Terms of Service

Who you are agreeing with

These terms are between you and Phonebook Directory LLC, an Ohio limited liability company, 6545 Market Ave. North STE 100, Canton, OH 44721, which operates phonebook.directory. Creating an account means accepting them.

Eligibility

You must be 18 or older, or 19 if you live in British Columbia, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Yukon, the Northwest Territories or Nunavut, and able to form a binding contract. We ask for your date of birth at signup and refuse the signup if it shows you are under that age. By creating an account you confirm that what you provide, including your date of birth, is accurate. If we later learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we close it. If you live in Tennessee or Mississippi, you must verify your age through our identity check before your listing goes live. If you sign up for a personal account with an internet phone number (such as Google Voice or TextNow, a toll-free number, or any number that isn’t a mobile or home phone), your listing stays hidden, and you can’t contact anyone, until you verify your identity through our identity check. An account not verified within 30 days of signing up is deleted (see Ending an account). We don’t serve Quebec yet. We don’t accept signups or purchases from people or organizations in Quebec until we can serve Quebec in French.

Your account

• One account holds one personal listing. There is no second personal listing or alternate-persona path. A public persona, such as a performer, creator or public figure known by a public name, is a business, and is listed as an organization.
• You are responsible for your credentials and for what happens under your account.
• Verifying a phone number is required to sign up. This confirms control of a phone number, not who you are. Unless a listing carries a Verified badge, nothing about it is a representation by us about the identity of the person behind it.
• Identity verification is free, and optional except where the law requires an age check, or where a personal account signs up with an internet phone number (see Eligibility). A badge means a real check was completed with our verification provider at that time. It is not a guarantee about who is using the account today, and we are not responsible for an incorrect result reached by that provider.

Text messages

The one-time codes we text you, how often they are sent, and how to stop them are covered separately in our Text Message Terms.

Organization listings

Any signed-in account with a paid Personal Plus plan, a verified identity, or a setup link we sent for that organization may create an organization listing for a business, nonprofit, religious organization, government or civic body, or other community group. A public figure or creator known by a public name counts as a business. Identity verification is free, so no one has to pay to create one. A school picks whichever of these actually fits its structure. A personal account waiting for its identity check because of an internet phone number may create one only through a setup link we sent.

• An organization listing is a separate account, with its own email, phone, and password. Once created it operates independently of the personal account that created it.
• The individual who created it is recorded permanently, as a matter of accountability. That record cannot be changed by anyone. It does not mean that person retains control, and we do not track or guarantee who is operating an organization account day to day.
• The person who creates an organization listing starts as its linked account. The organization can name someone else as its linked account, and can name a backup contact. Either role needs the named person’s own acceptance, and neither can be assigned unilaterally. Either one can recover the organization account if its sign-in details are lost. Billing belongs to the organization’s account and does not change when its linked account does. A person who becomes a linked account has already accepted these terms with their own account and does not accept them again.
• An organization listing represents an organization. It must not be used as a second personal listing.
• Deleting a personal account does not delete any organization account it created, and deleting an organization account does not affect anyone’s personal account. They are independent. The one exception: while you are an organization’s linked account or backup contact, your personal account can’t be deleted until that role passes to someone else or the organization is deleted.

Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Impersonate a specific real person or organization, or list yourself under a name that does not reflect a real identity.
• Use a personal listing to represent a company or organization.
• Create fake, automated, or bot-driven accounts, or misrepresent how many real people are here.
• Use search or browsing to bulk-collect, scrape, or export information about other members.
• Send unsolicited messages outside the request and approval system, or work around messaging limits.
• Use the service to harass, stalk, or locate someone against their wishes.
• Post photos or other content you don’t have the right to share, or content that is illegal, sexually explicit, or shows someone without their consent.
• Post an intimate image of anyone without their consent, including one made or altered with software or AI.

