Folkso Terms of Use

1. About these terms

These terms govern folkso.app, your Folkso account and the Folkso integrations with ChatGPT and Claude. Your agreement is with Oleksandr Plakhuta, an individual based in Bulgaria, who runs Folkso. In these terms, “we” means him.

You accept the terms when you expressly agree to them during account creation or connection. The Privacy Policy explains our use of personal data. Reading that notice does not by itself give consent to optional processing or marketing.

If you act for a business, you must have authority to bind it. References to “you” include that business where appropriate. A person acting as a consumer keeps the mandatory rights applicable to them.

2. What Folkso is

Folkso helps people find and introduce themselves to each other through AI assistants. You can look for people without publishing your own profile. A person who creates a profile can choose to appear in relevant Folkso results. One account can do both.

Folkso provides search and introductions. We do not employ the people listed, negotiate or enter into their agreements, manage their work or guarantee a placement. We do not represent that we have verified a person's identity, qualifications, employment history or suitability. Folkso charges no fee to people who are looked for and does not place workers. If the law where you work requires a licence or registration for the hiring or introduction you arrange, meeting it is your responsibility.

People decide whether to contact, work with or meet one another and agree any fees, scope and safeguards directly. A profile does not guarantee exposure, an accepted request, paid work or any particular result. Folkso results are drawn from people available through Folkso, not a search of everyone on the internet.

3. Your account

You must be at least 18 to use an account. Do not impersonate another person or operate an account without their authority. Give accurate information and keep access to your sign-in email and connected assistant accounts secure.

You sign in through Google or an emailed code. One email identifies one Folkso account. Tell us at hello@folkso.app if you suspect unauthorised access. We will assess disputed actions; connecting an assistant does not make you automatically liable for every erroneous or unauthorised action it may attempt.

You may correct account details and disconnect integrations. Do not evade an account restriction by opening another account. Accounts identified as belonging to someone under 18 may be closed, with information retained only where the Privacy Policy and applicable law permit it.

4. ChatGPT and Claude

A connected assistant can search, display profile cards, prepare a request, show its preview and send it after your confirmation. It can check or cancel your requests and, when you instruct it, update your own About you, profile or status and add your contacts. Connection permission and confirmation of a particular request are separate steps.

Folkso receives the arguments the assistant sends to its tools. These can include the task, search conditions and short matching preferences. Folkso does not independently browse your assistant's chat history or memory. Do not ask the assistant to transfer unrelated conversations, private records or secrets to Folkso.

Check what the assistant prepares. AI can omit conditions or describe a person incorrectly. A request preview is the place to check the message, task and the information intended for the recipient.

OpenAI and Anthropic operate their own services under their own terms and account settings. Availability of an integration can depend on their approval, plans and technical features. You can disconnect Folkso in the assistant or the Folkso console. Disconnection does not automatically delete the Folkso account or copies already delivered.

5. Your profile and content

5.1 Your content. You retain your rights in the profile, photo, work descriptions, ideas and other material you submit. Use only material you are entitled to provide. Do not present someone else's work as your own.

5.2 Truthful and yours. Your profile must accurately describe what you offer and the proposals you are open to. Keep availability and important conditions reasonably current. You are responsible for confirming any professional status that a task legally requires.

5.3 Licence to Folkso. You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, format, translate and transmit your content to the extent necessary to provide the features you use, protect the service and comply with law. This includes processing profile text for matching and moderation and displaying the published profile fields in AI results. It does not authorise advertising with your content, sale of your profile or unrelated model training. Private reports, appeals and support messages are not licensed for publication in search results. Personal data remains subject to the Privacy Policy and applicable rights.

The licence ends when its purpose ends or you delete the content, except for necessary retained records described in the Privacy Policy and copies already lawfully delivered. We cannot withdraw a copy from another person's downloaded file or assistant conversation, but will take the steps required by applicable data protection law.

5.4 Who sees your profile. Publishing makes the disclosed profile fields available to other people using Folkso and their connected AI assistants. You can pause future discovery. An image already served from its public storage address may be opened by someone who has the address; a hard-to-guess link is not private access control. Previously delivered cards can remain in a conversation.

