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Terms of Service
The agreement between you and Viaowl AS: your account and owl phrase, scam protection, plans and refunds, what you own, and your rights as a consumer.
Who we are and these Terms
These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) govern your access to and use of the Viaowl email service, the viaowl.com website, our applications and all related features (together, the “Service”). The Service is provided by Viaowl AS, a Norwegian private limited company with organisation number 923 456 789 and its registered address at Karl Johans gate 22, 0159 Oslo, Norway (“Viaowl”, “we”, “us” or “our”).
By creating an account, signing in or otherwise using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms and by our Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy and Acceptable Use Policy, each of which forms part of this agreement. If you do not agree to these Terms, you must not use the Service.
If you use the Service on behalf of a company, association or other organisation, you confirm that you have the authority to bind that organisation to these Terms, and “you” then refers to both you and that organisation. The current version of these Terms is always available at viaowl.com and in your account settings.
Eligibility
You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service. Where the law of the country in which you live sets a higher minimum age for consenting to the processing of personal data or for entering into online contracts, such as 16 in some countries of the European Economic Area (“EEA”), you must meet that higher age, or have the consent of a parent or guardian where the law allows it.
You may not use the Service if we have previously terminated your account for a serious breach of these Terms, or if you are a person with whom we are prohibited from dealing under applicable sanctions or export control laws.
We may ask for reasonable information to confirm that you meet these requirements. If we learn that an account belongs to someone who does not meet them, we will close the account and delete the associated data in line with our Privacy Policy.
Your account and security
You must provide accurate information when you create your account and keep it up to date, including a recovery address where you choose to add one. Each account is for one person. On Parliament plans, the organisation’s administrators may create, manage and close accounts for members of that organisation.
You are responsible for keeping your password, recovery codes and second factors confidential and secure. We strongly recommend that you turn on a second factor, such as an authenticator app or a hardware security key, and administrators on Parliament plans may require it for their members. You are responsible for all activity that takes place under your account, except to the extent that it results from our own failure to meet our obligations under these Terms.
Your account includes a secret two-word “owl phrase”. The genuine Viaowl sign-in page always displays your owl phrase before you enter your password. If a page asking for your Viaowl credentials does not show your owl phrase, or shows the wrong one, do not enter your credentials, and report the page to abuse@viaowl.com. Keep your owl phrase private. We will never ask you for your password, your owl phrase or your second-factor codes, by email, by phone or in any other way.
If you believe that someone has gained unauthorised access to your account, you must change your password and contact us promptly at help@viaowl.com. We may temporarily lock an account where we see strong signs of compromise, in order to protect you and others, and we will help you regain access once you have proved that the account is yours.
The Service
The Service gives you an email mailbox with an @viaowl.com address and, depending on your plan, the following features: (a) “the night watch”, which checks incoming mail for signs of scams; (b) “the owl’s nest”, where suspicious messages are held; (c) “link x-ray”, which shows where a link really leads; (d) “quiet hours”, which silence notifications at night, with exceptions you choose; (e) tracker blocking, which removes spy pixels and tracking parameters; (f) the owl phrase anti-phishing check; (g) community scam reports; (h) custom domains; and (i) import of existing mail from Gmail, Outlook and iCloud. The features included in each plan are described at viaowl.com and in Section 9.
All scanning of your mail takes place on Viaowl’s own servers in Norway. Your mail is never sent to third parties for scanning, is never used for advertising and is never used to train models. The Service carries no advertising.
When you ask us to import mail from another provider, you authorise us to access the source account using the authorisation you give, solely to copy the mail and related data you have selected into your Viaowl mailbox. You remain responsible for complying with the terms of the source provider, and you can withdraw the authorisation at any time from that provider’s settings.
We may from time to time offer features marked as early access or preview. These features are offered so that you can try them before they are finished, may change or be withdrawn, and are excluded from any commitments in these Terms about features of your plan.
Scam protection and its limits
The night watch automatically checks incoming messages for signs of fraud, including lookalike sender addresses, false urgency, links whose real destination differs from what they display, and patterns associated with known scams. These checks are automated. No member of our staff reads your mail in order to perform them.
Messages that the night watch considers suspicious are placed in the owl’s nest instead of your inbox. They remain there for 30 days, during which you can release any of them to your inbox with a single tap. After 30 days, held messages are deleted automatically. You should review the owl’s nest from time to time, because it may contain messages you want.
No filter is perfect. The night watch may fail to identify some fraudulent messages, and it may occasionally hold a legitimate message. Link x-ray shows the destination of a link at the time it is checked, and the owner of a website may change that destination afterwards. The Service helps you to spot scams, but it does not replace your own judgement. Please never share passwords, codes or payment details in response to an email you are unsure about; you can forward suspicious messages to check@viaowl.com and we will look at them.
