Terms of Service

By creating a ClearChive account, you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service (“Terms”) and our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated by reference. If you do not agree, please do not use ClearChive.

We may update these Terms from time to time. We will give you at least 30 days’ notice of material changes by email. Continuing to use the service after the effective date of a change means you accept the new Terms.

• You must be at least 18 years old to use ClearChive.
• You must provide accurate information when you create your account.
• You may hold only one account per person.
• Accounts must be created by a human. Automated sign-ups are not permitted.
• You are responsible for keeping your login credentials secure. If you suspect unauthorised access, contact us immediately at hello@clearchive.com.

• You may export all your documents at any time via Settings → Export. This produces a ZIP file containing all your documents as PDFs.
• To close your account permanently, email privacy@clearchive.com. We will delete your account and all associated data within 30 days.
• After deletion, we retain billing records for up to 7 years for accounting compliance. All other personal data is removed.
• We reserve the right to terminate accounts that violate these Terms, at our discretion. Where possible, we will give advance notice and allow you to export your data first.

You own your documents. ClearChive claims no ownership over anything you upload.

By uploading documents, you grant ClearChive a limited, non-exclusive, revocable licence to store, process (OCR, classify, index), and display your content back to you — solely in order to provide the service. This licence ends when you delete the content or close your account.

We do not use your document content to train AI models. Third-party processors we use (Google Cloud Vision, Google Gemini) operate under enterprise API terms that prohibit using customer content for model training.

You warrant that you have the right to upload each document you store — for example, that uploading a deceased family member’s documents does not violate any legal obligation you hold.

ClearChive uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and AI to read and categorise your documents automatically. You should be aware that:

• AI classification is probabilistic — the suggested document type, filename, date, and summary may occasionally be wrong.
• You are responsible for reviewing and correcting AI-generated metadata where accuracy matters to you.
• ClearChive is not liable for errors in AI-generated classifications, names, or summaries.
• Your documents are transmitted to Google Cloud Vision (OCR) and our AI classification provider before encryption. See our Privacy Policy for details.

You may not use ClearChive to:

• Upload documents belonging to third parties without their knowledge or permission.
• Store content that is illegal in your jurisdiction or in Germany (where our servers are located).
• Attempt to circumvent, reverse-engineer, or interfere with ClearChive’s encryption, security, or access controls.
• Create accounts via automated scripts or bots.
• Resell or redistribute ClearChive’s services without our written consent.
• Harass, threaten, or abuse ClearChive employees or support staff.

Violations may result in immediate account termination. We reserve the right to report illegal activity to the relevant authorities.

ClearChive uses AES-256-GCM encryption to protect your document files at rest. Each user account has a unique encryption key. The key itself is protected by a master key held only in our server environment — not in the database.

Important limitations:

• OCR-extracted text and AI-generated metadata are stored in our database with access controls but without field-level encryption. This is required for search to work.
• Document files are encrypted only after OCR and AI classification are complete — both of which involve transmission to third-party services.
• No security measure is 100% guaranteed. We strongly recommend keeping independent copies of documents that are critical to you.

ClearChive is a document storage and organisation service. We do not provide legal, medical, tax, financial, or any other professional advice.

AI-generated summaries, classifications, and metadata are informational only and are not a substitute for professional review. Do not make important legal, financial, or medical decisions based solely on information generated by ClearChive.

• You own your uploaded documents.
• ClearChive owns the platform, interface, branding, and all underlying technology.
• If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them to improve the service without compensation or obligation to you.

• We aim to keep ClearChive reliable but cannot guarantee uninterrupted availability. The service is provided “as is” and “as available”.
• We may add, change, or remove features. For significant changes that reduce the service, we will give you reasonable advance notice.
• If we are forced to shut down ClearChive, we will give you at least 90 days’ notice and keep the export function available throughout that period.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, ClearChive’s liability to you for any claim arising from these Terms or the service is limited to the greater of:

• the total amount you paid to ClearChive in the 12 months preceding the claim, or
• €100.

We are not liable for indirect, consequential, incidental, punitive, or special damages, including loss of profits or loss of data.

Note: certain consumer protection laws in the EU and UK may limit our ability to exclude or cap liability. Nothing in these Terms overrides your rights as a consumer under applicable local law.

These Terms are governed by the laws applicable in the jurisdiction of ClearChive’s legal entity. EU and UK consumers retain the right to bring proceedings in the courts of their country of residence, regardless of this clause.

We are committed to resolving disputes amicably. If you have a complaint, please contact us at hello@clearchive.com and we will do our best to resolve it within 14 days.

General: hello@clearchive.com
Privacy and data rights: privacy@clearchive.com