Acceptable Use Policy

1. Status and Incorporation

This AUP forms an integral part of the SShoty Terms of Use and End User License Agreement (the “Terms”) and the SShoty Privacy Policy. Any breach of this AUP is a material breach of the Terms and activates, without limitation, the indemnity in the Terms, and is subject to the limitation of liability, governing-law, and severability provisions of the Terms. Where this AUP and the Terms conflict, the Terms control.

2. Acceptance

You accept this AUP by downloading, installing, opening, accessing, purchasing, or using SShoty, including any feature unlocked by an in-app purchase or subscription. If you do not accept this AUP, do not use SShoty. Continued use after an update means you accept the AUP as updated.

3. Definitions

In this AUP: (a) “you” means any natural person who uses SShoty; (b) “Content” means any screenshot, capture, recognized text, annotation, blur, collage, or other material you capture, copy, create, edit, save, or handle with SShoty; (c) “Personal Data” has the meaning given in Article 4(1) of the EU General Data Protection Regulation and equivalent terms under other data-protection laws; (d) “Misuse” means any use of SShoty that violates this AUP, the Terms, the Privacy Policy, Apple’s platform rules, or applicable law; (e) “Credible Report” means a good-faith report of suspected Misuse with enough detail to enable MAHTCA GLOBAL to evaluate it; (f) “Authority” means any competent law-enforcement body, court, regulator, data-protection authority, prosecutor, child-protection hotline, or other public body with lawful jurisdiction; and (g) “Apple” means Apple Inc. and its affiliates, including as third-party beneficiary under the Terms.

4. Intended Uses

SShoty is intended for lawful, privacy-respecting, good-faith uses, such as capturing your own screen, marking up and blurring captures, copying text you are entitled to use, combining captures into collages, and saving and sharing Content that you own or have the right to handle. A use is permitted unless it falls within Section 5 or otherwise violates the Terms, the Privacy Policy, applicable law, or the rights of others.

5. Prohibited Conduct

You must not use SShoty, or allow anyone to use SShoty on your behalf, in any way that involves the following. This list is illustrative, not exhaustive.

(a) Child sexual abuse material — zero tolerance. You must not use SShoty to capture, view, store, copy, mark up, conceal, alter, combine, save, prepare for distribution, or distribute any image that constitutes child sexual abuse material or that sexualizes, exploits, or endangers any person under 18. Reference: Directive 2011/93/EU; Article 9 of the Budapest Convention; 18 U.S.C. §§ 2251–2258A; Articles 374–375 of the Romanian Criminal Code. Such material is reportable to NCMEC and to equivalent national hotlines and authorities.

(b) Non-consensual intimate imagery. You must not use SShoty to capture, copy, process, conceal, combine, save, distribute, or prepare for distribution any intimate image of a person — including an image taken from a video call, a stream, or a private message — without that person’s free, specific, informed, and unambiguous consent. Reference: Directive (EU) 2024/1385; section 66B of the UK Sexual Offences Act 2003, as inserted by the Online Safety Act 2023.

(c) Covert surveillance, stalking, and intimidation. You must not use SShoty to covertly capture another person’s screen, device, communications, or activity — for example, by running SShoty on a Mac that another person is using without their knowledge, or by using delayed, Burst, or Pin Region captures to monitor them — or to identify, locate, monitor, dox, harass, intimidate, or facilitate harm against any person. Reference: Directive (EU) 2024/1385; the Istanbul Convention.

(d) Privacy violations. You must not use SShoty to capture, copy, extract (including with Grab Text), store, or disclose the Personal Data of any identifiable person — for example, another person’s messages, video calls, accounts, records, or on-screen information — without a lawful basis under applicable data-protection law, including the EU GDPR, the UK GDPR, the CCPA/CPRA, the LGPD, the PIPL, the Indian DPDP Act, the Australian Privacy Principles, and PIPEDA.

