Introduction
These Terms and Conditions govern your access to and use of Penpal America, a 1-to-1 penpal and social communication platform operated by Tick Waves Limited. By creating an account or using the service, you agree to these Terms.
Penpal America Legal
Terms and Conditions
Effective version: v1.0. Penpal America is operated by Tick Waves Limited. These Terms apply to users of the Penpal America website, app experience, messaging, voice call, video call, profile, gallery, reporting, blocking, moderation, and subscription features.
Eligibility and 18+ Requirement
Penpal America is for adults only. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account, use chat, upload content, make voice or video calls, or subscribe to paid features. We may suspend or remove accounts where we suspect an underage user.
Account Registration and Truthful Information
You agree to provide truthful, accurate, and current information during registration and while using your profile. You must not use fake, misleading, stolen, or impersonated profile information.
User Responsibility for Account Security
You are responsible for keeping your login details secure and for activity that occurs through your account. Notify us if you believe your account has been accessed without permission.
Acceptable Use of the Platform
You may use Penpal America to create a profile, discover users, send one-to-one messages, make voice and video calls, upload permitted profile/gallery content, report concerns, block users, and manage subscriptions in a lawful and respectful way.
Prohibited Behaviour
Users must not:
- harass, threaten, abuse, bully, intimidate, or exploit others
- send sexual, indecent, violent, hateful, discriminatory, illegal, or harmful content
- impersonate another person
- use fake, misleading, or stolen profile information
- scam, defraud, request money, or manipulate other users
- share another person's private information without consent
- upload malware, spam, or harmful links
- use the service for illegal activity
- attempt to bypass bans, moderation, payment systems, or security controls
User-Generated Content
You are responsible for the text, images, videos, voice notes, profile information, reports, and other content you submit. You must have the rights and permission needed to upload or share that content. We may review, restrict, remove, or reject content that appears unsafe, unlawful, misleading, abusive, or inconsistent with these Terms.
Messaging, Voice Calls, and Video Calls
Penpal America provides private one-to-one text chat, voice calls, and video calls. You must use these features respectfully. Do not pressure users, record calls without consent where prohibited, send indecent content, or use communication features to harass, scam, exploit, or threaten another person.
Safety, Meeting Other Users, and Background Checks
Penpal America is a social communication platform that allows users to meet and communicate with other users online. Tick Waves Limited does not carry out criminal record checks, identity verification checks, address checks, employment checks, financial checks, or any other background checks on users of the platform. Tick Waves Limited does not have the facility to carry out background checks on users.
Users are solely responsible for deciding whether to communicate with, trust, share personal information with, or meet another user. If a user chooses to meet another user in person, they do so entirely at their own risk and are responsible for carrying out their own checks, taking safety precautions, meeting in public places, informing friends or family, and using their own judgment.
Tick Waves Limited is not responsible or liable for any loss, harm, injury, damage, fraud, abuse, emotional distress, financial loss, or other consequence that may arise from a user's decision to communicate with or meet another user, especially where the user has not carried out their own checks or safety precautions.
No Background Check Disclaimer
Penpal America does not guarantee the identity, background, intentions, honesty, safety, conduct, location, employment, financial position, or personal circumstances of any user. Online interactions can involve risk. Use your own judgment and safety precautions at all times.
Reports, Blocking, Moderation, Suspension, and Account Termination
Tick Waves Limited may review reports, remove content, suspend or ban users, restrict access to features, and cooperate with lawful authorities where required. We may take action where we believe a user, profile, message, media item, call behaviour, payment activity, or account pattern creates risk or breaches these Terms.
Paid Subscriptions, Renewals, Cancellations, and Refunds
Penpal America may offer paid subscription features. Subscription prices, billing periods, renewals, limits, and included features are shown before purchase. Payments are processed by third-party payment providers such as Stripe. Subscriptions may renew automatically unless cancelled before renewal. Refunds are handled according to applicable law, payment provider rules, and any refund policy shown at the time of purchase.
Service Availability and Changes
We aim to provide a reliable service, but Penpal America may be unavailable, interrupted, updated, restricted, suspended, or changed from time to time. Features may be added, removed, limited, or modified for operational, safety, legal, or business reasons.
Limitation of Liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, Tick Waves Limited is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, punitive, or exemplary losses, or for loss of profits, data, reputation, goodwill, opportunity, or expected benefit arising from use of the platform.
Privacy and Data Protection
Our Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, store, and protect personal data. By using Penpal America, you agree that your data will be handled in line with the Privacy Policy and applicable data protection laws.
