Utilisation acceptable

OkBell sends reminders to real people. This policy sets the rules that keep those reminders welcome, lawful and safe. It applies to everyone who uses OkBell: businesses, their staff, and personal users.

In short: message only people who agreed, never spam or harass anyone, never store secrets that move money, and never attack or misuse the service. If you break these rules, we may pause your reminders or close your account.

This policy is part of our terms of use.

1. Consent comes first

Businesses and payers

• Add only payers you have a real business relationship with, and a lawful reason to remind.
• Payers must be adults. A child may be listed only as a dependant, with a first name and batch. Never add a child's phone number or email. OkBell never messages a child.
• If a dependant is under 18, mark them so. OkBell then asks the parent for consent through its own link.
• Add as a second contact only a person the payer named. A second contact gets nothing from OkBell, beyond one request to agree, until they agree themselves.
• Automated reminder calls (when available) need the called person's own separate yes, given on their pay page. You cannot give it for them.

Personal users and the people they name

• Remind someone only if they want to be reminded. Send the first invite from your own WhatsApp or SMS. OkBell sends them nothing automatic until they say yes.
• Do not invite the same person again and again. You may invite one person at most twice, ever.
• You may remind someone under 18 only if you are their parent or guardian.
• Family care (when available) starts only after the person being checked agrees themselves. Each contact must agree too.
• Name Just in case recipients and verifiers (when available) only if you trust them and expect them to want the role.

2. No spam, no promotion to non-users

• Never use OkBell to send marketing, offers or adverts to anyone.
• Messages to people who do not use OkBell (payers, second contacts, people you remind, care contacts, Just in case recipients) carry no promotion at all: no offers, no prices, no referral codes and no "install the app". OkBell enforces this.
• Do not pretend to be someone else. Display names that look like a bank or a government office (for example "SBI", "Income Tax" or "TDRA") are refused.
• Your note on a personal reminder is short (80 characters at most) and may not contain links, phone numbers or requests for money.

3. Reminders, not pressure

OkBell is for polite reminders. It is not a debt collection tool.

• Who may not use the Business space: lenders, non-bank finance companies, microfinance firms, recovery agents, debt buyers, chit funds and money lenders.
• Personal users may not use OkBell for: debt collection, recovery work, lending, dating, political messages, or messages to minors (except by their parent or guardian).
• Never use OkBell to threaten, shame, frighten or harass anyone.
• Businesses choose from our message templates and cannot add their own words to automated messages. This keeps out threats, late-fee claims and shaming.
• Staff may message payers by hand only from their own phone and WhatsApp.

OkBell also sets limits that no one can switch off:

• no reminders at night or on listed holidays;
• a payer gets at most 6 automated messages for each due, and at most one reminder a day from one business;
• a second contact gets at most 2 messages for each due and 4 in 30 days;
• a person reminded by personal users gets at most 3 messages a day and 10 a week, from everyone together;
• STOP is honoured on every channel within a minute.

4. Never store secrets that move money

Never store, in any part of OkBell (your Just in case messages included):

• bank or net-banking passwords;
• card PINs, UPI PINs or CVVs;
• one-time-password secrets or authenticator secrets;
• crypto seed phrases or private keys;
• full card numbers;
• anything that lets someone sign in as you to move money.

OkBell checks for these on your device and refuses or warns, but the checks are a safety net. You are responsible for what you store. A note on where to find something ("the papers are in the red diary") is fine.

5. Lawful and respectful content

Do not use OkBell to store or send anything that:

• is unlawful, or helps someone break the law;
• threatens, harasses, or stirs up hatred against anyone;
• invades someone's privacy, for example by tracking where they are without their knowledge;
• infringes someone else's rights, such as copyright or trademark;
• holds sensitive data about other people (such as health or religion) that OkBell does not need.

Saved places and arrival sharing (when available) are only for your own reminders, or between adults who agreed. Never use them to watch or follow anyone.

6. Use the service fairly

• Do not resell, rent or share access to OkBell, or offer it to others as your own service, without our written agreement.
• Do not copy, scrape or harvest data from OkBell, its pages or its pay links.
• Do not test, probe or attack the service, get around its limits or security, or try to see other people's data.
• Do not overload the service, or send automated requests except through features we offer for it.
• Do not copy or reverse-engineer the apps, except where the law allows it.
• Do not open accounts to get around a suspension or a limit.

If you find a security problem, tell us at security@okbell.app. Please give us time to fix it before telling anyone else.

7. How we enforce this policy

• Automatic pauses. If too many people stop a business's reminders (more than 5% in 7 days) or mark its emails as spam (more than 0.1%), its automated reminders pause and we review them. In the Personal space, a single report pauses reminders between that sender and that person at once. If too many people block a type of message, we pause it and review.
• Review. We look at what happened and may ask you about it.
• Action. Depending on what happened, we may warn you, pause reminders, suspend reminders for others, suspend your account, or close it. Where we can, we tell you why and give you a chance to fix it first.
• The law. Where the law requires it, we report unlawful use to the authorities.

8. Reporting misuse

If you get messages through OkBell that you did not agree to, reply STOP or tap Report in the message. You can also write to hello@okbell.app.