Terms of Use (Acceptable Use)

1. Scope

1. These Terms of Use govern the use of the SHELL-AFFECT customer dashboard, registration, communication features, questionnaire, the optional questionnaire AI assistant and related platform functions at shell-affect.com.
2. Contractual service relationships (projects, cybersecurity engagements, invoices) remain governed primarily by the Terms and Conditions (AGB). Privacy is described in the Privacy Policy.

2. Respectful conduct

1. Users communicate respectfully with SHELL-AFFECT staff and other authorised participants. Harassment, threats, hate speech, spam or deliberately misleading information are prohibited.
2. Credentials must be kept confidential. Accounts may only be used by authorised persons of the customer organisation.

3. No cyberattack or abuse attempts

1. Users must not attempt, facilitate or probe for cyberattacks against SHELL-AFFECT systems, other users or third parties via the platform, including XSS, CSRF abuse, SQL injection, SSRF, LFI/RFI, path traversal, command injection, credential stuffing, brute force, malware uploads, and unauthorised access to files or paths such as /etc/passwd, .git, configuration files or internal network resources.
2. Security research against SHELL-AFFECT systems is only permitted with prior written authorisation.
3. Input may be monitored for attack patterns. Detected attempts are logged and the request is rejected.
4. For the questionnaire AI assistant, the following is also prohibited: prompt injection, jailbreaks, probing for system instructions, secrets or internal configuration, and abusive overload of AI rate limits.
5. Reverse engineering: Reverse engineering, decompiling, disassembling or otherwise probing the platform software, interfaces or security mechanisms is prohibited except where mandatory law provides otherwise.

4. Unlawful content

1. Users must not upload or transmit unlawful content (including copyright-infringing, criminal or privacy-infringing content).
2. SHELL-AFFECT may block or delete such content and restrict access.
3. Reports of allegedly unlawful content: support@shell-affect.com.

5. Account suspension

1. By using the platform, the user agrees that SHELL-AFFECT may lock the account if these Terms of Use or the AGB are breached, including automatically after repeated high-severity security events (e.g. more than ten within one hour).
2. Locked users cannot use the customer dashboard until unlocked. After login, a lock notice may show the reason, related security event (if any) and support contact.
3. Unlock at SHELL-AFFECT’s equitable discretion: Unlock after cyberattack attempts, security probes, injection attempts or comparable abuse is at SHELL-AFFECT’s equitable discretion, taking into account the specific circumstances (in particular severity, recurrence, the user’s cooperation, and actual or imminent harm). There is no claim to unlock within a particular time.
4. No refund for policy locks: If the account is locked because of a breach, there is no claim to a refund of amounts already paid or due, to the extent permitted by law. Non-waivable statutory rights remain unaffected.

6. Customer content, export and account end

1. Users retain rights to their uploads and inputs. SHELL-AFFECT may store and process them for contract performance.
2. On request, users may receive a reasonable export of available project files and communication content before account deletion, where technically and legally possible.
3. After project end, termination or account deletion, data may be retained for statutory retention (e.g. invoices) and security logs. Other account data is deleted or anonymised within a reasonable period.
4. An account lock does not automatically terminate ongoing work contracts, but may impair cooperation and communication.

7. Availability and resources

1. The dashboard is a tool without a guaranteed SLA.
2. Upload, storage and messaging use are subject to fair use and the limits shown in the system. Abusive or excessive use may be throttled or blocked.
3. The optional questionnaire AI assistant is subject to additional daily and burst limits and may be disabled temporarily or permanently. There is no claim to continuous AI availability.

7a. Questionnaire AI assistant

1. The assistant is an optional tool. Outputs may be incomplete, outdated or incorrect (including hallucinations). There is no guarantee of success and no legal, tax or professional advice.
2. Suggestions are applied to the questionnaire only after your confirmation. You remain responsible for all accepted and self-entered content — especially legal texts, imprint and privacy notices.
3. Do not enter personal data of natural persons into the chat (private names, private emails, phone numbers, home addresses, ID data). Account identifiers are not sent to the AI inference service; free text is additionally filtered for typical contact patterns. Details: Privacy Policy.
4. Neither SHELL-AFFECT nor — based on Cloudflare’s Workers AI product documentation known to us — Cloudflare uses your chat/fill content to train AI models without separate explicit consent to the respective provider.

8. Good-faith dispute resolution

1. Before legal proceedings about a platform dispute, the parties first try in good faith to resolve the issue bilaterally (dashboard and/or email) within a reasonable period.
2. This does not limit interim relief, limitation periods, mandatory statutory rights or termination for cause.

9. Changes

1. SHELL-AFFECT may update these Terms of Use for the future where legally, technically or organizationally necessary and not unreasonably detrimental to the user.
2. Material changes are announced by email and/or dashboard with reasonable advance notice and documented with a change summary.
3. If the user does not object within the period stated in the notice and continues use, the changed Terms of Use apply to the extent permitted by law. The notice will point out the right to object. Non-waivable rights remain unaffected.
4. The version published on shell-affect.com is decisive. The German version is authoritative; the English version is a convenience translation unless otherwise agreed in text form.

Version 1.0 · Last updated: July 2026