Changes to the Terms
Tick Waves Limited may update these Terms from time to time. Where changes are material, we may provide notice through the app, email, or another appropriate method. Continued use of Penpal America after changes take effect means you accept the updated Terms.
Contact Information
For questions about these Terms, contact Tick Waves Limited at support@penpalamerica.com. This contact address may be updated from time to time.
See also our Privacy Policy and Safety Center.
Video Stories
Effective 10 November 2026 · Revision video-stories-legal-2026-11-09-v2
1. Optional participation and publication choices
Video Stories nominations originate in a member’s own Post or Wall. There are two independent choices: publish on Penpal America, or submit for publication to the supported official social destination following administrator approval, or both. YouTube alone is supported for this rollout; Facebook and TikTok publication are not active. Normal posting does not nominate content for YouTube. A YouTube-only nomination is hidden from other members’ normal Post/Wall media access while remaining available for authorised review.
For YouTube, provide the video title, description, audience designation and desired visibility. The initial launch supports approval/upload only where you expressly choose Public. A Private or Unlisted choice is not silently changed or treated as advance permission for a later upload.
2. Ownership, permission and confirmation
You retain ownership. For the exact video and destinations selected, you grant Tick Waves Limited the non-exclusive permission necessary to store a private processing copy, review and moderate it, and, following approval and while valid consent remains, upload it automatically to the official Penpal America YouTube channel using the selected supported visibility. If you also select Penpal America publication, this includes displaying the confirmed public YouTube video, approved title/description and member display-name attribution in Penpal America Video Stories. It does not transfer ownership or authorise unrelated content or inactive destinations.
At submission you expressly confirm that you own the content or possess all necessary publication rights and permissions, including from identifiable people where required, and that it complies with applicable law and YouTube policies. Do not include information intended to remain private. You accept this revision of the Video Stories Terms and the Privacy Policy. By using the YouTube-enabled features, you agree to be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service.
The publication notice is:
If approved by Penpal America, this video will be uploaded publicly to Penpal America's official YouTube channel and may be viewed, shared and embedded outside Penpal America.
These confirmations are associated with this submission, its selected destinations and the recorded revision/timestamp. They do not require additional publication checkboxes and do not arise merely from ordinary account registration.
3. Review and automatic processing
Administrators may approve or reject nominations and record the decision. Approval creates one durable upload job; it does not bypass valid consent, media checks, channel verification, provider permissions, quota or the separately authorised live-publication control. When enabled, the backend uploads the approved video automatically; an administrator does not manually upload it to YouTube Studio. There is no mandatory Private-first upload.
Approval does not guarantee successful publication. Interrupted or uncertain outcomes require reconciliation, not blind repeated uploads. Only confirmed Public videos may appear in public Video Stories. Embedded playback additionally requires a verified Not Made for Kids status consistent with the submission. Other eligible public videos use a link to YouTube; this does not change their selected visibility or the video on YouTube. We may reject, expire or suppress a nomination for safety, rights, eligibility or operational reasons. Rejection or removal of the nomination does not alter unrelated customer accounts, purchases or content.
4. Withdrawal and removal
Withdraw before the upload attempt begins to prevent upload. Once an external attempt has begun, a video may exist even if the application has not received confirmation; use the takedown-request control or support@penpalamerica.com. We suppress local display and ask an authorised administrator to investigate and, where appropriate, remove the external copy through YouTube Studio.
Option A cannot automatically delete or edit an existing YouTube video or change its privacy. A local deletion is not a promise of YouTube deletion, and we cannot recall copies other people made or shared. We record confirmed removal of each copy separately. The Wall tracking entry remains while any recorded local/social copy remains or its outcome is unresolved; an individual deletion link disappears only after the corresponding deletion succeeds. Existing ordinary Post/Wall permissions, moderation and deletion rules continue to apply.
5. Retention and privacy
The Video Stories section of the Privacy Policy governs private media, consent/moderation evidence, Google data, backups and retention. In brief: temporary uploads expire after 24 hours; unresolved pending/approved nominations expire after 30 days without the relevant action; rejected/withdrawn and known failed processing copies are removed within seven days; extra processing copies after confirmed publication are removed within 24 hours; uncertain external outcomes require review within 30 days; minimal closed-case evidence is normally retained up to 365 days, subject to necessary bounded holds. Ordinary Post copies retain their existing lifecycle. Provider-data obligations are separate and are not extended by moderation retention.
The official channel controller separately authorises the Google connection. Members are not asked to connect their own Google accounts. See Google Privacy. Requests and questions: Tick Waves Limited, support@penpalamerica.com.