5.5 What not to include. Do not include secrets, identity documents, home addresses, payment credentials or unnecessary sensitive information. Put your own contact details in contact fields, not profile prose or images. We apply filtering to free text, but cannot guarantee recognition of every disguised contact or sensitive fact. “Not shown in search” does not mean that a saved item is excluded from all internal processing or moderation.

5.6 Limits on edits. Limits on content edits, searches and active ideas are shown in your console. Service limits do not remove your statutory rights to correct or erase personal data. Contact support when a self-service limit prevents the exercise of a right. The CV feature creates a document for your own use; accepting an introduction does not automatically authorise sharing your entire CV or unpublished ideas.

6. Searches, requests and contacts

A request is sent to a person shown in your search. Before sending, you review what that person will receive and select the contacts to share if they accept. A recipient reviews the request and chooses which of their contacts to exchange. If a selected contact is no longer available when the request is accepted, the exchange does not happen and no other contact is used instead.

The message, the task and its conditions (role, budget with currency and unit, city, type of work and start) are saved with the request when you send it. Later changes to the search do not change a request already sent.

Normally a request remains open for 14 days. The sender may cancel it before it is answered. The recipient may decline it or accept it; a decline can be changed to acceptance once while it remains open. Requests held for moderation are not delivered until released. Limits and temporary restrictions may prevent sending or accepting.

Contacts are exchanged only after acceptance. The recipient's acceptance is not an employment contract, agreement to a price or consent to receive unrelated marketing. Use exchanged information for the introduction concerned. Do not add it to marketing lists, sell it, publish it, pass it on without authority or continue unwanted contact.

Businesses using contacts for their own purposes must comply with applicable data protection obligations. The legal role of an individual using information privately depends on the circumstances; these terms do not turn every private user into a business controller.

Ratings, useful-request marks, blocks and reports are not displayed to the other participant as personal feedback. That does not create an absolute promise of secrecy where a lawful request or fair procedure requires disclosure.

7. Acceptable use

Do not use Folkso for fraud, impersonation, harassment, threats, sexual solicitation, unlawful services or attempts to obtain passwords, identity documents, security codes or financial credentials. Do not use job offers to demand deceptive upfront payments. This is not a prohibition on every lawful deposit agreed independently for genuine work.

Do not send bulk promotional messages, advertise instead of making a relevant personal proposal, harvest profiles or contacts, manipulate ranking or evade restrictions. Do not involve a child as a Folkso account holder or an introduction participant. Any proposed feature involving minors requires separate safety and legal approval and is not authorised by these terms.

Do not seek unlawful discrimination in hiring or other opportunities. Describe the skills, lawful requirements, location and working conditions a task needs. Do not ask the service to infer protected or sensitive characteristics.

Do not access another account, bypass security, run unauthorised production tests, overload the service or use it to obtain data beyond your permissions. Responsible reports of suspected vulnerabilities are welcome at hello@folkso.app. Obtain written authorisation before testing that could affect other people, systems or costs.

Respect intellectual property and privacy rights. These restrictions do not limit mandatory rights to your own data, lawful disclosures to authorities or other uses protected by applicable law.

8. How results are ordered

The service considers whether a profile is visible and available for the relevant kind of request, together with the task, expressed conditions, location, skills and recent activity. Matching also uses permitted information about working style and shared interests where relevant. We do not treat common interests as proof of professional ability.

AI and other matching methods order a shortlist and check the leading results. If the AI check is unavailable, the search shows nobody and asks you to try again, rather than showing a less checked list. A matching explanation is not an independent verification of the profile. A budget filters results only when its currency and unit (hour, day, month, project) match the person's rate.

A subscription does not buy a higher place in organic results. Material changes to ranking parameters will be explained where required, including for business users covered by the Platform-to-Business Regulation. P2B

9. Moderation, reports and appeals

9.1 Automated checks. We use automated checks of texts and photos for violations. A clear violation may stop a request or hide a profile. Some uncertain cases are referred for review. A provider outage can affect these checks. We do not present an unchecked item as verified.

