our delay in exercising a right does not automatically waive it. We will not transfer this agreement in a way that unlawfully reduces your rights; any required notice or consent still applies.

These Terms concern the service and do not replace rights under data-protection law. Any translated version must accurately reflect the same agreement; no language-precedence clause may override mandatory local-language or consumer protections.