Terms of Service
Scope of provided services
freakedout offers two types of services: downloads and support.
Downloads are further divided into free-of-charge downloads, available to registered users, and for-a-fee downloads, available only to subscribers. Access to the former is provided unconditionally to anyone who can access freakedout through Internet and completes the free registration. The latter are provided only to qualifying subscribers, if they are logged in, and only for the term of their subscription. As soon as your subscription expires you will have no access to any of the for-a-fee downloads, even for those items which were already published or made available during your subscription's term.
Support services are provided to qualifying subscribers only and only if they are logged in. Likewise to our download services, support services are provided only for the term of your subscription. When your subscription expires you will not be able to file any replies to your existing tickets or new tickets. Moreover, private tickets will no longer be available for you to read.
No warranty
Our services are provided as-is, without any warranty whatsoever. The exact terms of our software licence can be read by folowing the "licence" link at the bottom of any page of freakedout. Regarding the support services, we can not guarantee the validity or veracity of any provided information or suggestion.
THE SERVICES ARE PROVIDED AS-IS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF AVAILABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE AVAILABILITY, QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF OUR SERVICES IS WITH YOU. SHOULD ANY OF OUR SERVICES PROVE INEFFICIENT OR UNSUITABLE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY ACTIONS TO RECTIFY THE ISSUE.
IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW freakedout, ITS OWNERS, STAFF, ASSOCIATES OR ANYONE AFFILIATED WITH ITS MAINTENANCE, OPERATION OR HOSTING BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE SERVICES (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF OUR PROGRAMS TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
Should the applicable law hold freakedout, its owners or any party affiliated with it liable for damages, the maximum amount of damages acknowledged shall be no higher than 5 Euros. Shall any dispute arise between the owners of freakedout and a third party, the only applicable jurisdiction is the Courts of Law of the Prefecture of Valletta, Malta.
If you do not agree with these Terms, you are not allowed to use our services. Moreover, any use of our services implies the unconditional and immediate acceptance of the aforementioned terms, waiving your legal rights to uphold them. Acting in violation of the above Terms of Service constitutes a violation of our copyright and abuse of a computer system, both persecutable as felonies.
"Cool-off" period and refunds policy
In compliance to EU directives, you are entitled to 30 calendar days of "cool-off" period. If within those 30 calendar days you have not used our services (explicitly: you have not downloaded our software and have not requested software support) you are eligible for a full refund of your purchase, no questions asked. This "cool-off" period is provided in accordance to Article 6, §1 of Directive 97/7/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 May 1997 on the protection of consumers in respect of distance contracts and the Directive 2011/83/EU which replaces it.
However, if you have already downloaded our software and/or already made use of our support services you are not eligible for a refund, even in the first 14 calendar days according to Directive 2011/83/EU, Article 16, §m which states: "the supply of digital content which is not supplied on a tangible medium if the performance has begun with the consumer’s prior express consent and his acknowledgment that he thereby loses his right of withdrawal."
Explicitly: when you click on a software download link or use any method provided by your web server / CMS to initiate such a download (including but not limited to installing updates via Live Update and Joomla! extensions update) or request software support from us you are giving us your express and unreserved consent to begin the provisioning of the software download and support service you have purchased from us, waiving your right of withdrawal from the subscription contract, making you ineligible for a refund. For more information you may also want to read: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-11-450_en.htm?locale=en
Clarification for renewals and their eligibility for a refund: renewals are considered new purchases, not a continuation of your previous subscription. As a result you can get a refund in 14 calendar days before the conclusion of the contract which means:
Clarification for the software download service: Most of our software comes in two editions, a free of charge Core edition and a subscription-based Professional edition. For these software we consider our software download services to have been provisioned only when you download the subscription-based Professional edition. Downloading the free edition of our software or any other item which is made available to the general public without the need for an active subscription does not constitute performance of our download service.
Clarification for the software support service: Performance of the software support service begins at the exact time you submit a support ticket or a reply to an existing support ticket. Pre-sales requests and communication through e-mail or the Contact Us page does not count towards the performance of the software support service. These are communications provided outside the scope of the software support service.
In any other case, no refunds will be given whatsoever. By using our software download and support services you explicitly declare that you accept our policy of no refunds beyond the provisions of Directive 97/7/EC.
