acceptable use policy

This Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) is part of the Terms of Service and applies to anyone who uses SpotHOA, including board members, homeowners, residents, vendors, and visitors. Breaking these rules is a breach of the Terms and can result in suspension or termination.

Don't use SpotHOA to:

• Post spam, deceptive marketing, or bulk unsolicited messages.
• Harass, threaten, stalk, defame, or intimidate another person — including other residents in the HOA community feed or messages.
• Share content that is illegal, obscene, sexually exploitative, or that violates another person's rights (including intellectual property rights).
• Upload malware, phishing links, or files designed to compromise other users' systems.
• Impersonate another person, another HOA, or an official role (for example, claiming to be the board president when you're not).

Don't:

• Attempt to reverse engineer, decompile, or circumvent the technical protections of the service.
• Probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the service without prior written permission. Responsible disclosures are welcome at legal@spothoa.com.
• Bypass or disable abuse guards — rate limits, Cloudflare Turnstile CAPTCHA, email verification, or role-based permissions.
• Scrape or bulk-download data you're not a member of.
• Automate user actions beyond what our APIs explicitly allow.

The AI drafting features (meeting-minute summaries, violation notices, dues reminders) exist to help volunteer boards write faster, not to generate deceptive or abusive content. Don't:

• Prompt the AI to produce harassing or defamatory text about specific residents.
• Use the AI to impersonate another person's style or voice.
• Ask for legal opinions and treat the output as advice — AI drafts are a starting point, not counsel.
• Abuse the feature to burn through API quota for non-HOA purposes.

SpotHOA is for small self-managed homeowners associations. Don't use the service to:

• Run a tenant screening business or rental marketplace.
• Manage property on behalf of third parties as a professional property manager.
• Operate a commercial real estate portfolio.
• Host a social network unrelated to the HOA.

If your needs have outgrown the self-managed HOA use case, another tool is a better fit. We'd rather lose you as a customer than watch the product get misused.

When we see a violation, our response scales with severity. The ladder looks roughly like this:

• Minor / first-time: we email the account and ask you to stop.
• Ongoing: we disable the offending feature, or temporarily suspend the account, and notify the HOA's primary contact.
• Severe / legal risk: we terminate the account immediately, preserve evidence if required, and cooperate with law enforcement when served with valid process.

We apply the least disruptive remedy that resolves the issue. We'd rather talk than terminate.

To report a violation of this policy — spam, harassment, impersonation, illegal content, or security issues — email legal@spothoa.com with as much detail as you can share (screenshots, URLs, timestamps). We'll acknowledge receipt within 2 business days.