Terms of Service

These are the rules for using Footy Finder. By creating an account you agree to them.

1. Who can use this

You must be at least 16 years old. You must give a real name and a real date of birth: other people decide whether to meet you in person based on what your profile says.

2. What Footy Finder is, and what it is not

Footy Finder helps people find each other and agree on a game. That is all it does.

We are not the organiser of any match. We do not book, own, inspect or approve any pitch. We do not supervise games, provide referees, first aid or insurance, and we do not vet the people you meet beyond what they have written about themselves. The organiser of a game is the person who posted it.

3. Football involves physical risk, and you accept it

Football causes injuries. Collisions, sprains, fractures and worse are ordinary outcomes of the sport, not unusual ones. By using this service to arrange or join a game you accept that risk for yourself.

To the fullest extent the law allows, Pietro Di Paola is not liable for injury, loss or damage arising from a match arranged through it, including anything caused by a pitch, by another player, or by a game that was cancelled or never happened. Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our own negligence, or for fraud, where the law does not permit that limit.

Check you are fit to play, and check your own insurance. If you have a medical condition that a stranger would need to know about in an emergency, tell the organiser before you play.

4. Money

Footy Finder is free and handles no payments. If a pitch costs money, that is arranged directly between you and the organiser, and any dispute about it is between you and them.

5. How to behave

• Turn up, or leave your place in good time so someone else can take it.
• Describe your ability honestly. Overstating it spoils the game for everyone.
• No harassment, discrimination, threats or violence.
• Do not post a game you do not intend to play.
• Do not use the service to advertise, recruit or collect people into unrelated groups.
• Upload only a photograph of yourself, and only one you are happy for other players to see.

6. Reporting something, and what happens next

How to tell us. Use the form at /report, reachable from the footer of every page and from the account menu when you are signed in. It needs no account. You can also email hello@footyfinder.app. Say what you saw, where, and when. If you are reporting something you believe is illegal, say so and explain why.

Nothing you write is checked before it is stored. The names on a report are the ones the reporter typed, so a report is an allegation and nothing more until we have matched it against the games both people were actually in. Reports are never shown to the person reported, and never appear on anyone's profile.

What we do with it. A person reads every report. There is no automated moderation here, and nothing about your account is decided by an algorithm. We aim to look within a few days. This is a small operation run by one person, and we would rather state a slow timescale we can meet than a fast one we cannot.

What we can do. Remove content, warn an account, suspend it, or close it. Where content is illegal we may also pass it to the police or another authority.

You will be told why. If we remove your content or restrict your account we will tell you what we did, on what grounds, and whether it came from a report or from something we noticed ourselves, unless the law forbids telling you.

You can contest it. Reply to that message, or email hello@footyfinder.app, within six months. A person looks again, not the same automated process, because there was not one, and we will tell you the outcome. If you disagree with the result you keep every right you have to go to a court, and to complain to your national authority.

Reporting someone in bad faith, repeatedly and knowingly, is itself grounds for us to act on your account.

7. Ratings

After a game has been played, the organiser may rate each player who turned up, and each player may rate the organiser. Ratings are a star out of five, they are optional, and there is no comment attached to them.

Your averages are public to every signed-in player, next to the number of ratings they are based on, and they are shown from the first rating you receive, so an early average may rest on a single opinion. Who gave you which rating is never shown to anyone.

A rating cannot be changed or withdrawn once given. Rate honestly, and rate the football: using a rating to punish somebody for something other than how the game went, including for a report they made, is a breach of these terms and we may act on your account for it. If you believe a rating was given in bad faith, tell us at hello@footyfinder.app.

8. Communication happens off-platform

Once you are in a game you may be given a WhatsApp group link. That group is not ours: we do not run it, moderate it or see what is said in it. WhatsApp's own terms and privacy policy apply there.

9. Your content, and what you are answerable for

Your biography and photograph remain yours. You give us permission to display them to other signed-in players for as long as your account is open. Close your account and that permission ends.

Everything you put here is yours to answer for. That means your name, your photograph, your biography, the pitch and team names you type when posting a game, the group chat link you attach, and anything you write in a report or a rating. By posting it you confirm it is yours to post, that it is accurate, and that it breaks no law and nobody else's rights.

Do not post:

• A photograph of anyone but yourself, or one you do not have permission to use.
• Someone else's personal information, including their phone number, address or photograph.
• Anything unlawful, threatening, hateful, or targeted at a person because of who they are.
• Advertising, or a link to anything other than the group chat for the game you are posting.
• A claim about another player that you know to be untrue, whether in a report, a rating or a biography.

We do not check any of it before it appears. Nothing here is reviewed in advance and we are under no obligation to monitor it. We are a hosting service in the ordinary sense: what other people write is theirs, not ours, and we are not responsible for it. When something is reported to us we act on it as set out in section 6.

We may remove any content that breaks these rules, or that we reasonably believe is unlawful, without notice and without owing you anything for the removal. We will still tell you what we did and why, as section 6 says.

If a third party brings a claim against us because of something you posted, you agree to cover what that claim reasonably costs us, so far as the loss was caused by your breach of these terms. Nothing in this paragraph applies to anything you do as a consumer outside a trade or profession where the law does not permit it, and nothing in it limits your rights against us.

10. Closing your account

You can close your account at any time from your profile. We may close an account that breaks these rules. Either way, see the Privacy Policy for exactly what happens to your data.

11. Changes

If these terms change materially you will be asked to agree again rather than being told that continued use counts as acceptance.

12. If something goes wrong between us

Tell us first. Almost everything is quicker to fix by email than by anything more formal. Write to hello@footyfinder.app setting out what happened and what you would like done about it, and a person will reply.

If that does not settle it. These terms are governed by the law of Italy. If you are a consumer, you may bring proceedings in the courts of the country you live in, and you keep the protection of the consumer law of that country. We will bring any claim against you in the courts where you live.

Nothing here signs away a right you cannot sign away. You are not required to arbitrate, you do not waive your right to go to a court, and nothing in these terms removes a consumer right that the law does not permit to be removed by agreement. Where any part of these terms conflicts with such a right, that right wins and the rest of these terms carries on unaffected.

You may also be able to use an alternative dispute resolution body rather than a court. We are not signed up to any particular scheme, and we will tell you if that changes.