Terms of Service

1. Agreeing to these Terms

By applying to Hala, creating an account, or using the app, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy, which is part of them. If you do not agree, do not apply or use Hala.

You also agree that we may contact you by SMS at the number you give us (including one-time sign-in codes and important account or safety messages), by email, by push notification, and by notices in the app, and that notices sent any of these ways are effective when sent. Message and data rates may apply. You can stop non-essential texts by replying STOP, but we need to be able to send you sign-in codes and safety notices to run your account.

2. What Hala is

Hala is a private, membership-based community and dating service. Admission is by application or referral, decided by a membership committee at our sole discretion. Applying does not create a right to membership, and we do not disclose reasons for decisions.

3. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old, legally able to enter this agreement, and never previously removed from Hala for a violation. Your application and profile must be truthful, about yourself, and use your own recent photos.

You also confirm that you have never been convicted of, or pleaded no contest to, a felony or any crime involving violence, sexual misconduct, or fraud, and are not required to register as a sex offender anywhere; and that you are not subject to U.S. sanctions or located in a country under a U.S. embargo. We rely on these statements. We do not run background checks, and you must not make these statements if they are not true.

4. Your account and its security

Your account is yours to protect. Keep your phone and sign-in codes private and never share a code with anyone — Hala will never ask you for one. Use a passcode on your device. You are responsible for everything done through your account until you tell us it has been compromised at support@halatheapp.com.

If you change or give up your phone number, update it in Settings first. Otherwise the person who receives your old number may be able to reach your account, and we are not responsible for that.

5. Membership and payment

• Approved applicants activate membership through an auto-renewing subscription (monthly, six-month, or annual, as offered in the app) purchased via Apple's App Store (or Google Play). The current price of each term is shown in the app before purchase.
• Payment is charged to your Apple ID (or Google) account at confirmation of purchase. The subscription renews automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period, and renewal is charged within 24 hours before the period ends.
• Manage or cancel anytime in your device's subscription settings; cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid period. Deleting the app does not cancel the subscription.
• If your membership lapses, your profile is paused from discovery until it is renewed.
• Except where law requires otherwise, payments are non-refundable; purchases through Apple/Google follow their refund processes.
• Price changes and tiers. We may change membership prices or add new tiers. A change to your renewal price will be shown to you by Apple or Google and will not take effect without your agreement where the law or the platform requires it.
• Complimentary and promotional memberships are a courtesy, may have conditions we tell you about when we offer them, and can be ended at any time. Promo codes cannot be sold or transferred.
• Referrals. Referring someone does not guarantee their admission and earns you no compensation. Only refer people you know personally and who have agreed to be referred; never in bulk or for payment.
• Cancellation rights in certain states. If you live in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, or Wisconsin, you may cancel your membership without penalty at any time before midnight of the third business day after you first subscribe, and we will refund what you paid. To do so, cancel the subscription in your device settings and email support@halatheapp.com with "Cancel" in the subject line. If you die or become unable to use Hala because of a disability before your paid period ends, you (or your estate) are entitled to a refund of the unused portion; write to us at the address below. Where your state gives you additional rights, we honor them.

6. Community standards

Trust, respect, and discretion are conditions of membership, not suggestions:

• Zero tolerance for objectionable content or abusive behavior: harassment, hate, threats, nudity or sexual content, solicitation, spam, or impersonation will result in content removal and account suspension or termination. Reported content is reviewed and acted on promptly, including ejecting offending members.
• Discretion: do not screenshot, record, or share other members' profiles, photos, or conversations, and do not identify or discuss other members publicly (including social media). Doing so is grounds for immediate removal.
• Authenticity: one account, your real identity, your own photos. Photos must be genuine, recent images of you — not AI-generated, AI-altered, or edited in ways that materially misrepresent your appearance. Your application and profile must be about your real life, in substance your own; submitting an AI-fabricated application is misrepresentation and grounds for removal.
• You, not a bot: every account must be operated personally by its member. Bots, scripts, automated access, and AI agents that browse, swipe, or converse on a member's behalf are prohibited.
• No commercial use: no promotion, recruiting, research, or scraping — including any collection or use of Hala content or member data to train artificial-intelligence or machine-learning systems.

