Bao — End User Agreement
Last updated: 20 June 2026
1. Acceptance
This End User Agreement (the "Agreement") is a binding contract between you ("you", "your") and Monsun Technologies Limited ("Bao", "we", "us", "our") — a company registered in England and Wales under company number 17266355, with its registered office at 66 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NA, United Kingdom — that governs your use of the Bao iOS app, the bao-app.com website, and any related services we make available (together, the "Service").
By creating an account, verifying a phone number, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to be bound by this Agreement and by our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.
We may amend this Agreement from time to time; see §17.
2. Eligibility
To use the Service you must:
- be at least 16 years old (the Service is rated 16+ and is not intended for, or directed to, anyone under 16, in any location);
- have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract in your jurisdiction (and, if you are a minor where minors can contract with parental consent, have that consent);
- not be barred from receiving the Service under the laws of your country, the United States, or any other applicable jurisdiction (for example, you must not be located in a country subject to a U.S. Government embargo or designated by the U.S. Government as a "terrorist-supporting" country, and you must not be on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties);
- keep control of the phone number you use to sign in, and set a recovery email in the app so you can regain access if you lose that number. Re-claiming an established account from a new sign-in requires this account-recovery step (a code sent to your recovery email), so a later holder of a recycled number cannot by itself use it to take over your account. If you have not set a recovery email, losing access to your number may mean you cannot recover the account and must start a new one.
The Service is provided for personal, non-commercial use only. We may offer commercial features in the future under separate terms.
3. Your account
You create an account by verifying a mobile phone number via SMS. You are responsible for:
- the security of the phone number, SIM, eSIM, and device used to receive verification codes;
- all activity on your account;
- the accuracy of any profile information you provide.
You may have only one active account per phone number. We may require additional verification, suspend, or terminate your account if we suspect that the security of the phone number has been compromised, that the account is being used to violate this Agreement, or that the account has been inactive for an extended period.
4. Licence to use the Service
Subject to your ongoing compliance with this Agreement, we grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to install and use the Bao iOS app on Apple-branded devices you own or control, and to access the related services, solely for your personal, non-commercial use.
The licence does not include the right to:
- sell, sublicence, lease, rent, distribute, or otherwise transfer the app;
- modify, reverse-engineer, decompile, or disassemble the app or any part of the Service, except to the limited extent applicable law expressly permits;
- access the Service through automated means (bots, scrapers, crawlers) other than as we may publish;
- use the Service to build or train a competing product or machine-learning model;
- remove or obscure any proprietary notices.
All rights not expressly granted are reserved.
5. Acceptable use
You agree not to use the Service to:
- harass, threaten, stalk, defame, or harm another person;
- send spam, chain messages, mass invitations, or other unsolicited bulk communications;
- impersonate any person or entity, or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity;
- upload or transmit content that is unlawful, infringing, sexually explicit involving minors, hateful, or that incites violence;
- circumvent any access, rate, privacy, or content control we implement;
- attempt to gain unauthorised access to other accounts, our systems, or our service providers' systems;
- introduce malware or otherwise interfere with the integrity of the Service;
- scrape, harvest, or otherwise collect data about other Bao users except as the app's normal use permits;
- use the Service in a manner that violates any applicable law, including export controls, sanctions, anti-money-laundering rules, or telecommunications regulations regarding SMS;
- use the contact-matching features for marketing purposes or to build a directory of users' phone numbers.
We may investigate suspected violations, remove offending content, and suspend or terminate accounts in our reasonable discretion.
Zero tolerance for objectionable content and abusive users. There is no tolerance for objectionable content — including content that is illegal, hateful, harassing, threatening, or sexually explicit involving minors — or for abusive behaviour towards other users. We act on reports of such content or behaviour (we aim to take action within 24 hours), removing the content and suspending or terminating the responsible account. You can also block any user at any time — from their profile or a conversation — to immediately stop all further contact from them.
6. Your content
6.1 Ownership
You retain ownership of the content you create or upload through the Service — your messages, list and group names, event details and descriptions, profile photo, event images, RSVPs, and similar material ("Your Content").
6.2 Licence to us
You grant Bao a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully paid-up licence to host, store, reproduce, modify (e.g., to create thumbnails or transcode images), transmit, display, and distribute Your Content solely to provide and operate the Service for you and the people you invite. The licence ends when you delete the relevant content, except to the extent that (a) the content has already been shared with other users (whose copies persist independently of yours), (b) we are required to retain it to comply with a legal obligation, or (c) backups remain for the retention period stated in our Privacy Policy.
