Legal Disclaimer

This Legal Disclaimer is part of the contract between you and the operator of Don't Open Me (together with the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy). By creating an account, visiting, searching, sealing Content, listing a lockbox, paying, or otherwise using the Service, you acknowledge that you have had a reasonable opportunity to read this page and that you agree to it. If you do not agree, leave the site and do not upload anything. If anything here conflicts with a non-waivable law, that law controls, and the rest still applies.

This page exists so you cannot later say you were not told. It is written to change the mind of anyone who thinks Don't Open Me is a vault, a will, a secret that nobody can ever read, a guaranteed gift to a grandchild, or a company that will still be here in 2050, 2075, or 2126. If any paragraph below makes you uncomfortable, that is the point. Do not use the Service.

If any of this is true for you, do not use this website

• You need the message, photograph, or secret to still exist on a future date. We do not promise that.
• You cannot afford to lose the only copy. Keep your own copies. We are not a backup service.
• You believe encryption means even we cannot read what you seal. That is not how this Service works. Encryption at rest uses keys the operator and its vendors can hold. We can decrypt Content. Hosts, administrators, successors, and anyone with a lawful order may be able to as well.
• You plan to put Social Security numbers, bank logins, cryptocurrency seed phrases, medical records, passwords, or anything whose leak would ruin you. Do not.
• You want to hide something from a spouse, a court, the police, a future employer, or a search engine, and you think a “sealed” capsule does that. It does not, especially if you later make it public.
• You will open a capsule “to the world.” On that date everything inside becomes public and searchable. Copies cannot be pulled back.
• You are under 18, or you want to seal photographs of children, or Content that is illegal, pornographic involving minors, threatening, or that you do not have the right to store.
• You think $5.99 buys permanence, insurance, a fiduciary duty, or the right to sue the owner personally for more than a small, limited amount.
• You need a recipient in 2050 to actually receive an email. Addresses die. People die. Inboxes fill. Spam filters eat mail. We may never reach them.
• You want this to act as a last will, trust, safe-deposit box, or estate plan. It is none of those things and a court may ignore it.

If you still want to use a consumer website that stores optional personal writing and photographs for a future year, with no guarantee it will be there, continue reading. The rest of this page is the fine print.

What this Service actually is

Don't Open Me is a consumer entertainment and personal-keepsake website. You may type messages, upload photographs, and pick a future opening year. You may pay a one-time fee per opening year and optional storage add-ons. You may list a public lockbox or send a private one toward an email address. That is the product. It is software running on rented computers, paid processors, and email vendors, operated by a private party who may lose interest, lose money, get sick, die, sell the project, or shut it down.

It is not a bank. It is not escrow. It is not a warehouse. It is not a professional archive. It is not a records-management company. It is not a law firm. It is not a therapist. It is not a messenger service with guaranteed delivery. It is not end-to-end encrypted chat. It is not anonymous. It is not a Swiss vault. It is not “for your heirs” in any legal sense. Treating it as any of those things is unreasonable.

No guarantee of future delivery, existence, or readability

Don't Open Me does not promise that any message, photograph, letter, quote, memory, document, map, or other Content will exist, open, decrypt, display, or be readable in 2050, 2075, 2126, or any other year you choose. We do not promise that the website, the company, the domain, the database, the encryption keys, the payment records, or the operator will exist then. We do not promise that file formats (including JPEG, WebP, AVIF, or whatever we store) will still open on ordinary devices. We do not promise that an email we send will arrive, be believed, or be acted on.

Servers fail. Disks fail. Cloud vendors fail, raise prices, or close regions. Backups are incomplete. Migrations corrupt rows. Keys are lost, rotated, or stolen. Domains expire. Certificates expire. Laws change. Wars happen. People who run small websites stop. You should assume a material chance that your capsule will never open, will open empty, will open damaged, or will open to the wrong person. You agree that this risk is obvious for a product that talks about decades.

If the only copy of a letter to your child lives here, that is your decision and your loss if it vanishes. Keep copies. Print them. Give them to a lawyer or a person you trust. Do not rely on Don't Open Me.

