Terms and Conditions

These Terms and Conditions constitute a legally binding agreement between you and the operator of PodGuard concerning your access to and use of the PodGuard mobile application, podguard.app, and the related processing, account, subscription, and support services.

1. Definitions and scope

In these Terms, "PodGuard," "we," "us," and "our" refer to the operator of PodGuard. "You" and "your" refer to the individual using the Services. "Services" means the PodGuard application, podguard.app, episode-processing systems, account and subscription features, and related support. "Prepared Episode" means a copy of a podcast episode processed according to filter settings selected in PodGuard.

These Terms apply to all access to and use of the Services. Additional terms imposed by Apple, Stripe, a podcast publisher, or another third party may also apply to the part of the Services they provide.

2. Eligibility and acceptance

You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of legal majority where you live, and legally capable of entering into a binding contract. PodGuard is intended for use by adults. If you permit a child or another person to listen through your account or device, you remain responsible for that use and for deciding whether a Prepared Episode is appropriate for that listener.

If you use the Services on behalf of an organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that organization. The Services are nevertheless licensed only for personal, noncommercial listening unless we separately agree otherwise in writing.

3. Description of the Services

PodGuard processes a podcast episode at your request and removes portions of audio identified by the filter settings you select. Available controls may include preset profanity filtering, mature-content filtering, dense-swearing filtering, and ad-read removal. The settings available in your version of the application control which categories PodGuard attempts to remove.

Filtering is subtractive. PodGuard removes portions of audio; it does not bleep, replace, rewrite, endorse, or modify the source episode published by its creator. Prepared Episodes are available only through PodGuard and are not delivered to or substituted within another podcast service.

Preparation applies to the episode and settings selected at the time of processing. How a later settings change affects an existing Prepared Episode depends on the compatible result and audio available on your device; a different setting may require re-rendering or reprocessing before that version is available. We may improve, modify, replace, limit, or discontinue features when reasonably necessary to operate, secure, or develop the Services.

4. Accounts and security

An account is required to use PodGuard. You may create an account with an email address and password or use Sign in with Apple. You agree to provide accurate information, maintain control of your email address and devices, protect your credentials, and promptly notify us at support@podguard.app if you suspect unauthorized access.

Your account and subscription are personal to you. You may not sell, transfer, sublicense, or share account access. You are responsible for activity conducted through your account except to the extent caused by our failure to use reasonable security measures.

5. Free access and credits

PodGuard uses preparation credits for plans that have a credit allowance. One credit permits preparation of one episode, regardless of episode length. A new eligible user receives one free preparation credit. That credit does not require a payment method, does not renew, and does not expire.

Paid-plan credits are granted according to the plan terms displayed at purchase. Unused monthly credits carry into the immediately following month and then expire. A credit is reserved when new preparation is admitted. For an episode already prepared by PodGuard that you have not previously used a credit for, the credit is charged after five minutes of listening. Replaying an episode already covered by your account does not consume another credit. A failed preparation is refunded when the Services confirm the failure.

Credits are limited licenses to use processing capacity. They have no cash value, are not property, are not redeemable for money, and may not be sold or transferred. Your signed-in website and linked iPhone installations share one credit balance and processing allowance. Linking another device does not create another free trial. Sharing an allowance does not sync your iPhone Library, downloads, or playback position with the browser.

6. Subscriptions, billing, and cancellation

PodGuard offers recurring Monthly and Unlimited subscription plans through the website and, when available, through Apple's App Store. Prices may differ by purchase channel. The price, billing interval, included benefits, and applicable taxes are disclosed before you authorize a purchase, and the information shown at checkout controls if it conflicts with general pricing copy elsewhere.

Automatic renewal. Unless you cancel before the renewal date, a subscription automatically renews for successive periods equal in length to the then-current billing period and the applicable payment provider charges the payment method on file. Cancellation prevents the next renewal and ordinarily takes effect at the end of the paid billing period.

Web subscriptions. Stripe processes website payments and provides the customer portal used to change or cancel a web subscription. Web purchases are also subject to Stripe's applicable terms. PodGuard does not receive or store complete payment-card numbers. Deleting your PodGuard account cancels any active web subscription immediately, ending both billing and access.

App Store subscriptions. Apple processes App Store purchases, renewals, cancellations, and refund requests. You must manage an App Store subscription through your Apple Account. Deleting a PodGuard account does not itself cancel an App Store subscription because Apple does not permit PodGuard to cancel it for you.

Refunds and taxes. Except where required by law or expressly stated by the applicable payment provider, fees are nonrefundable and we do not provide prorated refunds for a partially used billing period. Taxes may be calculated and charged based on your location and the payment provider's rules.