9.2 Reports from users. Participants can report a request and block another person. Blocking does not recall contacts already lawfully exchanged. After a block in either direction, or a freeze of either account, an open request between the two people can no longer be accepted, and the other person is not told why.

9.3 Notices from anyone. You can notify us of suspected illegal content without an account at abuse@folkso.app. Identify the content as precisely as possible, explain the legal concern, provide your name and email unless an applicable exception permits otherwise, and state that you believe the notice is accurate and complete. We acknowledge and assess notices and communicate a decision as required. DSA

9.4 Measures. We may warn an account, remove content, restrict sending, pause discovery, freeze an account or terminate it where proportionate to a violation or safety risk. Automated rules may temporarily freeze an account after serious reports. An internal trust assessment can reduce sending limits or route requests for human review. It considers relevant outcomes and abuse signals; it is not proof that an individual is dishonest.

9.5 Reasons. For restrictions to which Article 17 DSA applies, we provide the affected person with the restriction, relevant facts, the legal or contractual ground, the role of automation, applicable duration and available challenge routes. A necessary anti-abuse safeguard may justify protecting particular detection details, not a blanket refusal to explain the decision. Statutory exceptions apply only where their conditions are met. The affected person finds this statement in their Folkso account. DSA

9.6 Appeals. You may contest a moderation decision in your console within six months. Where the console route is missing, inaccessible or insufficient for a data-rights request, write to hello@folkso.app. A person reviews the dispute with sufficient authority to change the outcome. This voluntary route does not replace statutory rights to a regulator, an eligible out-of-court body or a court. Additional DSA obligations apply where Folkso is not exempt from them. DSA

9.7 Safety. We may notify competent authorities where a legal duty applies or a lawful and necessary disclosure is needed to address a serious threat. We will not treat every complaint as a police matter.

9.8 Unfounded reports. Repeated manifestly unfounded reports or misuse may result in proportionate restrictions on reporting where permitted. Good-faith disagreement or use of a complaint right is not abuse.

10. Notifications

Service notifications concern your requests, account and security. You can manage supported categories in Notifications. Sign-in messages are needed to use email sign-in. Important legal or security notices may still be sent where necessary.

Tips about finding people and using Folkso are optional, at most one a week. The choice is shown next to the age confirmation when you create an account, ticked, and you can untick it. You can stop tips at any time in Notifications or with the link in any tip. Every tip names the sender and has an unsubscribe link.

Telegram notifications are optional and pass through Telegram. Their contents can include request text and exchanged contacts. Disconnecting Telegram stops that delivery channel, not the Folkso account.

11. Price

Folkso is currently free within the displayed limits. There is no commission charged by Folkso on the agreements users make with each other.

A future paid plan will require a separate purchase. Before purchase we will identify the seller or merchant of record, total price and taxes where applicable, renewal frequency, cancellation and refund conditions and any withdrawal rights. Free use does not authorise a future charge. Paid plans are not on sale.

12. Our rights and your feedback

We and our licensors retain rights in Folkso's software, design and brand. You may use the service in accordance with these terms and applicable law. You may send feedback voluntarily. We may use that feedback to improve the service, but this does not give us ownership of your underlying inventions, confidential material or unrelated intellectual property.

13. Deleting your account, suspension and termination

You can delete your profile and request deletion of your account in Settings. Account deletion requires recent authentication and confirmation of the sign-in email. It removes the account and its linked data at once. Some security, dispute or legal records can remain only for the purposes and periods stated in the Privacy Policy. Removing an account identifier is not necessarily anonymisation of the remaining text.

Copies already delivered to other people or assistant providers can remain outside Folkso. We will take legally required steps concerning downstream correction or erasure; we cannot promise remote deletion of every copy. GDPR-ERASURE

We may suspend or terminate for a material breach, a binding legal requirement or a proportionate safety reason. We give reasons and an opportunity to challenge as applicable. If the Platform-to-Business Regulation applies to your use, its notice and statement-of-reasons requirements take precedence, including the ordinary 30-day termination notice and its defined exceptions. P2B

If we close the service, we will give at least 30 days' notice and a reasonable opportunity to export your data, unless the law or circumstances outside our control make that impossible.