We provide scam protection with reasonable care and skill. To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for loss arising from a fraudulent message that was not detected, or from a legitimate message that was held in the owl’s nest, unless the loss was caused by our failure to exercise that care and skill. This Section does not limit any rights you have as a consumer under mandatory law.
Your content
You keep all rights in the messages, attachments, contacts, settings and other material that you send, receive or store using the Service (“Your Content”). We claim no ownership of Your Content.
You grant Viaowl a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, transmit, scan, process, display, back up and deliver Your Content, solely to the extent necessary to provide and secure the Service for you and to comply with the law. This licence ends when Your Content is deleted from our systems, subject to the backup rotation described in our Privacy Policy.
Mailboxes are encrypted at rest, with the encryption keys held in a separate vault. Our staff do not read your mail. Access to Your Content by our staff takes place only (a) with your explicit permission, for example to resolve a support request; (b) where strictly necessary to investigate a serious security incident or a report of abuse under our Acceptable Use Policy; or (c) where we are required to do so by Norwegian law. Any such access is limited to what is necessary, logged and reviewed.
You confirm that you have all rights needed to send and store Your Content using the Service, and that Your Content does not breach these Terms, our Acceptable Use Policy or the law. Notices of alleged infringement of copyright or other rights may be sent to legal@viaowl.com, and we will handle them in accordance with applicable law.
Privacy
Our Privacy Policy explains what personal data we process, why we process it, how long we keep it and the rights you have, including your rights under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), the UK GDPR and the privacy laws of US states such as the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (“CCPA/CPRA”). Our Cookie Policy explains the two strictly necessary cookies the Service uses.
For accounts you hold personally, Viaowl AS is the controller of your personal data. On Parliament plans, where an organisation provides accounts to its members, the organisation is the controller of the mailbox data of those members and Viaowl acts as its processor under our data processing agreement, which organisations can obtain from privacy@viaowl.com.
We do not sell or share personal information, we show no advertising and we do not build profiles of you for marketing. You can contact our Data Protection Officer at dpo@viaowl.com.
Acceptable use
You must use the Service in accordance with our Acceptable Use Policy, which forms part of these Terms. In summary, you must not use the Service to send spam or bulk unsolicited mail, to exceed the sending limits for your plan, to send phishing messages or malware, to impersonate others, to harass anyone, to distribute illegal content, to circumvent our security measures or to abuse the scam-report system.
The sending limits are currently 500 recipients a day on Owlet and 2,000 recipients a day on paid plans. We may adjust these limits for an individual account where needed to protect the Service or other users, and we will tell you if we do.
Breach of the Acceptable Use Policy may lead to the measures described in that policy and in Section 14, including restriction of sending, suspension or termination of your account.
Plans, billing, renewal, taxes and price changes
We currently offer the following plans: (a) Owlet, free forever, with one address and 10 GB of storage; (b) Barn Owl, at USD 4 a month or USD 40 a year, with 100 GB of storage, link x-ray everywhere, quiet hours and a custom domain; and (c) Parliament, at USD 7 per person a month or USD 70 per person a year, with group scam alerts, an admin console with single sign-on (SSO), shared addresses and 1 TB of storage per person.
Paid plans are billed in advance at the start of each monthly or yearly billing period. Payments are processed by our payment processor, Stripe. We do not store your full card number. Paid plans renew automatically at the end of each billing period, at the price then in effect for your plan, until you cancel. We will remind you by email before a yearly plan renews.
Where the law requires prices to be displayed inclusive of value added tax or a similar tax, the price shown at checkout includes that tax. Otherwise, any applicable taxes are added at checkout and shown before you pay. You are responsible for any taxes that apply to your purchase, other than taxes on our income.
Upgrades apply straight away. When you upgrade, you are charged the prorated difference for the rest of your current billing period, and your new plan renews at its own price. Downgrades take effect at the end of your current billing period. On Parliament plans, seats added during a billing period are charged on a prorated basis.
We may change the prices of our plans. We will give you at least 30 days’ notice by email of any price increase, and the new price will apply only from your next renewal after the notice period ends. If you do not agree with the new price, you may cancel before it takes effect. If a payment fails, we will try again and notify you; if payment is still outstanding 14 days after the due date, we may move your account to Owlet, in which case you keep access to all your existing mail.
Cancellation, refunds and your right of withdrawal
You can cancel a paid plan at any time in your account settings. Monthly plans can be cancelled at any time and continue until the end of the period you have already paid for, after which no further charges are made. When a paid plan ends, your account moves to Owlet and all your mail remains available to you and to export.