7. Fair use and service limits

All plans are intended for one person's ordinary listening. Free access currently permits up to 20 hours of newly processed audio across your account per calendar month. Monthly currently permits up to 60 hours of newly processed audio across your account per calendar month. Unlimited currently permits up to 120 hours of newly processed audio across your account per calendar month. Playing an available Prepared Episode does not use processing hours. New processing, including reprocessing an episode, can use those hours even when no additional episode credit is due. Initial and whole-episode processing passes may both count. Processing work already performed remains counted if preparation later fails, even when the episode credit is refunded. These limits protect service availability and are separate from any visible credit balance.

"Unlimited" means that you do not need to count episode credits for ordinary personal listening. It does not authorize bulk transcription, automated catalog processing, account sharing, resale, or use of PodGuard as a general-purpose processing service.

We may apply reasonable queue, rate, concurrency, abuse-prevention, and system-wide capacity controls. We may adjust technical limits prospectively to protect reliability or reflect material cost changes. If a change materially reduces a paid plan during an active billing period, we will provide notice and any remedy required by applicable law.

8. Filtering limitations and listener responsibility

Accuracy may be affected by background noise, overlapping speakers, accents, recording quality, ambiguity, sarcasm, implication, and context. A report submitted through the player helps us investigate a result but does not automatically alter that episode for other users.

9. Acceptable use

You may use the Services only for lawful, personal, noncommercial listening and in accordance with these Terms. You may not:

• redistribute, broadcast, publish, sell, license, publicly perform, or share Prepared Episodes or extracted audio;
• download, rip, record, capture, or circumvent technical controls to use Prepared Episodes outside PodGuard;
• use bots, scripts, scrapers, automation, or multiple accounts to evade credits, quotas, rate limits, access controls, or fair-use restrictions;
• reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, discover source code, or bypass security measures except to the limited extent applicable law expressly permits;
• interfere with, overload, damage, or gain unauthorized access to the Services, another account, or any connected system;
• upload or submit malware, unlawful material, fraudulent information, or content that infringes another person's rights; or
• use the Services in violation of law, these Terms, or the rights of any person or podcast publisher.

10. Third-party podcasts and services

Podcasts, feeds, titles, artwork, trademarks, and episode content belong to their respective creators, publishers, and rights holders. PodGuard does not own, produce, sponsor, endorse, or control third-party podcasts, and displaying or processing a podcast does not create a partnership or imply endorsement.

PodGuard processes audio made available through podcast feeds for your personal listening. You receive no ownership interest in the source podcast or in a Prepared Episode. You remain responsible for complying with any lawful restrictions applicable to the source content.

Parts of the Services depend on Apple, Stripe, Cloudflare, Railway, transcription and language-model providers, podcast hosts, and other third parties. We are not responsible for third-party content, policies, availability, or conduct. If you are a creator or rights holder with a concern, contact support@podguard.app.

Rights-holder requests

If you are a podcast creator, publisher, or other rights holder and you do not want episodes from a feed you control to be processed by PodGuard, or you believe the Services infringe your rights, email support@podguard.app with the feed URL, a description of the material and of your rights, your contact information, and a good-faith statement that the use is not authorized. We will review promptly, and where appropriate we will stop processing the identified feed or episodes.

Apple App Store

If you obtained the PodGuard application from Apple's App Store, the following also applies. These Terms are an agreement between you and PodGuard only, not with Apple, and Apple is not responsible for the application or its content. Your license to the application is limited to a nontransferable license to use it on Apple-branded devices that you own or control, as permitted by the Usage Rules in Apple's App Store terms, except that the application may be accessed and used by other accounts associated with yours through Family Sharing or volume purchasing where Apple permits.

Apple has no obligation to furnish maintenance or support for the application. If the application fails to conform to an applicable warranty, you may notify Apple and Apple will refund the purchase price of the application to you. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation with respect to the application, and any other claims, losses, liabilities, damages, costs, or expenses attributable to a failure to conform to a warranty are governed by these Terms.

Apple is not responsible for addressing any claim by you or a third party relating to the application, including product-liability claims, claims that the application fails to conform to a legal or regulatory requirement, and claims under consumer-protection, privacy, or similar law. If a third party claims that the application or your possession and use of it infringes intellectual-property rights, PodGuard, not Apple, is responsible for the investigation, defense, settlement, and discharge of that claim to the extent required by these Terms.

You represent that you are not located in a country subject to a United States government embargo or designated by the United States government as a "terrorist supporting" country, and that you are not listed on any United States government list of prohibited or restricted parties. Apple and Apple's subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms as they relate to your license to the application, and upon your acceptance of these Terms Apple has the right to enforce them against you as such.

11. Intellectual property and license

The Services, including the PodGuard name, marks, software, designs, interfaces, documentation, and filtering technology, are owned by us or our licensors and are protected by intellectual-property laws. Except for the limited license below, no right, title, or interest is transferred to you.

Subject to your compliance with these Terms, we grant you a limited, personal, revocable, nonexclusive, nontransferable, and nonsublicensable license to install and use the PodGuard application on devices you own or control solely for personal, noncommercial listening.