• Don’t use phonebook.directory to decide whether someone is eligible for credit, insurance, a job, or housing. We are not a consumer reporting agency, and nothing here is a consumer report.
• Don’t post another person’s home address, phone number, or other private details without their permission.
• Don’t post a housing or job offering that states a preference, limit, or exclusion the law forbids, such as one based on race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, or national origin.
• Don’t use what people or organizations share with you to market to them or to anyone else, and don’t copy it into a mailing list or sell it. Use it only to keep in touch with them yourself.

What you show others on your listing must also follow our House Rules. We check it when you save it: something that breaks them is not saved, or is hidden from others. Unless it falls under rule 1 or 2, you can tell us we got it wrong.

Any signed-in member can report a listing or a conversation; reporting a conversation sends us a copy of it. Anyone can report an image or other content to takedown@phonebook.directory. We do not tell a listing who reported it. If an intimate image of you was posted here without your consent, use Report an intimate image: we remove it within 48 hours of a complete request, and you do not need an account. If you believe something here infringes your copyright, see Copyright: we remove it on a valid notice, and close the accounts of members who infringe repeatedly.

Your content

You own what you add to your listing. Posting it gives us permission to display it to the audiences you have selected through your own visibility settings, and to store, back up, and review it (for example, when you save it, against our House Rules, or when it is reported) as needed to run the service — and nothing beyond that. We do not use your content to advertise anything to anyone without your choosing to. You can remove any of it, or all of it, at any time.

Messaging

• There is no messaging channel between two personal listings before a connection is approved. The only contact before that is the optional short message attached to a connection request.
• A person with a listing can message an organization without asking first, and the organization can reply in that conversation. Otherwise, an organization needs an approved connection before it can message a person or another organization; the only contact before that is the optional short message attached to a connection request.
• Blocking is mutual: neither party can message the other until the block is removed, and any connection between you ends.
• We may restrict messaging on any account showing patterns of abuse or spam, including organization listings despite their open default.

Invites

Invites are private links you share yourself. We never send anything to someone on your behalf. You choose per link whether it connects the two of you automatically once they join; the person joining sees that choice and can decline it while still using the invite.

Paid features and billing

Personal Plus, Organization Pro, the one-time organization verification fee, and additional member directories are paid, except for the free time described under Free premium during the beta. Everything to do with safety, export and deletion, and with being listed and found by name or category, is free and always will be.

• Payments are processed by Stripe through its own hosted checkout. We never receive or store your card details.
• Plans and prices. Personal Plus and Organization Pro are sold for a term of one year or three years. The price of each term, what it includes, and how it renews are shown on the payment page before you pay, and that is the amount you are charged.
• Free premium during the beta. While we offer it, a new account gets Personal Plus, and a new organization listing gets Organization Pro, free for three months from the day it is made. It needs no card and does not renew. It ends on the date shown in your settings, and the account then moves to the free plan unless you buy a plan. Fields beyond the free plan’s limits are switched off, not deleted. Free time does not unlock a vanity URL, and free Personal Plus does not unlock creating an organization listing. We may stop offering it to new accounts, or lengthen it, at any time; we will not shorten time already given.
• Renewal. A plan renews automatically at the end of its term, for one year at the one-year price, whether the term was one year or three, unless you cancel before then. We email you between 15 and 45 days before it renews, with the date, the amount, and how to cancel, and once a year while a three-year term runs. If the price of your plan changes, we email you 30 days before you would first pay the new price, so you can cancel first.
• Canceling. You can cancel at any time, online, from your account settings. Canceling stops the next renewal, and you keep the plan until the end of the term you paid for. After a renewal, you can instead end the plan at once and get the unused part back (see Refunds). Deleting your account cancels its plan immediately.
• Vanity URLs. A three-year term lets you claim a vanity URL. Once claimed, it stays yours if your plan later changes or ends, until you release it or the account is deleted or closed. If the payment for the three-year term is refunded in full or reversed through your bank, the address is released, as if you had released it.You can change it once, while you have Personal Plus or Organization Pro. The old address then forwards to the new one for 30 days, and no one can claim it for six months. An address you release is held for six months the same way, without forwarding. We may remove a vanity URL that impersonates a real person or organization, uses a name or mark that belongs to someone else, or otherwise breaks these terms. If we ever need one for a page of the site itself, we will tell you first and help you choose another.
• Organization verification opens one type of organization at a time; the verification page says whether it is open for yours. It is free for nonprofit, religious and community-group organizations. Government bodies can’t be verified yet; when they can, it will be free. For-profit and other-category organizations pay a one-time fee. We may waive the fee for an individual organization, or charge it to one whose type is otherwise free.
• A purchased member-directory add-on is permanent. It is attached to the organization’s account, carries no recurring charge and no activity requirement, cannot be lost by canceling Organization Pro, and cannot be transferred to another organization.
• Refunds. Payments are not refundable, with two exceptions. If something you paid for is not delivered or cannot be completed (for example, a verification that never finishes, or a directory add-on that cannot be used), we refund it. And after a plan renews, you can end it at once and we refund the unused part of that renewal, by the day. If a payment for a plan is reversed through your bank, the plan ends at once.