You also may not: ask any member for money, gifts, or financial information, or promote investment schemes; misrepresent your location, marital status, or other facts material to another member; interfere with the service or its security, or access accounts or data not intended for you; collect, harvest, or export other members' information; create a new account or apply again after being removed, or help a removed person return; solicit personal information from anyone under 18; or use Hala to further any illegal activity. We may act on conduct that happens outside Hala, or before you joined, if it shows you are not a fit for the community.

You can block any member (immediate mutual invisibility) and report any member or content from their profile, any conversation, or Settings → Safety Center.

7. Your content

"Content" means anything you submit to Hala: photos, your bio and prompts, profile details, messages, reports, and feedback.

Ownership and license. You own your Content. So that we can run the service, you grant Hala a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, adapt (for example resizing or cropping), display, and distribute your Content to eligible members, the membership committee, and the service providers that process data on our behalf. This license ends when you delete the Content or your account, except that (a) copies already delivered into another member's conversation remain there, (b) Content under an active safety review or legal hold is kept for that purpose, and (c) routine backups are purged within 30 days.

Your promises about your Content. You confirm that:

• it is yours to share, or you have every right and permission needed (including from anyone who appears in a photo), and it does not infringe anyone's copyright, trademark, privacy, or publicity rights;
• your photos are recent and of you, and contain no minors;
• it does not impersonate anyone or misrepresent who you are;
• it complies with the Community standards in Section 6 — no nudity or sexual content, no harassment, hate, threats, or violence, no illegal activity, no spam, solicitation, or commercial promotion, no one else's private information, and nothing that would embarrass or endanger another member.

Moderation. Hala has no obligation to monitor Content, but we may review, filter, refuse, remove, or restrict any Content at any time, with or without notice, if we believe it violates these Terms or harms the community. Reports are reviewed promptly — objectionable Content is removed and the member responsible is suspended or removed within 24 hours of a substantiated report. Every member can block any other member (immediate mutual invisibility) and report any member or Content from their profile, any conversation, or Settings → Safety Center. Capturing or sharing other members' Content outside Hala is prohibited (Section 6).

Copyright complaints. If you believe Content on Hala infringes your copyright, email support@halatheapp.com with: your contact details, a description and location of the work and the infringing Content, a statement of good-faith belief that the use is unauthorized, a statement under penalty of perjury that the notice is accurate and you are (or act for) the rights holder, and your physical or electronic signature. We remove infringing Content, notify the member, and terminate repeat infringers. Members may submit a counter-notice with the equivalent statements.

Feedback. Ideas or suggestions you send us may be used without restriction or compensation.

8. Privacy and your data

Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect and why; it is part of these Terms. In short:

• What we collect: your phone number and email, date of birth, gender, photos, city, industry, education, languages, cultural or religious background where you choose to share it, Instagram handle, application answers, messages, a device token for notifications, and basic usage and diagnostic data.
• Sensitive information. Religious and ethnic background are sensitive categories. By adding them to your application or profile you explicitly consent to Hala processing them to run the community and its matching; you can edit or remove them at any time in Edit profile, which withdraws that consent going forward.
• We never sell personal information and show no advertising. Data is shared only with the service providers that run the app on our instructions (hosting and database, SMS and email delivery, push notifications, payments, and error reporting), with the membership committee, and where the law requires.
• Messages are private. They are read by a person only when a member reports a conversation, or where the law requires.
• Location. Hala does not use your phone's GPS. Other members see the city you set on your profile and, if you use the Travel feature, the city and dates you choose. You can change or turn Travel off at any time in Settings. Treat your city as visible to other members and use judgment about how specific you are.
• Your controls: edit your profile at any time; delete your account in Settings → Delete account, which permanently deletes your data (report evidence may be retained where required for safety or legal reasons); request a copy of your data at support@halatheapp.com. Depending on where you live (for example California, the EU, or the UK) you may have additional rights described in the Privacy Policy.
• Security. We use industry-standard safeguards, but no service can guarantee security; tell us at support@halatheapp.com if you suspect a problem with your account.
• Age. Hala is for adults 18 and over; we do not knowingly collect information from anyone younger.