Support policy
We only provide support to our subscribers through our site's support section. We will not provide support by any other means including, but not limited to, email, regular mail, telephone, Twitter, Facebook, Skype and so on. If you wish to receive support without using our site's support section or demand that you be given a full discount in violation of our refund policy we reserve the right to request to be paid according to our regular consultancy rates. Our regular consultancy rates are 100 Euros per hour (plus VAT, where applicable), minimum charge one hour. In case of on-premises support a specific arrangement has to made.
Subscriptions at freakedout are not to be considered as a gurantee of response time or a service level agreement. All tickets are answered on a "best effort" basis. Private tickets and severe bug reports are given top priority, public tickets are given medium priority. If you have not received any response withing 72 hours, please use the Contact page to let us know of the issue. If we determine that there is an objective difficulty in providing support to you over our ticket system we will provide you with support over email, in exception of our support policy.
We reserve the right to provide no support for outdated versions of our software, when your server environment does not meet our minimum requirements or when you have modified the core code files shipped with your site's script or our software beyond what the respective developers reasonably expect you to do in the normal course of using their software. Support policy details regarding different versions of our software and server environment are detailed in our release announcements. We reserve the right to give you a link to our troubleshooting page, documentation and/or previous public tickets if we deem it necessary for providing better support. We will not provide support for issues not related to our software or services. We reserve the right to decline support if the request or the conversation is conducted in a language other than English and German or when the language barrier makes it impossible to provide meaningful support. We reserve the right to decline support when access to the affected site is denied or objectively impossible. We reserve the right to decline providing support on a case by case basis (even though we do try to help everyone), with or without a reply to your ticket. We assume no responsibility for any issues directly or indirectly caused by our support efforts, as per the "No warrantly" article of this policy. We reserve the right to close support tickets for any reason deemed appropriate. We reserve the right to decline providing support for issues which have to do with using your site's script (e.g. Joomla! or WordPress) or your server / hosting account, but not our software. We reserve the right to close or delete support tickets if the user refuses to follow our instructions and insists on receiving support (our instructions are support and you're supposed to follow them in order for us to help you). We reserve the right to edit or delete tickets or ticket replies. We reserve the right to close or delete tickets and/or block accounts of users who become abusive and/or pugnacious in their support ticket replies; we are trying to help frustrated users under adverse conditions, please respect it and understand that we are neither deities nor saints.
Fair use policy
The owners of freakedout believe in software freedom and strive to provide low cost, high quality services surrounding their software. In order to keep the costs low, without placing artificial restrictions, we have a fair use policy in place. In no event shall we provide support to anyone who is seeking our support for more than three domains per month. This restriction is in place to deter edge cases, like a hosting provider buying a single subscription, installing the software on all of his clients' sites and then overflowing our support services with its client's requests. If such behaviour is detected, we regret to inform you that we will immediately terminate the user account without a refund.
Moreover, freakedout reserves the right to terminate any account which is supected in being implicated in unlawful or abusive activity, including –but not limited to– unsolicited mass distribution of our for-a-fee software. Account termination is in the sole discretion of freakedout and we reserve the right to not provide any prior warning or further information.
Actions for content beyond fair use and account termination policy
If the content you submit to freakedout is deemed offensive, inappropriate, defamatory, objectionable or in any other way engage in disruptive behavior we reserve the right to use your personal information to stop such behavior.
If freakedout believes on reasonable grounds that you are in violation of the laws of Malta, or the European Union directives, we reserve the right to submit your personal information - including the content itself and any other relevant information about you - to the proper authorities, such as law enforcement, your ISP or school email / ISP.
freakedout reserves the right to terminate user accounts (free or paid subscribers) when the aforementioned fair use rules are violated. Furthermore, freakedout reserves the right to terminate user accounts if the user is posting unsolicited messages (spam), engaged in sites or services promoting the unauthorized distribution of proprietary or other distributed for-a-fee software (warez), directly promoting or linking to resources promoting indecent or unlawful actions, or in any other way trying to disrupt or diminish the quality of the services offered by this site. Account termination takes place without prior notice and is considered final. Holders of terminated accounts, if they are paid subscribers, will not be refunded. freakedout reserves the right to terminate any further user accounts created by the holder of a terminated account, or any other person, business or organization affiliated with or endorsed by the holder of a terminated account.
Zero spam tolerance
As noted above, if you send out an unsolicited message, your account will be terminated without prior notice. One strike and you're out. Moreover, you will feed our anti-spam filter with keywords so that you can't spam us again.