(e) Fabricated screenshots, forgery, and fraud. You must not use SShoty’s markup, text, blur, Spotlight, Hero Shot, collage, or other features to fabricate, falsify, stage, or alter a screenshot — such as a conversation, a payment or transfer confirmation, an account balance, a receipt, an order, a booking, a review, a social-media post, search results, or an official document — in order to deceive anyone, to obtain any benefit or advantage, or to cause loss to anyone; to present an altered, staged, or selectively cropped capture as genuine, complete, or unaltered; or to reproduce official seals, stamps, logos, or letterheads without authorization. Such conduct may constitute a criminal offence, including under the forgery and fraud offences of the Romanian Criminal Code and under laws such as 18 U.S.C. §§ 1028 and 1343.

(f) Evidence tampering and obstruction. You must not use SShoty’s blur, markup, selection, or other features, or capture selectively, to destroy, conceal, alter, fabricate, or misrepresent any image or fact in connection with any actual or reasonably foreseeable legal, criminal, regulatory, tax, insurance, employment, audit, or other proceeding, or in breach of any legal duty to preserve evidence. Reference: Articles 271–273 of the Romanian Criminal Code and equivalent laws.

(g) Infringement and circumvention. You must not use SShoty to capture, copy, reproduce, or distribute content in breach of anyone’s copyright, trademark, confidentiality, contractual, or other rights, or in circumvention of any technical protection measure — for example, paywalled, licensed, or confidential content that you are not authorized to copy. You must not bypass or facilitate the bypass of any in-app purchase gating, subscription gating, entitlement check, license verification, watermark, or anti-tamper mechanism in SShoty. Reference: Article 6 of Directive 2001/29/EC; 17 U.S.C. §§ 1201–1202.

(h) Phishing, scams, and impersonation. You must not use SShoty to create or distribute images that imitate the screens, sign-in pages, messages, or branding of any person, company, bank, platform, or authority in order to phish, scam, impersonate, or otherwise deceive or defraud anyone.

(i) Defamation, harassment, and threats. You must not use SShoty to create or distribute defamatory, threatening, harassing, or hateful Content, or Content that incites violence.

(j) Reverse engineering, redistribution, or modification of SShoty, as prohibited by the Terms.

(k) Any other unlawful activity under any law, regulation, court order, sanctions regime, or platform rule applicable to you or to MAHTCA GLOBAL.

The absence of a specific category from this Section does not mean that it is permitted. Conduct that is unlawful, harmful, deceptive, or that violates the rights of any person is prohibited whether or not it is listed here.

6. What We Can and Cannot Do

SShoty runs on your Mac. MAHTCA GLOBAL does not receive, access, host, or store your Content or any record of how you use SShoty. As a result, MAHTCA GLOBAL: (a) cannot detect, monitor, scan, or observe your use of SShoty; (b) has no technical means to suspend or restrict SShoty on your Mac; (c) has no usage record to consult in connection with any report; (d) may act on Credible Reports as described in Section 7 and Section 8; (e) may refuse support, goodwill consideration, or future product access to anyone who is the subject of a Credible Report of Misuse; and (f) does not warrant that it will detect, prevent, or remedy any Misuse. The absence of detection or action is not an endorsement of any conduct and does not waive any provision of this AUP.

7. Cooperation with Authorities and Apple

MAHTCA GLOBAL will cooperate in good faith, subject to applicable law, with Authorities and with Apple in response to valid legal process, Credible Reports indicating an imminent risk of serious harm, reports of suspected material described in Section 5(a) — which will be referred to NCMEC and equivalent national hotlines — and requests from Apple relating to the App Store or the Apple Developer Program. Because MAHTCA GLOBAL keeps no Content or usage records, its cooperation is limited to confirming SShoty’s local-only design and the absence of server-side records, providing technical documentation to the extent legally required, modifying or removing SShoty features at Apple’s request or the lawful direction of an Authority, and any other action required by law.