12. Feedback and reports

If you provide suggestions, ideas, or other feedback, you grant us a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free right to use, reproduce, modify, and incorporate that feedback for any lawful purpose without compensation or attribution. This does not transfer ownership of podcast content or personal information included in a support or filtering report. Our handling of personal information is governed by the Privacy Policy.

13. Suspension, termination, and discontinuation

You may stop using the Services, cancel a subscription, or delete your account at any time. Account deletion is available in the application and in the account panel at podguard.app/signin.

We may suspend, restrict, or terminate access if we reasonably determine that you violated these Terms, created legal or security risk, abused processing capacity, failed to pay applicable fees, or if suspension is required by law. When reasonable, we will provide notice and an opportunity to correct the issue.

We may discontinue all or part of the Services. If we discontinue a prepaid service before the end of a paid period, we will provide the refund or credit required by applicable law. Apple remains responsible for App Store refunds. Provisions that by their nature should survive termination, including intellectual property, disclaimers, liability limits, indemnification, and dispute provisions, will survive.

14. Disclaimers

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICES ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY. WE DISCLAIM IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, QUIET ENJOYMENT, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

WITHOUT LIMITING SECTION 8, WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICES WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE; THAT EVERY EPISODE CAN BE PROCESSED; THAT A RESULT WILL BE AVAILABLE BY A PARTICULAR TIME; OR THAT FILTERING WILL IDENTIFY OR REMOVE ALL CONTENT COVERED BY YOUR SETTINGS.

Some jurisdictions do not permit certain warranty exclusions. In those jurisdictions, the exclusions apply only to the maximum extent permitted, and these Terms do not limit nonwaivable consumer rights.

15. Limitation of liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, PODGUARD AND ITS SERVICE PROVIDERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES; LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, USE, OR GOODWILL; OR DISTRESS OR OFFENSE RESULTING FROM CONTENT A FILTER DID NOT REMOVE, EVEN IF ADVISED THAT SUCH DAMAGES WERE POSSIBLE.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, PODGUARD'S AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICES OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID TO PODGUARD FOR THE SERVICES DURING THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM OR (B) 25 UNITED STATES DOLLARS.

The foregoing limitations do not apply to liability that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded.

16. Indemnification

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless PodGuard and its service providers from claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and reasonable costs arising from your unlawful use of the Services, your material breach of these Terms, or your infringement of another person's rights. This obligation does not apply to the extent a claim results from PodGuard's own unlawful conduct.

17. Changes to the Services or these Terms

We may update these Terms to reflect changes in the Services, law, security requirements, or business practices. The effective date appears at the top. If a change materially affects your rights, we will provide reasonable advance notice through the Services or by email when required. Material changes will apply prospectively unless applicable law permits otherwise.

Your continued use after revised Terms take effect constitutes acceptance. If you do not agree to a revision, you must stop using the Services and cancel any subscription before its next renewal.

18. Governing law, arbitration, and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of New Jersey, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. Subject to any nonwaivable right you have under applicable law, you and PodGuard consent to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state courts located in Atlantic County, New Jersey, and the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, for disputes that are not subject to arbitration under this section.

Before filing a claim, you agree to send a written description of the dispute to support@podguard.app and allow 30 days for an informal resolution. This requirement does not prevent either party from seeking urgent injunctive relief or filing a claim before a limitations period expires.

Arbitration. Except for the carve-outs below, any dispute arising out of or relating to the Services or these Terms that is not resolved informally will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules. The arbitration will be conducted in English by a single arbitrator and may proceed by videoconference or on written submissions where those rules permit. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction.

Class-action waiver. You and PodGuard each waive the right to a jury trial and the right to participate in a class action, class arbitration, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may award relief only to the individual party seeking it and only to the extent of that party's individual claim.

Carve-outs. Either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court, and either party may seek injunctive or other equitable relief in court for infringement or misuse of intellectual property or for unauthorized access to the Services.

Opt-out. You may reject this arbitration provision by emailing support@podguard.app with the subject "Arbitration opt-out" within 30 days of first accepting these Terms. Opting out does not affect any other provision of these Terms.

19. General provisions

These Terms and the Privacy Policy constitute the entire agreement between you and PodGuard concerning the Services and supersede prior discussions or representations on that subject. If any provision is found unenforceable, it will be enforced to the maximum lawful extent and the remaining provisions will remain effective.

Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them in connection with a reorganization, financing, merger, acquisition, or transfer of the Services. Headings are for convenience only. Except as stated in the Apple App Store provisions of Section 10, nothing in these Terms creates an employment, agency, partnership, joint venture, or third-party beneficiary relationship.

20. Contact information

Questions, legal notices, account concerns, and rights-holder inquiries may be sent to support@podguard.app. Privacy requests are addressed in our Privacy Policy.