You represent and warrant that you have all rights necessary to grant this licence — that Your Content does not infringe any third-party rights, that you have obtained any consents required under privacy or publicity laws from people depicted in your event images or referenced in your event descriptions, and that you have the right to upload the phone numbers in your contact list for the matching purposes described in our Privacy Policy.
6.3 Pre-signup invitations
When you invite someone to a group or event by phone number, Bao stores that invitation server-side until the person joins the Service. By inviting them you confirm that you have a reasonable basis to believe the invitation is welcome and that you are otherwise entitled to provide their phone number to us for this purpose.
6.4 Removal
We may remove Your Content if we believe in good faith that it violates this Agreement or applicable law, or if we are required to do so. We are not obligated to monitor user content.
7. Bao's content
The Service — including the app's code, design, brand, name, logos, and the bao-app.com website — is owned by Bao and protected by intellectual-property laws. Except for the licence in §4, nothing in this Agreement transfers any of these rights to you.
8. Reporting abuse
If you encounter content or behaviour on the Service that violates this Agreement, report it using the in-app report option (available on a profile, conversation, event, or group) or email report@bao-app.com. Include enough detail (account, conversation, event, screenshot if you have one) for us to investigate. We aim to review reports promptly and, consistent with our zero-tolerance policy (§5), to act on reports of objectionable content or abusive users within 24 hours. You can also block any user directly in the app to immediately stop all contact from them, independently of any report.
9. SMS, push notifications, and other communications
- SMS: We use SMS to send one-time codes to your phone number. When you sign in, our authentication provider (Firebase Authentication, operated by Google LLC) sends a verification code. When you request a download of your data, our SMS provider, Twilio Inc., sends a one-time verification code — a second-factor security check to confirm it's you before we release the export. Standard messaging rates from your mobile carrier may apply. By requesting a sign-in or data export within the app, you consent to receive a one-time SMS verification code for identity verification. These messages are transactional, are not used for marketing purposes, and are sent only in response to your request.
- Push notifications: With your permission (iOS prompt), we send push notifications about new messages, event invites, RSVPs, and similar service activity. You can turn these off at any time in iOS Settings → Notifications → Bao.
- Email: We send certain account emails through our email provider (Resend) — for example, account-recovery codes to your recovery email, and data-export download links when you request them. We may also contact you about security incidents or material changes to our policies.
- Marketing: We do not send marketing communications. If we add them in the future, they will be strictly opt-in.
10. Third-party services
The Service interoperates with third-party services including Apple's iOS platform and Push Notification service, Google Firebase Authentication, Cloudflare's R2 and Durable Objects, Vercel's hosting platform, Twilio's SMS delivery, and Apple MapKit. Your use of those services is also subject to their respective terms; we are not responsible for their acts or omissions. A current list of processors is in our Privacy Policy §4.2.
11. App Store terms (Apple)
You acknowledge that this Agreement is between you and Bao, not with Apple, Inc., and that Apple is not responsible for the Service or its content. To the extent the standard Apple "Licensed Application End User Licence Agreement" (the "Apple EULA") applies to the iOS app, this Agreement supplements, but does not replace, those terms; in the event of a conflict between the Apple EULA and this Agreement on a point that the Apple EULA expressly addresses, the Apple EULA controls. You and Bao further acknowledge that:
- Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for the Service.
- Apple is not responsible for addressing any claims by you or any third party relating to the Service.
- In the event of any third-party claim that the Service or your possession and use of it infringes that third party's intellectual-property rights, Bao (not Apple) is solely responsible for the investigation, defence, settlement, and discharge of any such claim.
- Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of this Agreement and, upon your acceptance, will have the right (and will be deemed to have accepted the right) to enforce this Agreement against you as a third-party beneficiary.
12. Service availability
The Service is provided on a best-effort basis. We do not promise that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that messages will always be delivered instantly. The app stores your changes locally and syncs when connectivity returns, so most outages will be invisible to you, but transient or extended outages of our infrastructure or its dependencies (Apple, Google, Cloudflare, Vercel) may affect performance, message delivery, or feature availability. We may add, remove, or change features at any time.
