Terms of Use

1. How this page fits with the others

Our Terms of Service are the agreement between you and Paheli — eligibility, payments, liability, disputes. This page is the part you are most likely to need day to day: the rules for using the app. Both are binding, and our Community Guidelines and Privacy Policy sit alongside them.

If this page and the Terms of Service ever appear to conflict, the Terms of Service take precedence.

2. Your licence to use the app

We give you a personal, limited, revocable, non-transferable licence to install and use Paheli on a mobile device you own or control, for your own non-commercial use, for as long as you follow these rules.

• One account per person. Duplicate accounts get removed. If you have been banned, creating a new account is itself a breach.
• Your account is not transferable. You may not sell, rent, gift or share it, and you may not run an account on behalf of someone else.
• Keep the app updated. Older versions may stop working and may have security issues we have already fixed.
• Your device, your data plan. Data charges, device costs and app-store rules are between you, your carrier and your app store.

3. The rules

These are the things that will get an account removed. This list is not exhaustive — the spirit of it counts as much as the letter.

3.1 About who you are

• You must be 18 or older. Lying about your age is grounds for immediate and permanent removal.
• No impersonating anyone else — a real person, a celebrity, a brand, or a made-up person.
• No catfishing: your photos must be recent, genuinely of you, and not AI-generated to depict someone you are not.
• No accounts operated by bots, scripts or agencies on someone else’s behalf.

3.2 About how you treat people

• No harassment, threats, stalking, intimidation or repeated unwanted contact.
• No hate speech or attacks based on caste, religion, region, language, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, appearance or health status.
• No sexual content sent without consent — including unsolicited explicit photos.
• No sharing another person’s private information, photos, chats or screenshots, on or off Paheli.
• No blackmail, sextortion, revenge posting or threatening to expose anyone.

3.3 About money and commerce

• No asking other users for money, gifts, recharges, UPI transfers, loans or investment.
• No promoting a business, a service, an event, a channel, a crypto or trading scheme, an MLM, or a “work from home” opportunity.
• No prostitution, escorting, sugar arrangements, trafficking, or any exchange of sexual services for money or goods.
• No sale or advertising of drugs, weapons, counterfeit goods or anything else illegal.
• No recruiting users onto other platforms, apps or paid groups.

3.4 About the app itself

• No scraping, crawling, harvesting profiles or photos, or copying data out of Paheli by any automated means.
• No bots, emulators, modified clients, injected code, or automation of likes, messages, puzzles or purchases.
• No reverse engineering, decompiling or tampering with the app, our APIs or our servers; no probing, load-testing or attacking our infrastructure.
• No exploiting a bug, pricing error or loophole instead of reporting it to support.paheli@gmail.com.
• No uploading viruses, malware or anything designed to damage a device or our systems.

4. Standards for your photos, profile and messages

Everything you upload is visible to strangers. Hold it to that standard.

Photos are moderated, and a photo can be removed after it has gone live. Repeated removals count as repeated breaches.

5. The daily puzzle and fair play

The puzzle is what keeps Paheli slow on purpose. Everyone in your lineup solved theirs to meet you, and you solved yours to meet them.

• Solutions are validated on our servers, not on your phone. The app never decides that you have won.
• Automating, intercepting, replaying or forging puzzle submissions is a breach of these rules and will cost you your account.
• Hints and daily limits are part of the design. Circumventing them — including by creating extra accounts — is treated the same way.
• We may change the puzzle format, the daily limits, or how introductions are chosen, at any time.

6. Using paid features fairly

Paid features are covered by section 8 of the Terms of Service and by our Refunds & Cancellations policy. On top of that:

• Buy only with a payment method you are authorised to use. Using someone else’s card or UPI is fraud, and we report it.
• Do not raise a chargeback for a purchase you made and used. Ask us for a refund first — a disputed chargeback usually ends with the account closed.
• Paid features cannot be shared, resold or transferred between accounts.
• Buying something never buys leniency. Paid accounts are held to the same rules.

7. Blocking, reporting and moderation

Every profile and every chat has block and report. Use them — they are the fastest way to make something stop.

• Blocking removes that person from your experience immediately and takes you out of theirs. They are not told.
• Reporting sends the account to our review queue with the reason you picked: fake profile, inappropriate photos, harassment, spam, underage, or something else you describe.
• We review reports and take action ourselves. We do not tell you what action was taken against another user’s account — that is their private data — but we do act.
• Do not file false reports. Mass-reporting or reporting someone out of spite is itself a breach.
• If someone is in immediate danger, contact the police on 112 first, then tell us at support.paheli@gmail.com.

8. What happens when a rule is broken

Depending on how serious it is, and whether it has happened before, we may:

1. remove the offending photo, prompt or message;
2. warn the account;
3. limit features — pausing new introductions, hiding the profile from discovery, or restricting chat;
4. suspend the account while we investigate;
5. permanently ban the person and the device and number behind it.

Some things skip straight to a permanent ban: anything involving a minor, non-consensual sexual content, credible threats of violence, trafficking, or financial fraud. We report unlawful conduct to the authorities where required, and we preserve evidence when asked to by a lawful authority.

Appeals. If you believe an action was a mistake, email support.paheli@gmail.com from your registered number with your side of it. A person will review it once. Bans imposed for the offences listed above are not reversed.

9. You use Paheli at your own risk

Paheli introduces people. It does not vet them, supervise them, or take responsibility for what they do. Every choice you make from the first message onwards — what you share, whether you meet, where you go — is yours, and the consequences are yours.

The full position is set out in our Disclaimer and in section 5 of the Terms of Service. Please read at least one of them before you meet anyone, and read the Safety Centre before you meet the first one.

10. Availability and changes to the app

• We may add, change, limit or remove features at any time, including paid ones, and we may run experiments where some users see something different.
• The Service may be unavailable for maintenance, updates, outages or reasons outside our control. We do not guarantee uptime.
• We may stop offering Paheli in a region, or entirely. If we do, we will give reasonable notice and deal fairly with any active paid plans.
• Features described as beta or coming soon may change or never ship.

11. Contact

Questions about these rules, an appeal, or a bug you would rather report than exploit: support.paheli@gmail.com.