14. AI features

AI outputs, summaries and reasons can be inaccurate. We do not guarantee personal compatibility or infer that a result is safe merely because it ranks highly. Humans make the eventual decisions about hiring or meeting. Some platform moderation, ranking and access restrictions are automated, as the Privacy Policy explains.

You may challenge relevant decisions and exercise your data rights. The presence of a human at the end of a workflow does not itself eliminate all legal requirements for AI systems or automated decisions. GDPR UK-ADM AI-ACT

15. Changes to Folkso

Maintenance, provider outages and changes can affect availability. We will explain material changes affecting your use or rights where required and provide any remedies mandated by law. We do not reserve an unrestricted right to remove essential contracted features or impose new charges without appropriate notice and agreement.

16. Services of others

Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Telegram and other providers have their own terms. Their independent services can change. Nothing here excludes responsibility we have for our own obligations, selection of processors or disclosures merely because a third-party service is involved.

17. Disclaimer

Except for express commitments and rights that cannot lawfully be excluded, we provide the service without a guarantee of uninterrupted availability or a particular matching result. This provision does not exclude applicable consumer requirements concerning reasonable care and skill, conformity, remedies or the fairness of contractual terms. UCTD UK-TERMS

18. Liability

Nothing in these terms excludes or restricts liability where doing so is unlawful. This includes liability that applicable law does not allow us to limit for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or deliberate misconduct. Statutory consumer remedies remain available.

For consumers, we do not impose a fixed universal monetary cap. Responsibility is determined under applicable mandatory law, including any rules concerning foreseeable loss and essential obligations. An “as is” statement does not override those rights. UCTD UK-TERMS

For business users only, our total liability under these terms in any 12-month period is limited to USD 100 or, if higher, the amount you paid us in that period. We are not liable to business users for lost profits, lost business or indirect loss. These limits do not apply to liability that cannot be limited by law. We do not accept responsibility for promises made solely by another user, without excluding any responsibility arising from our own breach.

19. Indemnity

For business users only, you are responsible for third-party claims to the extent caused by your unlawful content or material breach of these terms and where applicable law permits recovery. This does not require payment for loss caused by our own breach or misconduct. We must give reasonable notice and cooperation; no settlement imposing obligations on you may be agreed without your consent, not unreasonably withheld. This clause does not apply to consumers.

20. Changes to these terms

We will notify you of material changes through an appropriate durable channel before they apply. Our ordinary notice is 30 days, and longer where applicable law or necessary business adaptation requires it. Changes required by law or to address a specific urgent security risk may take effect sooner only to the extent permitted.

A change does not retroactively authorise a past disclosure, new marketing consent or a payment. Continued use is not relied on where express agreement is legally required. Business users covered by P2B retain their rights under its notice rules. P2B

21. Law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of Bulgaria. Disputes with business users are decided by the competent courts of Bulgaria.

A choice of law does not deprive consumers of mandatory protections that apply in their country of habitual residence where the relevant legal conditions are met. Mandatory jurisdiction rules also apply. ROME-I

You may write to hello@folkso.app to seek a resolution. Doing so is not a prerequisite to contacting a regulator, exercising a statutory remedy or starting proceedings where the law permits. We do not direct consumers to the discontinued EU ODR platform.

22. Contact and legal notices

Support and security reports: hello@folkso.app.

Operator and legal notices: Oleksandr Plakhuta, Bulgaria, hello@folkso.app.

Single point of contact under Articles 11 and 12 DSA, for authorities and users: hello@folkso.app, in English or Bulgarian. Notices of illegal content: abuse@folkso.app. Users can reach a person; an automated assistant is not the only available route. DSA

23. General

Invalidity of one provision does not invalidate the rest, subject to mandatory law. A failure to enforce a right does not waive it. Any transfer of the contract to a successor must preserve applicable user protections.

For non-consumer disputes, the English version is the reference version. For consumers, this clause does not override mandatory language requirements, clear information given in another language or the interpretation of ambiguity in their favour. UCTD

The Privacy Policy is a transparency notice, not a blanket waiver of data rights. Separate purchase terms apply to a future paid plan only after the relevant agreement. These terms do not exclude mandatory statutory rights.