If you cancel a yearly plan within 14 days of the initial purchase or of a yearly renewal, we will refund the full amount paid for that year. If you cancel a yearly plan later, it continues until the end of the paid year. Except as set out in this Section or as required by law, payments are not refundable for partially used billing periods.
If you are a consumer in the EEA or the United Kingdom, you have a statutory right to withdraw from a paid plan within 14 days of entering into it, without giving a reason, under the Norwegian Right of Withdrawal Act (angrerettloven), which implements Directive 2011/83/EU, and, for UK consumers, the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. Because your plan starts immediately at your express request, if you withdraw from a monthly plan we may deduct an amount proportionate to the service provided up to the time you withdraw. For yearly plans, we refund the full amount without deduction.
To cancel or withdraw, use the cancellation option in your account settings or send a clear statement to help@viaowl.com. Refunds are paid to the original payment method within 14 days of your cancellation or withdrawal. Nothing in these Terms affects your statutory rights in respect of a service that is not provided as agreed.
The free Owlet plan
Owlet is free forever. It includes one @viaowl.com address, 10 GB of storage, the night watch, the owl’s nest, tracker blocking, the owl phrase and a sending limit of 500 recipients a day. Owlet carries no advertising, and your data is never sold or used to pay for it in any other way.
Some features, such as link x-ray everywhere, quiet hours and custom domains, are available only on paid plans. If your mailbox reaches its storage limit, new incoming mail may be refused until you free up space or upgrade. We will notify you before your mailbox is full.
We will never convert Owlet into a paid plan or charge you for it without your express agreement. If we change the features included in Owlet, we will give you at least 30 days’ notice.
Custom domains and addresses
Barn Owl and Parliament plans allow you to use a domain you own. You must own or control any domain you connect, keep its registration current and configure the DNS records we specify, such as MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records. We are not your domain registrar, and we are not responsible for mail lost because a domain has lapsed, been transferred or been misconfigured outside the Service.
When you choose an @viaowl.com address, it must not impersonate another person or organisation, infringe the rights of others or be offensive. We may disable an address that breaches this requirement.
Addresses are never reassigned. Once an @viaowl.com address has been created, it is never issued to anyone else, even after the account that held it has been closed or deleted. The address of a closed account is permanently retired, and mail sent to it is rejected, so that nobody else can ever receive mail meant for you or use the address to reset your accounts elsewhere.
On Parliament plans, shared addresses and addresses on the organisation’s custom domains are controlled by the organisation. The organisation’s administrators decide who may use them and what happens to them when a member leaves.
Changes to the Service and availability
We work to keep the Service available at all times, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted availability. The Service may be unavailable during planned maintenance, which we schedule to minimise disruption and announce in advance where practicable, and during unplanned incidents, which we work to resolve promptly.
We continuously improve the Service and may add, change or remove features. If we make a change that materially reduces a feature included in your paid plan, we will give you at least 30 days’ notice, and you may cancel your plan and receive a prorated refund for the unused part of your billing period.
If we decide to discontinue the Service as a whole, we will give you at least 90 days’ notice, keep export available throughout that period and refund any prepaid amounts for the period after the Service ends.
Suspension and termination
You may stop using the Service and close your account at any time, as described in Section 15.
We may restrict, suspend or terminate your access to the Service if (a) you materially or repeatedly breach these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy; (b) we are required to do so by law or by a binding order of a court or authority; (c) your account presents a serious risk to the security of the Service or of other users; (d) payment for a paid plan remains outstanding as described in Section 9; or (e) your account is used for fraud.
Our response will be proportionate. Where a lesser measure, such as a temporary sending restriction, is sufficient, we will use it first. We will tell you the reason for any restriction, suspension or termination and give you prior notice, unless doing so would be unlawful, would compromise the security of the Service or of others, or would hinder the investigation of a serious offence. You may appeal any decision as described in the Acceptable Use Policy.
On termination, your right to use the Service ends. Sections 6, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 of these Terms, and any other provisions which by their nature are intended to continue, survive termination.
Export and account closure
You can export your mail, contacts and settings at any time, on any plan, in standard open formats such as MBOX, EML and vCard. Export remains available after a paid plan ends and, where lawful and safe, while an account is suspended.
You can close your account at any time in your account settings. When you do, your mailbox and account data are deleted within 30 days. Copies in our backups are overwritten as the backups rotate, within 35 days. We keep billing records for five years, as required by the Norwegian Bookkeeping Act (bokføringsloven). The @viaowl.com address of a closed account is permanently retired, as described in Section 12.
If we terminate your account for any reason other than a serious breach involving illegal content or a threat to the security of others, we will give you at least 30 days in which to export your data before it is deleted.