Your $5.99 does not buy what you may think it buys

The one-time $5.99 charge (or any other posted price) purchases a limited software entitlement: for that user account and that time capsule (the box tied to one opening year), unpaid deletion is turned off and a base storage allowance is granted, subject to these documents. It is not $5.99 per year of waiting. It does not purchase:

• A promise the files will still be here when the year arrives.
• Insurance, indemnity, or a surety bond.
• A fiduciary, custodial, or bailee relationship.
• Priority support, a phone number, or a human who answers in 2049.
• The right to a refund if you later regret the Content or the year.
• Extra storage beyond the posted allowance.
• Privacy from us, from vendors, or from legal process.
• Anonymity.
• Delivery to a recipient who has changed email, died, or ignores us.
• A listing in search engines, or protection from them.

Payments are processed by Stripe. After Stripe confirms a successful payment we grant the entitlement. Except where a statute requires otherwise, charges are final. Duplicate charges are not intended; if one occurs, our total extra obligation is a refund of the duplicate through Stripe, not damages. Taxes are yours. Currency conversion is yours. Chargebacks made in bad faith may result in account closure and deletion of Content.

If you do not pay for a newly selected opening year within the 5-day free period, unpaid Content for that year is permanently deleted. We have no duty to warn you more than the product already shows. We have no duty to recover it. “I forgot” is not a reason we must restore files.

Encryption is not a magic lock — we can read sealed Content

Fields such as titles, bodies, and photographs are encrypted at rest using server-side cryptography. That is a security measure against some classes of theft of a raw database file. It is not end-to-end encryption. It is not zero-knowledge. It is not “only you have the key.” The Service must decrypt Content to show it to you, to show it on a public lockbox after it opens, to compress photographs, to search opened public material, and to operate the product.

The operator, people the operator authorizes, successor owners, vendors who host the application or the keys, forensic investigators, and anyone who obtains a warrant, subpoena, court order, or other compulsory process may be able to access plaintext. A bug, a misconfiguration, a stolen admin session, a backup sitting in the wrong bucket, or a future owner with different morals may expose Content. You assume that risk. Do not seal anything whose disclosure would harm you, your family, or anyone else.

The owner is not supposed to casually browse private sealed capsules, and the product is built so ordinary admin screens do not dump that plaintext. That is a policy and a UI choice, not a mathematical impossibility and not a promise that nobody ever will. If that is not good enough, do not upload the material.

Public capsules — this should change your mind

If you choose “open it to the world,” then on your chosen date the capsule is shared with the world. Every message, photograph, name, caption, quote, story, letter, map, and other item you sealed for that year may be shown to anyone who opens the lockbox. That same material may appear in Find Someone, in Recently Opened, in search results on this site, and in third-party search engines, archives, screenshots, social posts, and copies we cannot see and cannot delete.

Before the opening date, a listed public lockbox may still reveal that it exists, a display name you typed, an optional username, a capsule name, the year it was created, and the opening date. Strangers can wait. Journalists can wait. Relatives you did not consider can wait. People who wish you harm can wait. “Notify me when this opens” lets strangers attach an email to your lockbox.

Unlisting later does not unsay what was already seen. Deleting after opening does not unsay it. Asking us to “take it down” does not bind Google, the Wayback Machine, a screenshot on a phone, or a printout on a fridge. If you would not print the letter on a billboard in your hometown, do not mark the year public.

Private capsules sent to a named recipient are not supposed to appear in public search and cannot be opened from a public page by typing a name. That is a product rule, not a guarantee against leaks, forwards, or a recipient who publishes. If you later allow “recipient may publish” or “public after they open,” you have chosen the public path with extra steps.

Recipients, emails, and the people you think you are writing to

If you choose “give it to someone,” we store a name and email you type. We may send confirmation mail, reminders, and an opening-day message with a link and a one-time code. We do not promise:

• That the address is correct. You must check it. If you type it wrong, a stranger may be invited to open your capsule.
• That the person still uses that inbox in ten or fifty years.
• That they are alive, competent, or willing to open it.
• That mail providers will still accept our mail, or that our mail vendor will still exist.
• That a one-time code proves the human identity you had in mind. It proves control of an inbox at that moment, nothing more.
• That a backup recipient will behave well, or will wait the stated period, or will not be the wrong person.
• That we will keep trying forever. Reminders, if any, may stop.