9. The app and Hala's intellectual property

Hala owns the app, the Hala name and logo, and everything in the service that is not member Content. We give you a personal, revocable, non-transferable license to use the app for its intended purpose while you are a member. You may not copy, modify, reverse engineer, or create derivative works of the app; scrape, crawl, or harvest content or member data; probe or interfere with its security; or use it to build a competing product. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.

10. Artificial intelligence

• Hala does not operate AI chat assistants, AI personas, or bot profiles. Every member you encounter was admitted by the membership committee.
• We may use automated tools to help detect spam, scams, or content that violates these Terms; decisions that affect a membership are made by people.
• Membership, moderation, and safety decisions are made by the committee — human beings — not solely by automated means.
• If we introduce a feature powered by artificial intelligence, it will be clearly identified as such in the app, and the Privacy Policy describes how your data is (and is not) used with AI — including our commitment that member content is never used to train AI models.

11. Safety — read this

• We do not conduct criminal background checks on members. The committee reviews applications for community fit, not criminal history.
• You are solely responsible for your interactions. Use judgment: meet in public, tell someone, arrange your own transport. Hala is not responsible for the conduct of any member, online or offline.
• Never send money or financial information to another member. Report anyone who asks.

12. Membership review, suspension, and termination

Membership is at our discretion, not only when you break the rules. We periodically review the community and may end a membership, without stating reasons, if we believe it is no longer a good fit or to manage the size and balance of the community; in that case we will refund the unused portion of any prepaid membership.

We may pause, suspend, or terminate accounts that violate these Terms or harm the community, with or without notice, and without refund of unused membership time except where the law requires. You can end this agreement at any time by deleting your account in Settings (which also permanently deletes your data, per the Privacy Policy).

We may also change, suspend, or discontinue the service or any feature at any time. Some features are tested with a small group of members first or offered only in certain cities, and we do not promise that every feature is available to every member.

13. Disclaimers, limitation of liability, and indemnity

The service is provided "as is" and "as available." We do not warrant uninterrupted operation, that you will receive matches, meetings, or any particular outcome, or the conduct or claims of any member. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. Because Hala is a place to meet people, you understand that these disclaimers cover meetings and communications with members, including any claim of personal injury, emotional distress, or death arising from them.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Hala is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, and our total liability for any claim relating to the service is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose. Some states do not allow limits on implied warranties or on certain damages, so some of these limits may not apply to you; in those states our liability is limited to the smallest amount the law permits.

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Hala and its officers, directors, employees, and agents from any claim, loss, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your Content, your use of the service, your interactions with other members, or your violation of these Terms or of any law or third-party right. We may take over the defense of any such claim, and you will cooperate with us.

We are not responsible for delays or failures caused by events outside our reasonable control, such as outages at Apple, Google, or our hosting providers, or natural disasters. Hala may link to third-party sites and services, including Instagram profiles that members share; we do not control them and are not responsible for what they do with your information. Nothing in these Terms stops you from posting honest reviews of Hala or from any activity protected by the Consumer Review Fairness Act.

14. Apple/Google standard clauses

These Terms are between you and Hala, not Apple or Google; those platforms have no obligation to furnish support or maintenance for the app and are not responsible for any claims relating to it. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms as they relate to iOS distribution and may enforce them.

