Acceptable Use Policy — FishFinder Engine™

Status: DRAFT — for attorney review. Effective Date: [Effective Date] Version: 0.1-draft Read alongside: EULA / Terms of Use, User Content Policy, AI Disclaimer, Location & Outdoor Safety Disclaimer.

This Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") applies to anyone who accesses or uses FishFinder Engine, whether through the website, the iOS app, the Apple Watch app, or the SMS Trip Companion. Violations may result in account suspension, termination, removal of content, throttling, legal action, or referral to law enforcement.

1. No abuse of the platform

You may not:

• scrape, crawl, mirror, harvest, or systematically retrieve content from the Service except as expressly permitted (e.g., authorized API use);
• republish, resell, sublicense, redistribute, or commercially exploit the Service or its data;
• reverse-engineer, decompile, disassemble, or attempt to derive the source code of any part of the Service that is not openly distributed;
• use bots, scripts, headless browsers, automation, or AI agents to interact with the Service in a way that bypasses tier gates, exceeds quotas, or evades rate limits;
• bypass, circumvent, or attempt to bypass authentication, tier gating, feature flags, quotas (including AI quotas such as ai_prompt), or admin controls;
• create multiple accounts to chain free trials or stack quotas;
• impersonate another user, an agency, a guide, or any other person;
• transmit malware, viruses, or any code intended to disrupt the Service;
• probe, scan, test, or attack the Service or its infrastructure without prior written authorization (responsible-disclosure inquiries are welcome at [Contact Email]);
• interfere with other users' use of the Service.

2. No abuse of AI features

You may not:

• attempt to extract, reveal, or modify the AI system prompts;
• attempt to coerce the AI into bypassing its safety rules or guardrails;
• use AI features to produce harassing, hateful, sexual, defamatory, threatening, or unlawful content;
• use AI features for any safety-critical, regulatory, medical, legal, or navigational decision (the AI is an informational tool only — see the AI Disclaimer);
• attempt to use the AI as a general-purpose chatbot for tasks unrelated to fishing (the AI is instructed to refuse with "I'm not able to answer that question for you.");
• use AI Features to generate content for resale, scraping operations, or competing AI training datasets.

3. No illegal or harmful fishing or outdoor activity

You may not use the Service to plan, document, or assist any activity that is illegal under federal, state, tribal, or local law, including (without limitation):

• fishing without a required license;
• fishing in closed seasons or out-of-season for a species;
• exceeding possession or length limits;
• harvesting protected, threatened, or endangered species;
• fishing in posted, closed, restricted, or tribal waters without authorization;
• trespass on private land or private water access;
• poaching, stocking without authorization, or releasing invasive species;
• violating any boating, life-jacket, motor-restriction, or wake-zone rule.

You acknowledge that nothing on the Service overrides applicable law, and that the Data Accuracy Disclaimer and Location & Outdoor Safety Disclaimer apply to all of your use.

4. No harassment or harm to other users

You may not:

• harass, threaten, defame, dox, or invade the privacy of any other user or any third party;
• post or transmit hate speech, sexual or violent content, or content that exploits or endangers minors;
• use the Service to coordinate harassment, stalking, or harm.

5. No false reports or misleading data

You may not:

• log catches you did not actually catch in order to game catch-based features or promotions;
• submit false location, false species, or fabricated trophy data;
• intentionally upload misleading photos to deceive other users or staff;
• spoof your device's GPS to misrepresent where a catch occurred.

(Note: as of the Effective Date there is no live promotion that rewards catch volume — see the Subscription & Billing Policy §10.)

6. SMS Trip Companion

If you opt in to SMS, you agree:

• to provide a phone number you control;
• to use STOP / HELP keywords as documented;
• not to use SMS replies to harass other users or operators;
• not to attempt prompt injection, abuse, or jailbreak via SMS;
• to abide by the daily outbound caps (currently 15/day) and per-trip AI caps (currently 25/trip).

Standard message-and-data rates apply on your end. We rely on Twilio for delivery and on the carrier networks for routing; we cannot guarantee delivery, ordering, or timing.

7. No unauthorized commercial use

You may not use the Service:

• to operate a competing fisheries-data or fishing-intelligence product;
• to provide paid fishing-guide services that depend on republishing the Service's content (you may use the Service privately to inform your own decisions);
• to train or fine-tune a machine-learning model on the Service's data or AI outputs;
• to populate another database, app, or website with the Service's content.

If you have a research, journalism, or partnership use case, contact us at [Contact Email].

8. No exploiting or interfering with infrastructure

You may not:

• send excessive requests, malformed payloads, or other traffic patterns that constitute a denial-of-service attack;
• attempt to access tenants, accounts, or data that are not yours, including by manipulating tenant cookies or path-traversal attacks (the backend uses regex-validated tenant IDs and path-resolution checks; do not attempt to bypass them);
• attempt to access admin routes (/api/admin/*) without authorization.

9. Reporting violations

If you believe another user is violating this AUP, email [Contact Email] with a description and any supporting links or screenshots. We will review and respond as we deem appropriate.

10. Enforcement

We may, at our discretion and without notice:

• remove, hide, or rewrite any content;
• pause, throttle, or revoke quotas (including AI quotas);
• suspend, disable, or terminate accounts;
• refuse to refund prepaid fees for accounts terminated for violations;
• preserve evidence and disclose it to law enforcement when required by law or when we reasonably believe it is necessary to prevent imminent harm.

11. Changes

We may update this AUP. Material changes will be posted at /acceptable-use and announced via email and/or in-app notice.

[Attorney Review Needed] — confirm scope and remedies, and confirm that state fishing-law indemnity language is in EULA_TERMS_OF_USE.md.

This document is a non-attorney first pass and is not legal advice.