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Acceptable Use & Marketplace Rules

Rules for listings, messages, reviews, reports, moderation, and prohibited services.

Status: draft for counsel review Effective date: [TO FILL BEFORE PUBLICATION] Version: 0.1-launch-draft

These rules apply to customers, businesses, staff users, visitors, listings, messages, reviews, service policies, content, and other activity on OVIO. They supplement the OVIO Terms of Service, Marketplace Terms, Business Terms, and Privacy Policy.

Do not publish this document until counsel has approved it and all bracketed items are complete.

1. Core Rule

Use OVIO lawfully, honestly, respectfully, and only for legitimate marketplace and business-service purposes.

Do not use OVIO for illegal, misleading, unsafe, abusive, fraudulent, invasive, or exploitative activity.

2. Prohibited Services

Businesses must not list, offer, promote, arrange, or provide services through OVIO that are unlawful or that OVIO has not approved for launch.

Unless OVIO expressly approves the category after legal review, prohibited or restricted services include:

  • Illegal services or services requiring licenses the business does not hold.
  • Medical, health, wellness, beauty, or therapeutic services requiring credentials not verified for the launch country.
  • Legal, financial, insurance, tax, investment, or regulated professional advice requiring authorization not verified for the launch country.
  • Child-related services requiring safeguarding, background checks, or parental controls not approved by OVIO.
  • Transport, accommodation, travel, food, alcohol, event, ticketing, or high-risk leisure services requiring regulatory review.
  • Weapons, drugs, controlled substances, counterfeit goods, stolen goods, or illegal products.
  • Sexual services or adult services unless OVIO separately approves a compliant adult-services program.
  • Services that promote hate, violence, exploitation, self-harm, harassment, or unlawful discrimination.

OVIO may add category-specific rules before enabling new verticals.

3. Listing Accuracy

Businesses must keep listings accurate and complete. Listings must not misrepresent:

  • Business identity.
  • Licenses, qualifications, certifications, insurance, or verification status.
  • Service scope, price, taxes, fees, deposit terms, availability, location, duration, staff, or cancellation policy.
  • Expected results or guarantees.
  • Ratings, reviews, popularity, promotions, discounts, or scarcity.

Do not use words such as "verified", "certified", "guaranteed", or "official" unless the statement is accurate, documented, and allowed by OVIO.

4. Customer Conduct

Customers must not:

  • Provide false booking or payment information.
  • Harass, threaten, abuse, discriminate against, or endanger business staff, customers, or OVIO staff.
  • Abuse cancellation, refund, chargeback, review, report, or messaging tools.
  • Use OVIO to request illegal, unsafe, or prohibited services.
  • Attend services in a way that creates a safety risk or violates reasonable service rules.

5. Business Conduct

Businesses must not:

  • Publish unlawful, misleading, unsafe, or discriminatory services.
  • Accept bookings they do not intend or are not able to honor.
  • Move customers off OVIO to avoid required disclosures, payment obligations, safety processes, or support rules.
  • Use customer data for unrelated marketing without valid consent or another lawful basis.
  • Pressure customers to withdraw reports, reviews, disputes, or rights requests.
  • Retaliate against customers for cancellations, reports, reviews, disputes, or rights requests.

6. Messaging Rules

Messages must relate to legitimate OVIO activity, such as bookings, orders, queues, events, service preparation, customer support, or business follow-up allowed by law.

Do not send spam, malware, scams, harassment, threats, unlawful offers, misleading claims, sensitive information that is not needed, or promotional messages without a valid legal basis.

7. Marketing Rules

Marketing must comply with applicable law and customer choices. Marketing consent must be separate from booking confirmation where required. Marketing emails must include a clear unsubscribe method and required sender information.

Businesses must honor opt-outs promptly and must maintain suppression records where needed to avoid sending unwanted marketing.

8. Reviews and Feedback

Reviews, ratings, and feedback must be honest, relevant, and based on a real experience. Do not post or request fake reviews, compensated reviews without required disclosure, competitor attacks, private information, threats, hate, spam, or irrelevant content.

OVIO may remove, restrict, or label reviews that may violate these rules or applicable law.

9. Intellectual Property and Personal Rights

Do not upload or use content unless you have the rights needed to do so. Do not infringe copyrights, trademarks, publicity rights, privacy rights, image rights, database rights, trade secrets, or other rights.

Businesses must have permission to use logos, photos, staff images, customer images, service descriptions, and promotional materials.

10. Privacy and Data Protection

Users and businesses must respect privacy and data-protection obligations.

Do not:

  • Share another person's personal data without a valid reason.
  • Upload unnecessary sensitive data.
  • Scrape or export personal data outside permitted tools.
  • Use customer data obtained through OVIO for unrelated purposes.
  • Ignore valid data rights requests.

11. Platform Integrity

Do not:

  • Probe, scan, or test OVIO systems without written permission.
  • Bypass access controls, payment controls, rate limits, moderation controls, or account restrictions.
  • Use bots, scrapers, crawlers, or automated tools except where OVIO expressly permits them.
  • Interfere with OVIO's security, availability, analytics, payments, emails, or infrastructure.
  • Upload malware or malicious code.
  • Reverse engineer OVIO except where law allows and cannot be restricted.

12. Reports

You can report a business, service, listing, review, message, profile, or other content if you believe it is illegal, misleading, unsafe, or violates OVIO's rules.

Report to: [REPORT URL OR EMAIL]

Please include enough information for OVIO to assess the report, such as the URL, business name, booking reference, message, reason, and evidence where available.

Do not submit knowingly false reports.

13. Moderation

OVIO may review, restrict, remove, demote, or suspend content, listings, services, business pages, reviews, messages, accounts, or features that may violate these rules, OVIO's terms, payment provider rules, or law.

OVIO may also restrict activity during review if needed for legal, safety, fraud, security, payment, or platform integrity reasons.

14. Appeals

Where OVIO takes moderation action or declines to act on a report, OVIO may provide a reason and a way to request review where required.

Appeals should explain why the decision should be changed and include relevant evidence. OVIO may uphold, reverse, or modify the decision.

Appeals contact: [APPEALS EMAIL OR URL]

15. Cooperation With Authorities

OVIO may preserve or disclose information where required by law, court order, regulatory request, tax obligation, payment provider process, safety issue, or to protect rights, users, businesses, or the marketplace.

16. Changes

OVIO may update these rules as the marketplace, laws, service categories, or safety risks change. Businesses may be required to accept updated rules before publishing or continuing to use certain features.

17. Contact

  • Reports: [REPORT URL OR EMAIL]
  • Appeals: [APPEALS EMAIL OR URL]
  • Support: [SUPPORT EMAIL]