Intellectual property and feedback
The Service, including its software, design and documentation, and the names and marks Viaowl, the night watch, the owl’s nest, link x-ray, the owl phrase and our owl logo, are owned by Viaowl AS or its licensors and are protected by intellectual property laws. Subject to these Terms, we grant you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable licence to use the Service for its intended purpose.
You must not (a) copy, modify or create derivative works of the Service; (b) decompile, disassemble or reverse engineer the Service, except to the extent that mandatory law permits it; (c) sell, resell, sublicense or rent the Service without our written agreement; (d) remove any proprietary notices; or (e) use our names or marks in a way that suggests endorsement or that could confuse people, without our written permission.
Some components of the Service are open-source software, which is licensed under its own licence terms. Those terms prevail over these Terms to the extent they apply.
If you send us ideas, suggestions or other feedback about the Service, we may use them without restriction or obligation to you. Feedback does not include Your Content, and our rights in feedback do not extend to it.
Disclaimers
To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, and we disclaim all warranties not expressly stated in these Terms, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that every fraudulent message will be detected.
Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes any rights you have as a consumer under the mandatory laws of Norway or of your country of residence, including your rights where a digital service is not provided in conformity with the contract.
We are not responsible for any delay or failure in performing our obligations caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including natural disasters, pandemics, war, terrorism, civil unrest, acts of government, failures of public power or telecommunications networks and large-scale cyberattacks, provided that we take reasonable steps to limit the effects of the event and resume performance as soon as practicable.
Limitation of liability
To the extent permitted by law, Viaowl is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive loss, or for any loss of profits, revenue, business, goodwill or anticipated savings, arising out of or in connection with the Service or these Terms.
To the extent permitted by law, Viaowl’s total liability arising out of or in connection with the Service or these Terms, in any twelve-month period, is limited to the greater of (a) the amounts you paid to us for the Service in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the liability, and (b) USD 100.
Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, for loss caused by our gross negligence or wilful misconduct, or for any other liability that cannot be limited or excluded under applicable law. If you are a consumer, we are responsible for loss you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breach of these Terms or our failure to use reasonable care and skill.
Indemnity for business users
This Section applies only if you use the Service for the purposes of a trade, business or profession, including on a Parliament plan. It does not apply to consumers.
You will indemnify and hold Viaowl harmless from and against any third-party claims, and the resulting losses, damages, fines and reasonable legal costs, to the extent they arise from (a) Your Content or the content sent by your members; (b) your breach, or your members’ breach, of these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy; (c) your violation of any law or of the rights of a third party; or (d) your use of any domain connected to the Service.
We will notify you promptly of any claim covered by this Section, allow you to control its defence and settlement, and give you reasonable cooperation at your expense. You may not settle a claim in a way that imposes any obligation or admission on Viaowl without our prior written consent, which we will not unreasonably withhold.
Governing law and disputes
These Terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them or the Service, are governed by the laws of Norway, excluding its conflict-of-law rules.
If you have a complaint, please contact us first at legal@viaowl.com. We will try in good faith to resolve the matter with you within 30 days.
Any dispute that cannot be resolved informally shall be brought before Oslo District Court (Oslo tingrett) as the agreed venue. If you are a consumer, this choice of law and venue does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law of the country in which you live, and you may also bring proceedings in the courts of that country. Consumers resident in Norway may also bring a complaint to the Norwegian Consumer Council (Forbrukerrådet) for mediation.
Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time, for example to reflect changes to the Service or to the law. The date at the top of these Terms shows when they were last updated.
If we make a material change, we will notify you by email and in the Service at least 30 days before the change takes effect. Changes that do not affect your rights, such as clarifications or corrections, may take effect when published.
If you do not agree with a change, you may close your account or cancel your plan before the change takes effect, and we will refund any prepaid amount for the unused part of your billing period. If you continue to use the Service after the change takes effect, the updated Terms will apply to you.
General provisions and contact
These Terms, together with the policies referred to in them, form the entire agreement between you and Viaowl concerning the Service. If any provision is held to be invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of our right to do so later. You may not assign or transfer your rights under these Terms without our consent. We may assign our rights to a successor in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, provided that your rights under these Terms are not reduced, and we will notify you in advance. Nothing in these Terms creates any agency, partnership, joint venture or employment relationship. Headings are for convenience only.
You agree that we may send you notices about the Service and these Terms electronically, by email to your account or recovery address or through the Service, and that such notices satisfy any requirement for written notice. These Terms are provided in English.
Viaowl AS, Karl Johans gate 22, 0159 Oslo, Norway, organisation number 923 456 789. Legal notices: legal@viaowl.com. Support: help@viaowl.com. Privacy: privacy@viaowl.com. Data Protection Officer: dpo@viaowl.com. Abuse reports: abuse@viaowl.com. Suspicious messages: check@viaowl.com.