Ending an account

You can delete your account from your own settings, with your password and a typed confirmation. Deleting an organization account also needs a confirmation link that we email to its linked account. An account can’t be deleted while it is suspended, and a personal account can’t be deleted while it is an organization’s linked account or backup contact. Deletion removes your listing from search and public view immediately, ends every active session and cancels any paid plan. You have 30 days to change your mind: signing in restores the account, though not a canceled paid plan, unless its email address or phone number has since been used for a new account. After 30 days the account is permanently erased, as the Privacy Policy describes. Messages you have already sent remain visible to the people who received them. We delete a personal account on an internet phone number that isn’t verified within 30 days of signing up the same way, even one that is an organization’s linked account or backup contact; signing in within the 30 days after that restores it, still hidden, with 7 more days to verify.

We may suspend an account — reversibly, pending review — or close it permanently, if it violates these terms, is found to belong to someone under 18, or is reasonably suspected of impersonating a real person or organization. Closing is reserved for cases that warrant it; suspension is the ordinary first step. A suspension that hasn’t been resolved after 90 days becomes a closure; we email a warning 14 days before, with the date and how to appeal. A closed account cannot be restored, and its phone number and email address cannot be used to open a new account, unless we lift that restriction, for example when a phone number has since been reassigned to someone else. If your account is suspended or closed and you think it was wrong, contact us at appeals@phonebook.directory and a person will look at it.

Disclaimers and limitation of liability

phonebook.directory is in beta and is provided as it is, without warranties of any kind, whether stated or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. We do not promise that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure against every attack, or that anything you store here cannot be lost.

Listings are created by the people and organizations they belong to. We do not independently confirm that the information in a listing is accurate or current, except that a Verified badge means a check was completed at that time, through one of our verification providers or, for an organization, by us. We are not responsible for what members say or do, here or elsewhere, and a connection made through this service is not a recommendation by us.

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or business interruption. For any claim relating to the service, our total liability is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or one hundred US dollars. Some states do not allow some of these limits, in which case they apply to you only as far as that state allows, and nothing here limits liability for fraud or for anything that cannot be limited by law.

Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Ohio, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute that we cannot settle between us will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Ohio, and you and we each agree to those courts’ jurisdiction. There is no arbitration requirement and no class-action waiver in these terms.

Please contact us first. Most problems are faster to fix by email: legal@phonebook.directory. We will try to resolve anything you raise within 30 days.

Changes to these terms

We will post any change here with a new date, and for changes that materially affect your rights or what you are agreeing to, we will notify you by email to your verified address at least 30 days before it takes effect. Small corrections that do not change your rights, such as a typo or updated contact details, take effect when posted. We may change these terms, our prices, and what a plan includes. You can end the agreement instead, by canceling your plan or deleting your account, before a change takes effect.

Contact

Legal notices: legal@phonebook.directory
Report an image or content to be taken down: takedown@phonebook.directory
Appeal a suspension or closure: appeals@phonebook.directory
Account help: support@phonebook.directory

We read every message sent to these addresses.