Knowing a name is never enough to open a private capsule. Searching “John Smith” must not unlock a private gift. If someone still gets in because you reused an email, forwarded a link, or left a logged-in device, that is your problem. We will not reconstruct family fights about who “should have” received a letter.

Do not use this Service to surprise someone with abuse, a confession that will wreck a marriage, a secret child, a crime, or a medical diagnosis you have no right to dump on them decades later. If you do, you — not the owner — own the consequences.

This is not a will, trust, or estate plan

Capsules are not testamentary documents. They do not transfer property. They do not appoint an executor. They do not satisfy the statute of wills in Pennsylvania or anywhere else. A court may refuse to look at them. Heirs may fight. We will not mediate. We have no process that reliably hands an account to a widow, a child, or a lawyer when you die. If you die without leaving login details, the Content may sit until deletion, expiry, or shutdown. If someone presents a death certificate, we may, or may not, do anything, in our sole discretion, and we may still refuse to decrypt private material. You will not draft your estate plan on a $5.99 website.

No professional advice

Nothing on the Service is legal, estate-planning, tax, medical, financial, counseling, or other professional advice. Marketing copy about “secrets,” “the future,” and “we'll keep it safe” is advertising language, not a warranty. “Safe” means we try to keep ordinary strangers from browsing sealed files in the product UI until a date you picked. It does not mean safe from us, from law, from bugs, from time, or from you making it public.

What you must never upload

You will not upload, and you represent that you have not uploaded: child sexual abuse material or any sexual content involving minors (real or generated); content that sexually exploits anyone; non-consensual intimate images; revenge pornography; content you do not have the right to store or display; stolen data; malware; threats; swatting material; instructions whose primary purpose is violent crime; another person's identification documents used to impersonate them; or anything illegal in the United States or in the place you are using the Service from. We may remove Content, freeze accounts, report to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children or law enforcement, and refuse refunds. We may preserve copies for the report. You waive claims against us for those actions to the maximum extent the law allows.

Photographs of other people — including family, children, classrooms, hospitals, and strangers in the background — are your legal problem. You must have whatever consent the law requires. If someone sues us because you uploaded their face, you will defend and pay.

User-generated content and other people's feelings

We do not endorse Content. Opened listed capsules may contain cruelty, lies, racism, pornography, blasphemy, political speech you hate, or private facts. We are a platform for user Content, not the speaker of that Content, to the maximum extent allowed by 47 U.S.C. § 230 and similar laws. We have no duty to review capsules before they open. We have no duty to warn you that a lockbox is upsetting. If you click “open,” you asked to see it.

You assume the risk that a recipient, a relative, a future you, or a stranger will be hurt, angry, or ruined by what you sealed. Emotional distress, defamation among family, lost relationships, and “you should have stopped me” are not our liability.

Accounts, passwords, death, and takeover

You are responsible for every action under your login. If you use a weak password, reuse a password, share a device, or lose the email, other people may add, edit, delete, list, or publish your years. We may not be able to tell you apart from them. We may refuse to “prove” identity by family resemblance, a driver's license photo, or a sad story. Two-factor authentication, if offered, may fail. If we offer sign-in with Google or X, those companies can lock you out and we cannot get you back in.

There is no guaranteed heir account. There is no guaranteed “break glass” for your children. If that is why you came, leave.

Photographs, compression, and storage meters

We automatically resize, recompress, strip some metadata, and may convert photographs to other formats before counting them against your 50 MB (or other) allowance. The file that comes out is not the file you shot. EXIF, GPS, camera serials, and other metadata may be removed or may survive in part. Do not assume a location was stripped. Do not assume a face was blurred. Storage numbers are approximate. If the meter is wrong in our favor or yours, our logs control. Extra storage is sold separately per opening year and does not roll over. Changing a future default allowance does not take away storage already granted. Running out of space is not a reason we must host more for free.

