1. About these Terms
These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of Echo, a civic-tech platform operated by its founding team ("Echo", "we", "us") that helps university students raise issues, rally support, and engage their institution's leadership. By using the Echo website or platform, you agree to these Terms. If you don't agree, please don't use Echo.
Institutions that join the Founding Partner Pilot also accept a separate Founding Partner Pilot Agreement, which applies alongside — and in addition to — these Terms.
2. Eligibility
Echo is built for university communities. Students join through their institution's Echo community, and institutional representatives join through their institution's engagement with Echo. Echo does not currently perform age verification; however, applicable protections for younger users under Nigerian law still apply, and we may restrict access where required.
3. Accounts
If you create an Echo account, you agree to provide accurate information and to keep it up to date. You are responsible for keeping your sign-in credentials confidential and for activity that happens under your account. Tell us as soon as you can at hello@mail.echo-ng.com if you believe your account has been compromised.
4. Institutional membership
Echo is organized around institutional communities. Your access to an institution's space depends on being a verified member of that institution, and some institutions may require approval before membership is granted. Each institution's administrators manage roles within its community (for example, student members and institutional representatives), and those roles determine what each person can see and do. If your membership or role ends, your access to that institution's space may end too.
5. Your content
"Content" means what you submit through Echo: Pings, Waves, comments, media you upload, and similar material.
- You keep whatever rights you have in your own content. Echo does not claim ownership of your ideas or submissions.
- You give Echo a limited licence to host, reproduce, display, process, moderate, and technically transform your content as necessary to operate, secure, and improve the service — for example, storing it, showing it to your institution's community, tracking its status, and generating notifications about it.
- Submitting content does not make it private. Depending on the feature and your institution's configuration, content may be visible to other students in your community, institutional representatives, and (where you post anonymously) visible without your name attached. See our Privacy Policy for how visibility and anonymity work.
- You are responsible for the content you submit and confirm you have the right to share it.
6. Acceptable use
You agree not to use Echo to:
- harass, bully, threaten, or intimidate anyone;
- impersonate another person, student, or official;
- post unlawful content, or content that infringes others' rights;
- spam, phish, or distribute malware or other malicious code;
- deliberately spread false information intended to mislead your community;
- attempt to bypass moderation, anonymity rules, or institutional boundaries;
- attempt to access other users' accounts or non-public data;
- interfere with, overload, or compromise the platform; or
- use Echo in violation of applicable law.
7. Moderation
Echo may review, restrict, remove, or decline to display content, and may limit accounts, where content violates these Terms or platform rules. Institutional administrators may also have moderation powers within their institution's community according to their role. Where feasible and appropriate, we'll tell you when action is taken on your content.
8. Institutional decisions
Echo is a feedback and accountability channel — it does not direct institutional decisions. Echo does not guarantee that an institution will act on, approve, respond to, or resolve any Ping, Wave, or other matter. Consequential decisions remain with the institution's accountable officers.
9. Availability
Echo is an evolving product. It may experience downtime, maintenance, bugs, interruptions, or changes to features. We aim to keep things running well but do not promise uninterrupted or error-free availability.
10. Intellectual property
Echo's software, branding, design, wordmark, logos, and platform technology are owned by Echo or its licensors and are protected by applicable law. Using Echo does not transfer any ownership of the platform to you. You may not copy, modify, or reverse-engineer the platform except as permitted by law.
11. Third-party services
Echo depends on third-party infrastructure providers (such as hosting, database, email-delivery, and analytics services) to operate. Their availability and practices affect the service, and their handling of personal information is described in our Privacy Policy.
12. Suspension and termination
We may suspend or terminate access to Echo, in whole or in part, for serious or repeated violations of these Terms, security concerns, abuse, fraud, legal requirements, or where an institution's participation ends. Where feasible, we'll explain what happened.
13. Account deletion
You can stop using Echo at any time. To request deletion of your account or your information, contact hello@mail.echo-ng.com. We will action verified requests subject to legal and audit obligations — for example, Founding Partner acceptance records must be retained as durable agreement records, and content that others in a community have engaged with may not be removable in every trace. See our Privacy Policy for how retention works.
14. Disclaimers
Echo provides a platform for feedback and institutional engagement. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Echo is provided "as is" and "as available", and Echo makes no warranties or guarantees about: outcomes, resolutions, policy changes, or responses from institutions; the accuracy or completeness of user-submitted content; uninterrupted or error-free operation; or fitness for a particular purpose.
15. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Echo will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost data, lost opportunities, or harms arising from institutional decisions or inaction, in connection with your use of Echo. Echo's total liability for direct damages relating to the service will be limited to the amount you paid Echo in the twelve months before the claim arose or, if you paid nothing (as during pilots), to the maximum extent permitted by law.
16. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
17. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms as Echo evolves. The "last updated" date above shows the current version. If a change is material, we will take reasonable steps to bring it to your attention. Continuing to use Echo after changes take effect means you accept the updated Terms.