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 Terms — 11 November 2026
Revision: video-stories-legal-2026-11-11-v3. New member content is submitted using the unified Video Story composer, not a separate text/photo Post creation flow. Historical posts, audits and recorded consents are preserved under their applicable rules and restricted archive access. Existing submissions are not reinterpreted as accepting these new choices.
Destinations, rights and permission
My Penpal Wall is required for a new Story. After review and approval the video is available under existing creator/accepted-friend access and blocking controls, not in Penpal America's public Stories feed. You may subsequently request its removal. Optional YouTube publication is never preselected and requires separate explicit consent, an entered title and optional description, deliberately selected supported visibility, the correct audience designation and confirmation of YouTube policies. No member Google connection is required. Facebook and TikTok publishing remain unavailable.
You retain ownership. For the exact video and recorded destinations, you grant Tick Waves Limited the non-exclusive permission needed to store a private upload, review/moderate it and publish the approved Wall copy within those access rules. If and only if you explicitly choose YouTube and confirm the displayed notice, this also permits automatic upload to the official Penpal America channel after administrator approval. It does not authorise unrelated content, a different visibility, inactive providers or automatic inclusion of new Stories in Penpal America's public collection.
You must own the content or have necessary rights and permissions, including those of identifiable people where required. You confirm these rights and acknowledge the Terms and Privacy notice before submission. YouTube selection additionally confirms compliance with YouTube policies and agreement to YouTube terms. Public YouTube notice: “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.”
Approval and status
One Video Stories queue handles new submissions. Administrators approve or reject and record their identity, time and reason. Approval publishes the local copy and creates at most one durable external job only for an expressly selected and consented supported destination. There is no administrator manual-upload step or mandatory Private-first upload. Actual external operations remain subject to verified channel permissions, quota, media validation and the controlled launch's operational authorisation. An uncertain or failed response is not success and is reconciled before any retry; duplicate uploads are not intentionally created. Notifications distinguish approval from actual provider-confirmed publication.
Removal and safety
You can remove the hosted Wall copy or withdraw YouTube consent before upload. After an external attempt starts, request assisted takedown; only an authorised channel administrator can remove YouTube content through YouTube Studio under Option A. We cannot automatically delete or change privacy of an existing YouTube video or recall third-party copies. Each destination has its own removal status. Local removal does not falsely claim YouTube deletion and external removal does not remove an active local copy. Tracking is visible only within appropriate permissions while a legitimate copy or unresolved outcome exists; otherwise only necessary private management/audit evidence remains.
We may reject, restrict or remove unsafe, unlawful, rights-infringing or ineligible content according to existing moderation/account rules. These actions do not alter unrelated subscriptions, purchases, friendships or conversations. Retention and private backup handling follow the Video Stories Privacy notice: temporary24hours; stale unresolved30days; rejected/withdrawn/failed processing normally7days; redundant processing24hours after confirmed publication where no local copy remains; minimal closed-case evidence normally365days with necessary documented bounded holds. Existing historical Post retention remains separate.
Privacy and retention · YouTube Terms · YouTube policies. Questions/removal requests: support@penpalamerica.com.