Search, logs, and the data trail you leave

We and our vendors may log IP addresses, device and browser type, approximate location derived from IP, cookies, sign-in tokens, payment identifiers, and which pages you hit. Public search queries may be logged. Notify-me emails are stored until unsubscribe or cleanup. Recipient emails are stored so we can attempt delivery. Payment records are kept for accounting, tax, dispute, and fraud. You will not get a romantic idea that “sealed” means “no record that you were here.”

We may change, sell, or close the Service

We may modify, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Service at any time, including long-term hosting, public search, recipient mail, and encryption schemes. We may transfer operations, change vendors, or sell the project to someone you do not like. A buyer gets the databases and the keys unless law or a contract says otherwise. We have no obligation to keep the Service running until your opening year. If we shut down we may, but are not required to, email addresses we have on file. We are not required to export your archive on a pretty USB drive. You agree you will not rely on Don't Open Me as your only copy.

Third-party vendors

Hosting, databases, authentication, payments (including Stripe), email, image processing, and the network between you and us are run by other companies. Their outages, bankruptcies, policy changes, and foreign legal exposure are outside our control. We are not liable for them except to the extent a non-waivable law says otherwise. If Stripe holds a payment, talk to Stripe. If Gmail blocks our mail, talk to Google. If a cloud region dies, your capsule may die with it.

Law enforcement, courts, and compelled disclosure

We may disclose information — including decrypted Content, recipient names, emails, payment records, and IP logs — if we believe in good faith that the law requires it, that a court has ordered it, or that it is necessary to protect a person, a child, or the Service. We may notify you of a request, or we may be forbidden to. We are not your lawyer. We will not go to jail to protect a diary. If that shocks you, do not write the diary here.

Owner and operator protection — including personal protection

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, you agree that Don't Open Me, its owner and operator, and their family members, household members, employees, contractors, successors, assigns, insurers, and affiliates have no liability to you or any third party for: loss, alteration, delay, or disclosure of Content; failure of a capsule to open; opening to the wrong person; downtime; bugs; encryption failure; vendor failure; payment errors after a successful Stripe confirmation except as Stripe or card-network rules require; free-period deletion; your decision to list or share a lockbox; another person's reaction to opened Content; defamation among users; emotional distress; lost profits; lost chance; lost inheritance arguments; or any claim arising from use of a consumer website that stores optional personal writing and photographs for a future year.

You agree not to bring any claim, demand, lawsuit, arbitration (except as the Terms allow on an individual basis), investigation request, bar complaint, attorney-general complaint, “I know where you live” threat, or administrative action against the owner personally to the extent the law lets you waive that right. You agree not to name the owner's family. Where the law does not let you waive a right, you still agree that any remaining claim is limited as stated in the Terms, including the dollar cap and the bar on consequential damages.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE SHALL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID TO US FOR THE SPECIFIC OPENING YEAR OR STORAGE ADD-ON GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM, OR (B) TWENTY-FIVE U.S. DOLLARS ($25.00). THAT CAP IS AN ESSENTIAL BASIS OF THE BARGAIN. YOU WOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO USE THE SITE FOR $5.99 WITHOUT IT. SOME PLACES DO NOT ALLOW CERTAIN LIMITATIONS; IN THOSE PLACES LIABILITY IS LIMITED TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW. NOTHING HERE LIMITS LIABILITY FOR OUR OWN FRAUD, OR FOR DEATH OR PERSONAL INJURY CAUSED BY OUR OWN PROVEN NEGLIGENCE, WHERE SUCH A LIMIT IS UNLAWFUL.

Indemnification

You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Don't Open Me and its owner, operators, officers, employees, contractors, and affiliates from and against any claims, damages, losses, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or related to: (a) your Content; (b) your use of the Service; (c) your violation of these documents or any law; (d) your violation of anyone's rights, including publicity, privacy, copyright, and defamation; (e) a recipient's or visitor's reaction to Content; or (f) any dispute among people who claim an interest in your account or Content, including family, estate, and divorce disputes. We may assume exclusive defense at your expense. This duty survives shutdown of the Service and deletion of your account.