13. Disclaimer of warranties
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the Service is provided "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" without warranties of any kind, either express or implied, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, or that the Service will be secure, error-free, or free of viruses or other harmful components.
Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain implied warranties; in those jurisdictions the foregoing exclusion may not apply to you in full and we provide only the warranties that applicable law does not permit us to exclude.
14. Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Bao and its affiliates, officers, employees, agents, and licensors will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or any loss of profits, revenue, data, use, goodwill, or other intangible losses, arising out of or in connection with your access to or use of (or inability to access or use) the Service, whether based on warranty, contract, tort (including negligence), statute, or any other legal theory, and whether or not we have been informed of the possibility of such damage.
Our aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with the Service or this Agreement will not exceed the greater of (a) the amount you have paid us for the Service in the 12 months preceding the event giving rise to the liability, or (b) US$50.
Nothing in this Agreement limits or excludes any liability that cannot be lawfully limited or excluded — for example, liability for fraud, gross negligence, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or any other liability that applicable consumer- protection law makes non-excludable.
15. Indemnification
You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Bao and its affiliates, officers, employees, and agents from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or in any way connected with: (a) Your Content; (b) your use of the Service; (c) your violation of this Agreement; or (d) your violation of any third-party right, including any intellectual-property or privacy right. We reserve the right, at our own expense, to assume the exclusive defence and control of any matter otherwise subject to indemnification by you, in which case you will cooperate with us.
16. Termination
- You may stop using the Service at any time. Uninstalling the app removes the local copy of your data; to also delete the server copy, follow §7 of the Privacy Policy.
- We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service, with or without notice, if we believe in good faith that you have violated this Agreement, that your account is being used unlawfully or in a way that endangers other users or our systems, or if we are required to do so by law. Where it is reasonable and lawful, we will give you notice and a chance to cure the issue first.
- Effect of termination. Sections 6.2 (the licence we hold to Your Content for the limited purposes described), 7 (ownership), 13–15 (warranties, limitation of liability, indemnification), 18 (dispute resolution), and any other provisions that by their nature should survive, will survive termination.
17. Changes to this Agreement
We may update this Agreement to reflect changes to the Service, to our practices, or to applicable law. When we make a material change, we will notify you in the app before it takes effect. The "Last updated" date at the top of the page indicates the most recent revision. Your continued use of the Service after the change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the revised Agreement. If you do not accept the change, you must stop using the Service.
18. Governing law and dispute resolution
This Agreement is governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of England and Wales, without regard to its conflict-of- law principles. Subject to the next paragraph, the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or in connection with this Agreement, and you and Bao consent to the personal jurisdiction and venue of those courts.
Mandatory consumer protections in your country of residence prevail. If a mandatory law of your country of residence gives you stronger rights than this section provides — for example, a right to bring proceedings in your home courts or under your home country's law — that mandatory law applies instead, to the extent it cannot be contracted out of.
The above is an England-and-Wales court-jurisdiction clause. It may not be appropriate for every launch market — for example, the United States, where an arbitration clause and class-action waiver are common. Before launching in a new market, legal counsel should confirm the right dispute-resolution mechanism (and whether arbitration is required) and insert any market-specific clause here.
19. Miscellaneous
- Entire agreement. This Agreement, together with the Privacy Policy and any other policies we publish on bao-app.com, is the entire agreement between you and Bao concerning the Service and supersedes any prior or contemporaneous understandings.
- Severability. If any provision of this Agreement is held to be unenforceable, the remaining provisions will remain in full force, and the unenforceable provision will be construed to give effect to the parties' intent to the maximum extent permitted.
- No waiver. Our failure to enforce a provision of this Agreement is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
- Assignment. You may not assign or transfer this Agreement without our prior written consent. We may assign or transfer this Agreement to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
- Independent contractors. Nothing in this Agreement creates any partnership, agency, joint venture, or employment relationship.
- Notices. We may give notices to you through the app or by the phone number associated with your account. You may give notices to us at legal@bao-app.com or by post to Monsun Technologies Limited, 66 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NA, United Kingdom.
20. Contact
| Topic | Channel |
|---|---|
| Account, general support | hello@bao-app.com |
| Reporting abuse or violations | report@bao-app.com |
| Legal notices | legal@bao-app.com |
| Privacy questions and rights requests | privacy@bao-app.com (see Privacy Policy §13) |
| Security reports | security@bao-app.com |
Monsun Technologies Limited 66 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NA, United Kingdom