Sparring Terms of Service

Last updated: 2026-10-05. Version: draft-0.1.

DRAFT: NOT LEGAL ADVICE, NOT YET IN EFFECT. These terms are working draft text shown on the hosted demo. They have not been reviewed by a lawyer and must be reviewed and revised by qualified counsel (including consumer-protection, automatic-renewal, TCPA, CAN-SPAM, call-recording, elder-protection and arbitration law) before any commercial service launches. [Implementation notes] mark behavior that is planned but not yet built.

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between you and Sparring (working name; legal entity not yet formed) ("Sparring", "we", "us") about your use of the Sparring website, practice drills and related services (the "Service"). Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information and is part of these Terms.

1. What the Service is

Sparring lets an adult (the account holder) invite a family member (a participant, usually an older parent) to receive consented practice scenarios by email, text message and AI voice call when each channel is available. Routine email and text drills are labeled PRACTICE DRILL. Standard voice calls disclose the practice at the start. A separately consented, allowlisted realism test may omit the email/text label or voice opening. Every drill ends with a reveal and a coaching tip, and the account holder can review practice results over time.

The Service is education and practice. It is not fraud monitoring, identity-theft protection, financial, legal or medical advice, and it does not guarantee that anyone will avoid a real scam.

2. Eligibility and accounts

You must be at least 18 and able to form a binding contract. The Service is offered in the United States only.
You are responsible for your account and for activity under it. Sign-in uses one-time email links; keep access to your email secure.
Give accurate information, including participants' contact details.

A participant receives drills only after they personally agree, on their own private link, for each channel, and you have recorded your own consent for that channel. An allowlisted realism test without routine labels or voice disclosure requires the participant's agreement to that experience. You may not consent on someone else's behalf, including under a power of attorney or guardianship.
Do not invite anyone who is a minor, who you believe lacks the capacity to understand and agree, who is under a protective order involving you, or who has told you they do not want to take part.
Optional research (external-data enrichment) needs the participant's own separate yes and can be withdrawn at any time; see the Privacy Policy.
Either of you can stop at any time: reply or say STOP, revoke on the website, or pause drills. [Implementation note: pause is per participant's drill schedule today; a family-wide pause button is planned.] We may pause or end drills if we see signs of distress or of misuse.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to use the Service to:

send drills to anyone who has not consented, or to any business, employer or public official;
harass, frighten, embarrass or exploit anyone, or try to obtain anyone's real money, credentials or personal information;
impersonate a real person to the participant outside the drill itself, or edit drills to remove reveals or stop instructions;
probe, scrape or interfere with the Service, or use it to train or run real fraud;
break any law, including telemarketing, call-recording and anti-spam laws.

We may suspend or close accounts that break these rules, and we will cooperate with law enforcement where required.

5. How drills behave

Routine email and text drills are labeled PRACTICE DRILL and routine voice drills open with a practice disclosure. A separately consented, allowlisted realism test may omit those labels/opening; it still ends with a fixed reveal and stops on STOP, distress or a safety trigger. Drills never impersonate a real government agency. Fake forms never store or transmit what is typed; we keep only the kind of data, the digit count and the time.
Calls are recorded only when recording is enabled and the participant has given separate recording consent. Recording consent and consent to receive a voice drill are separate choices.
Timing is randomized inside the local-time window you choose, so drills feel real, but they never arrive outside it. Messages may still be delayed or fail to deliver.
A drill may resemble a real company's message because real scams do. Sparring is not affiliated with any brand named in a drill, and drills never send people to that brand's real website or ask them to contact it.

6. Plans, trials, billing and cancellation

Free trial. A card is required at checkout for a paid-plan trial. The selected monthly or annual price is charged when the 14-day trial ends unless you cancel first. When it ends, new drills pause until you choose a plan; your dashboard, results, revocation and export keep working.
Subscriptions. Plans may be billed monthly or annually as selected at checkout, at the displayed price plus any tax, and renew automatically on that schedule until you cancel. Payments are processed by Stripe; we do not receive your full card number. Payment terms and the amount due are shown at checkout.
Failed payments. If a renewal payment fails, new drills pause until it succeeds.
Changing plans. You can switch plans from Billing; the new price applies from the next renewal unless shown otherwise.
Canceling. Cancel any time from Billing, online, in a few clicks. "Cancel at period end" keeps your plan until the paid period ends (and can be undone before then). "Cancel now" ends the plan immediately, revokes every consent and deletes your family's data, and cannot be undone.
Refunds. Except where the law requires otherwise, payments are non-refundable and we do not give credit for partial months. [Implementation note: refund policy to be set with counsel; this preview build is Stripe test mode only, and no real charges are possible.]
Price changes take effect only after notice and only at a future renewal.

7. Your content and data

You keep any rights you have in information you give us. You give us permission to use it to run the Service as the Privacy Policy describes. You can export a person's consent history and delete your family's data at any time.

8. Our service and changes

We may improve, change or discontinue features. If we make a material change to these Terms, we will notify you in advance; continuing to use the Service after the effective date means you accept the change. If you do not agree, cancel.

9. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE." TO THE EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, WE DISCLAIM ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT PROMISE THAT THE SERVICE WILL PREVENT ANY LOSS FROM A REAL SCAM.

10. Limitation of liability

TO THE EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOSSES CAUSED BY REAL FRAUD BY THIRD PARTIES, AND OUR TOTAL LIABILITY IS LIMITED TO THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM. Some states do not allow these limits, so they may not apply to you.

11. Indemnity

You agree to cover our reasonable losses from a claim that you invited someone without their consent or otherwise broke Section 3 or 4.

12. Disputes

[Implementation note: counsel to decide governing law, venue, and whether to include an arbitration clause and class-action waiver, taking into account consumer and elder-protection rules.] Before filing a claim, please contact us at help@sparring.example so we can try to resolve it.

13. If you think a real scam is happening

Sparring cannot help with a real scam in progress. Contact your bank and local law enforcement, report it at reportfraud.ftc.gov, or call the AARP Fraud Watch Network helpline at 877-908-3360.

14. Contact

Sparring (working name; legal entity not yet formed) · Support: help@sparring.example · Privacy: privacy@sparring.example