8. Notice and Action Procedure

Reports of suspected Misuse should be sent to sshoty@mahtca.com. To qualify as a Credible Report, a notice should include, as far as the reporter is able: a clear identification of the person, conduct, or material involved; a description of the suspected Misuse; contact details if the reporter is willing to be contacted; and a good-faith statement that the report is accurate. MAHTCA GLOBAL will acknowledge Credible Reports within a reasonable time, evaluate them in good faith, and take any action it considers appropriate in its sole discretion and in accordance with applicable law, without promising any specific outcome or timeline. MAHTCA GLOBAL may decline to act on, close, or refer to an Authority any report that is frivolous, abusive, manifestly unfounded, repetitive, or made in bad faith. This procedure follows the spirit of Article 16 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 (the Digital Services Act) as voluntary good practice, and does not constitute an admission that SShoty is a hosting or intermediary service.

9. Reporter Safe Harbour

To the maximum extent permitted by law, MAHTCA GLOBAL will keep the identity of a good-faith reporter confidential, subject to disclosure required by law; will not retaliate against anyone for a good-faith report; and will not be liable to any reported person for any claim arising from a good-faith report received from a third party. Reports made in bad faith, knowingly false reports, and reports made to harass others are not protected, may themselves constitute Misuse, may activate the indemnity in the Terms, and may be referred to an Authority.

10. Consequences of Breach

Any breach of this AUP: (a) is a material breach of the Terms and terminates your license to use SShoty; (b) activates your indemnity obligations under the Terms; (c) is subject to the limitation of liability in the Terms, including the exclusion of indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, and punitive damages and the aggregate liability cap; (d) forfeits any goodwill consideration regarding refunds, support, or future products; and (e) may be reported to Apple, to any Authority, or to any person who has suffered or is at risk of harm. These remedies are cumulative and in addition to any other remedy available under the Terms, this AUP, or applicable law.

11. Reservation of Rights

MAHTCA GLOBAL reserves all rights not expressly granted to you, including the right to update this AUP (subject to Section 16), to act or decline to act on any report, to publish anonymized information about confirmed patterns of Misuse, to cooperate with Authorities and Apple, to refuse support or future products to anyone credibly reported to be in breach, and to enforce this AUP in light of the available evidence, resources, and legal advice. No failure or delay in exercising any right operates as a waiver.

12. No Third-Party Beneficiaries Except Apple

Apple and Apple’s subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of the Terms and of this AUP and may enforce this AUP against you. No other person has any right to enforce this AUP against MAHTCA GLOBAL. A person harmed by your Misuse must seek any remedy from you, not from MAHTCA GLOBAL. Nothing in this Section limits the right of an Authority to act against MAHTCA GLOBAL where MAHTCA GLOBAL has independent legal responsibility.

13. Survival

Your obligations under this AUP, and any indemnity, defence-control, cooperation, or consequence-of-breach obligation arising from your use of SShoty while this AUP was in force, survive your deletion of SShoty, any refund, expiry, or revocation of any purchase or subscription, and any termination or modification of the Terms, and apply to any Content you handled with SShoty while this AUP or any earlier version of it was in force.

14. Severability

If any provision of this AUP is found to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable, it will be enforced to the maximum extent permitted by law or modified to achieve the closest lawful effect, and the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.

15. Governing Law and Forum

This AUP, and any dispute arising out of or in connection with it, are governed by the laws of Romania, without regard to conflict-of-law principles, and are subject to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Dolj County, Romania. Nothing in this Section deprives you of the protection of the mandatory consumer-protection rules of the country in which you reside.

16. Changes

MAHTCA GLOBAL may update this AUP to reflect changes in SShoty, applicable law, Apple’s requirements, or its practices. When it does, the version number and effective date change, and the updated AUP is published at www.sshoty.mahtca.com/aup/, which is the authoritative version. Where a change materially affects your rights, MAHTCA GLOBAL will use reasonable efforts to inform you before it takes effect — for example, on the SShoty website or in an update to SShoty. If you do not accept an update, your remedy is to stop using and delete SShoty.

17. Contact

For any question about this AUP, to submit a Credible Report under Section 8, or to raise any other legal matter: sshoty@mahtca.com — MAHTCA GLOBAL, Bechetului, Nr. 26, Malu Mare, Dolj, Romania; Romanian Trade Register: J16/663/2018; VAT / CUI: 39070729. Ordinary support questions about using SShoty can be sent to sshoty@mahtca.com.