Zero bandits tolerance
If you do as much as imply that you are encouraging people to use illegal or unofficial copies of software your account will be terminated without prior notice, as noted above. Respect the work of others and we'll respect you. If you don't and act as a bandit, you'll be treated as one.
Privacy Policy
Summary
freakedout is committed to protecting you and your personal information when you are using our services. We want our services to be safe and enjoyable environments for our users. This Privacy Policy is relevant to our use of any personal information you provide to us during your visit to our site.
freakedout seeks to follow the industry's best practices concerning personal information handling.
The website contains hyperlinks to external resources, hosted and operated by third parties. These parties have their own privacy policies, including cookies, and we urge you to review them carefully. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the handling of your personal information when visiting these external resources; your use of those third party resources and/or websites is your own responsibility.
We also use third-party service and content providers (such as Google Analytics) who may collect their own set of personal information. Since these are third parties, the information collected by them is not governed by this Privacy Statement. Take a look at the Cookies section towards the bottom of this document for more information.
Personal information collected
Whenever you register for our members-only services, for example using our forum or registering for our newsletter, we may ask personal information about you. This can consist of such information as your name, e-mail, website address, gender, etc. By entering the information in the fields requested you enable freakedout to provide you with the services you select.
Invoicing information. In accordance to the local tax laws and the European Union's VAT and invoicing directives we collect the following personal information: your name, email address, physical address, company name (if applicable), company activity (if applicable), VAT number (if applicable), IP address, country based on your IP address and the User Agent string of the web browser you used when subscribing. This information is used to generate the legally stipulated invoice upon successful payment of your purchase and for proving your country of origin should it be required in accordance to the European Union's VAT directives.
Providing your invoicing information is legally required in accordance to the European Union's VAT directive and its incorporation to local tax laws. It is unlawful for us to let you make a purchase without issuing an invoice which requires this information. Information not printed on the invoice (IP address, country based on your IP address and your User Agent string) are also required for the same reason, to prove your country of origin for purposes of applying the correct VAT rate.
IP address. Your IP address is temporarily collected whenever you are accessing our site in our web server's logs, our security software's logs and our download system's logs (only when downloading through our site or when downloading updates to our for-a-fee a.k.a. Professional editions of our software). This information is used to ensure the security of our web site and to prevent abuse. IP address information is not directly identifiable information but if it's stored in conjunction with your user account ID it might be an indirect identifier.
Your IP address in the context of security and abuse prevention is specifically exempt from requiring your consent per the European Union's GDPR. We are legally required to ensure the security of your personal information through any appropriate technical means and that includes collecting your IP address in that context.
Support ticket information. Any identifiable information you provide when requesting support through our ticket system's private tickets feature including but limited to connection information to your site(s) and any other personally identifiable information you may volunteer. We use that information to provide you with technical and account support and, generally, to answer your questions and address your requests. Please note that when filing a public ticket or when you are providing your ticket system signature you have no reasonable expectation of privacy and as such any information volunteered in a public ticket is not subject to our privacy statement.
Contact form information. Any information you volunteer by submitting a contact form through this web site's Contact Us page. We use this information to respond to your requests.
This website is also using "cookies" to enhance user experience. Please read the relevant chapter to find out more about our use of cookies.
Use of collected information
freakedout will NOT sell, rent or otherwise willingly transmit the recorded personal information to any third party. Your privacy is important to us and we will not even offer aggregate information resulting from personal information processing to any part outside freakedout. We only use the recorded personal information for:
- service administration purposes, e.g. sending you password reminders, registration confirmations, billing subscription services etc.;
- to contact you regarding new content added on our website, e.g. new forum posts, if you have opted in for this sort of communication;
- to personalize your experience, through the storage of your preferences in cookies and/or our site's database;
- analyze the use of our website and improve its usability;
- IP addresses may be used to identify the location of users, the number of visits from different cities / territories / countries or filter and block inappropriate use.
If freakedout wishes to use the recorded personal information for other uses, it will notify you beforehand so that you have the chance to opt-out from these new uses.
When we contact you
We only contact you if you have explicitly opted-in for such communication through the use of our services. For example:
- We may contact you if a new post was added to a ticket thread or category you have subscribed to
These forms of contact are conducted by automated software running on our server. You always have the chance to opt-out from such communication. freakedout will never send unsolicited email messages ("spam") or allow third parties access to our users and contacts database.