Release

To the maximum extent permitted by law, you release Don't Open Me and its owner from any and all claims, known or unknown, arising from: loss or disclosure of Content; failure of the Service to exist on an opening date; encryption or vendor failure; free-period deletion; public listing metadata you chose to show; opened public Content being copied; or decisions by other people who view a listed lockbox. If you are a California resident you waive California Civil Code § 1542 (and similar laws), which says a general release does not extend to claims you do not know about. You intend to release those too, to the extent the law allows.

Assumption of risk

You assume all risk of using a long-horizon consumer product, including the risk that the Service will not be here when your year arrives. You assume the risk of uploading private, embarrassing, illegal-if-misunderstood, or sensitive material. If you list a lockbox or open a year to the world, you assume the risk that other people will find your display name, opening year, and — on the opening date — every message, photograph, name, quote, and letter you sealed, and that this information will be public and searchable, including by search engines and in copies you cannot retrieve. You assume the risk that a future you will hate a past you. You assume the risk that a joke ages badly. You assume the risk that a secret is only a secret until it isn't.

Force majeure and the next several decades

We are not responsible for delay or failure caused by events beyond reasonable control, including acts of God, war, terrorism, labor disputes, utility or internet failure, government action, epidemic, climate events, vendor bankruptcy, solar storms, changes in law that make the Service unlawful or impractical, app-store rules, payment network rules, or the ordinary decay of software and institutions over ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred years. You already know that most websites do not last fifty years. You are choosing to pretend otherwise at your own risk.

Dispute resolution; you waive a jury and a class action

These documents are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, except that the Federal Arbitration Act governs arbitration. Except for claims that may be brought in small-claims court, any dispute arising out of or relating to the Service shall be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules. The seat is Pennsylvania. You and we waive any right to a jury trial and any right to participate in a class, collective, or representative action to the maximum extent permitted by law. If a court finds the class waiver unenforceable for a particular claim, that claim may proceed in court only on an individual basis and the rest still applies. You may opt out of arbitration within 30 days of first accepting the Terms by sending a written notice that you reject arbitration, from the email on your account, describing your name and account. If you do not opt out, you have chosen a private arbitrator instead of a public courtroom.

International visitors

The Service is operated from the United States and aimed at adults. If you use it from another country you do so on your own initiative and are responsible for local law. We do not represent that the Service is appropriate everywhere. Cross-border transfer of your data to the United States (and to whatever countries our vendors use) is a condition of using the site. If GDPR, UK GDPR, or similar law gives you rights, we will not discriminate against you for exercising rights the law actually gives you. We may still refuse requests the law allows us to refuse, including where we must keep payment records. “Delete me” does not require us to invent a time machine for copies already public.

Children

The Service is for adults 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has used the Service, contact us and we will delete account data we can identify. Do not create an account “for” a child. Do not seal a child's intimate images. Do not treat a time capsule as a place to store school records you are not allowed to store.

No third-party beneficiaries except as stated

These protections are for Don't Open Me and its owner and operators. Visitors who open a listed capsule have no contract with us beyond ordinary use of public pages, and no right to demand Content, notices, or damages from the owner. Recipients have no right to force us to keep trying an email forever. Search engines have no special rights. Your heirs have no special rights unless law independently gives them some, which we do not expand.

California and other consumer notices

If you are a consumer in a place that forbids certain waivers, those waivers do not apply to you, and the rest still does. California users may have additional privacy rights described in the Privacy Policy. The dollar cap and “as is” terms still apply to the fullest extent the law allows. THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE,” WITH ALL FAULTS. WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, QUIET ENJOYMENT, ACCURACY, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE, ERROR-FREE, OR THAT CONTENT WILL BE PRESERVED, DECRYPTED, OR AVAILABLE ON ANY FUTURE DATE.

A last plain-language warning

People will use this site to write love letters, confessions, jokes, wills-in-all-but-name, grudges, and photographs they will later regret. Some of those people will be dead when the year arrives. Some will have changed their minds and forgotten the password. Some will have made the capsule public and will be horrified when a newspaper finds it. Some will discover that the recipient married someone else, or that the email now belongs to a stranger. Some will learn that the website is gone. If you cannot live with those endings, do not start. If you start anyway, you do it with your eyes open, and you will not hold the owner responsible for the story you wrote.