We grant you a limited, non-transferable license to use the Hala app on Apple devices you own or control, as allowed by the App Store Usage Rules. If the app fails to meet a warranty that the law does not let us disclaim, you may tell Apple and Apple may refund the price you paid for the app, if any; Apple has no other warranty obligation, and any other claim, loss, or cost is our responsibility, not Apple's. We, not Apple, handle any claim that the app infringes someone's intellectual property, and any product-liability or consumer-protection claim, to the extent the law does not let us disclaim it. You confirm that you are not located in a country subject to a U.S. government embargo or designated as supporting terrorism, and that you are not on any U.S. government list of prohibited or restricted parties. You will comply with any third-party terms that apply when you use the app (for example your carrier's). Questions about the app go to Hala at support@halatheapp.com.

15. Governing law and dispute resolution

Please read this section carefully. It requires disputes to be resolved by individual arbitration and waives class actions and jury trials.

• Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The Federal Arbitration Act governs this arbitration agreement.
• Talk to us first. Before starting arbitration or any claim, send a written notice to support@halatheapp.com with the subject "Dispute Notice", your name, the phone number on your account, a description of the dispute, and the relief you seek. We will do the same if we have a claim against you. Both sides will try in good faith to resolve it for 60 days; any limitation period is paused during that time.
• Binding individual arbitration. If we cannot resolve it, any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms, the service, or your relationship with Hala will be resolved by binding arbitration before a single arbitrator administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules (www.adr.org). The arbitrator, not a court, decides whether a dispute must be arbitrated. Hearings take place by video or in the county where you live. Fees are governed by the AAA consumer rules; Hala will not seek its legal fees from you unless the arbitrator finds your claim frivolous. The arbitrator may award any individual relief a court could.
• Exceptions. Either side may bring an individual claim in small claims court, seek a court order to stop unauthorized use of the service or infringement of intellectual property, or raise a matter with a government agency.
• No class actions, no jury trials. Disputes are resolved only on an individual basis. You and Hala each waive the right to a jury trial and to participate in a class, collective, or representative action. If this waiver is found unenforceable for a particular claim, that claim will proceed in court, not in arbitration.
• Coordinated filings. If 25 or more similar arbitration demands are filed by or with the help of the same counsel, they will be resolved in batches of 10 (five chosen by each side), with the rest paused until each batch concludes; after two batches the parties will mediate the remainder before continuing.
• Your right to opt out. You may reject this arbitration agreement by emailing support@halatheapp.com with the subject "Arbitration Opt-Out", your name, and the phone number on your account within 30 days of first accepting these Terms (or, for existing members, within 30 days of this section taking effect). Opting out does not affect the rest of these Terms.
• Court venue. Any claim that is not arbitrated (for example if you opted out, or a court holds the arbitration agreement unenforceable) must be brought in the state or federal courts located in Dallas County, Texas, and you and Hala consent to those courts, subject to the jury waiver above.
• Survival and severability. This section survives termination of your membership. If any part of it is found unenforceable, the rest remains in effect except as stated under "No class actions".
• Outside the United States. Where the law of your country does not allow mandatory arbitration or gives you the right to bring claims in your local courts, nothing in this section takes that right away.

16. General

These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and Hala about the service. If any part is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. If we do not enforce a term, we can still enforce it later. Your membership is personal: you cannot transfer or sell your account, and it ends on your death. We may assign these Terms to a successor if Hala is reorganized, merged, or sold, and we will tell you if that happens. Sections 6, 7, 9, and 12 through 16 survive the end of your membership.

California residents: under California Civil Code Section 1789.3, you may contact the Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs at 1625 North Market Blvd., Suite N 112, Sacramento, CA 95834, or (800) 952-5210. Hala's pricing is shown in the app before purchase, and complaints may be sent to support@halatheapp.com.

17. Changes

We may update these Terms as the service evolves; material changes will be announced in the app. Continuing to use Hala after changes take effect means you accept them.

18. Contact

support@halatheapp.com