We may also directly contact you - manually sending out emails, as opposed to automatic email sending outlined above - under special circumstances such as:
- Suspecting that your account is compromised by an unauthorized third party
- Before, during or after server-related incidents which may seriously hamper your ability to use our services
- In case you have crossed the line of fair use of our services
- If you have so asked us with an email, ticket, personal message, instant message, Twitter message or any other form of personal or electronic contact.
Contact for marketing purposes
Information sharing with third parties
Information collected by freakedout will not be shared with any third parties. Not in their raw form, not in a processed or aggregate form. We do not share personal information with third parties.
Important note: Please review the section on cookies, as we employ third-party service/content providers. These providers collect their own set of personal information, governed by their own privacy statements.
Exceptions to this rule will be clearly stated and will only be part of a special offer campaign. For instance, we may launch a campaign offering subscriptions to third party services for free or with a discount. If we are to collect and share your personal information you will be informed before opting in to that campaign.
Privacy policy for minors
If you are considered a minor in your jurisdiction (for example, people under 18 years of age in Malta) you must get your parent's/guardian's permission before submitting any content or personal information to freakedout. If you or your parent/guardian believes beyond doubt that such information have been submitted in violation of the above term, you may submit to us relevant proof so that we can remove the offending information from our website and records.
We do not allow minors (persons under the age of 13) to use our site. Any accounts found in violation of this term will be terminated without a refund and all information pertaining to that user account will be erased.
Duration of personal information retainment
Notwithstanding any aforementioned cases of explicit information removal, your personal information may be stored in our servers for an indefinite period of time, no less than the duration of your account's existence or 1 calendar year, whichever is more.
Cookie Policy
We believe in being clear and open about how we collect and use data related to you. In the spirit of transparency, this policy provides detailed information about how and when we use cookies, helping you understand and manage them as you wish.
To make this site work properly and to provide our services we use first party and third party cookies, web beacons, ad tags, device identifiers and other similar technologies (collectively named "cookies"). We do this to understand your use of our websites, mobile applications and services, in order to enhance their performance and develop them according to the taste of our customers and visitors.
What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small amount of data, which often includes a unique identifier that is sent to your computer, tablet or mobile phone (all referred to here as a "device") web browser from a website's computer and is stored on your device's hard drive. Each website can send its own cookie to your web browser if your browser's preferences allow it. Many websites do this whenever a user visits their website in order to track online traffic flows.
How we use cookies?
We use cookies that are essential in order to provide our services
Some cookies are essential for us to use in order to provide you with the services you have requested. These cookies will be used to manage the delivery of any web services requested by you and if you do not accept these cookies, the services may not be so easy to access and you may not be able to receive some services that you have requested e.g. access secure areas of our websites or make online payments. These cookies do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing purposes or remembering where you have been on the internet.
We use functionality cookies
freakedout uses cookies to track your preferences regarding our site's features, including the ticket system and the "remember me" login feature. We also use cookies to authenticate you to members-only features. If you block freakedout's cookies you may not be able to use our members-only features as a consequence. Moreover, in order to ensure your security, freakedout pages perform so-called "token checks", making it impossible for automated software ("bots") to send unsolicited messages ("spam") to our services. In order to do so, we have to send your browser a cookie. If you opt out of this site's cookie, then our services shall not work properly. This is a technical limitation which can not be overcome.
We use web analytics
This website uses Google Analytics which is the most widely used web analytics service on the internet. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. We use the information to compile reports and to make our websites run more efficiently.
The data collected will generally be aggregated to provide trends and usage patterns for business analysis, site/platform improvement and performance metrics. The type of information we collect includes how many visitors visit our websites, how many customers log in, when they visited, for how long and which areas of our websites and services. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site.
How can I change my cookies settings?
Please be aware that it is not possible to use our websites without the essential cookies, necessary for providing you with the best possible service, for maintaining the security requirements or for guaranteeing any legal requirements.
You can control cookies from your browser
If you wish to block cookies from your browser software, please check the browser help menu for relevant instructions. For more information on how to control cookies via your web browser, please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/stop-cookies-installed.html.
Unfortunately, if you choose to block cookies, some of the interactive features and some functionalities of our websites and our services may not be available to you. This is why we advise the users of our websites and services to accept cookies from us.
Contact information
- Sending an email to privacy at this domain name
- Sending a tweet or a Twitter direct message to @freakedoutweb
Alternatively, you can use the "Contact" link on the bottom of every page of this site.
Updates to our ToS and Privacy Policy
We reserve the right to add, remove or modify any section, article or paragraph of our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy without prior notice. All changes are effective immediately.
Last update: 04. September 2024