Terms of service

The contract partner is the provider named in the legal notice. Your conflicting terms do not apply unless we accept them in writing.

Mandatory consumer protections of your country of residence remain unaffected; otherwise German law applies (Rome I).

The website is an invitation to use the service. A free Glint contract forms when we provision an address. A free account contract forms when registration completes.

A paid Premium contract forms when you complete Stripe Checkout with the payment confirmation and we accept by providing the service or confirming payment. Price and summary appear at Stripe. Our Monthly/Yearly buttons only start Checkout; the paid contract is concluded there.

We may refuse orders, including for abuse, sanctions or failed payment.

The service is aimed at people aged 16 and over. Only adult consumers and businesses may order Premium.

The Premium contract is concluded in these steps: (1) you create an account and verify your email; (2) you choose “Monthly” or “Yearly” in Billing, and the total price is shown; (3) you tick the box confirming that we may start before the withdrawal period ends; (4) you click “Order with obligation to pay” and are redirected to Stripe Checkout; (5) there you review your details and complete the order with the payment button. The contract is concluded when payment completes and we confirm by email.

You can spot and correct input errors before placing the order in the Stripe Checkout fields and with your browser’s back button; until then you can abandon the order without consequences.

Contract languages are German, English and French; for users in Germany the German text prevails. We do not store the contract text separately for you; you can open, save and print it on this website at any time. We email you a confirmation with the contract details and the withdrawal information; Stripe provides the invoice or payment receipt.

Cloakmail provides temporary addresses (Glint) and longer-lived aliases (Cloaks), accepts inbound mail, stores it encrypted and shows it in the web app. Forwarding to a destination you verified is part of Cloak where your plan allows it.

Product outbound mail from the alias into the public internet is restricted or off unless expressly enabled for Premium.

Outbound messages are volume-capped so the service cannot be used to send spam. Replies from a Cloak: at most 5 per hour during the first 24 hours after the account is opened, then at most 20 per hour and 500 per 24 hours; to the same recipient, at most 10 per hour from one account and 30 per hour across the service. Forwards to your verified destination: at most 100 per hour per account. Across all accounts, at most 500 messages per hour leave our servers, counting replies, forwards and operational copies. Anything over the limit is not sent; mail that was meant to be forwarded stays in your inbox. These limits are the contractual scope of the service. There is no right to change them unilaterally for all users; any such change follows the statutory rules for digital products (sections 327r and 327s BGB). If there is a concrete suspicion that a particular account is being used to send spam or to overload the infrastructure, we may lower the limits only for that account, only while the suspicion continues, and only as far as necessary to stop it. We tell you in text form and lift the reduction as soon as the suspicion ends.

For Premium we aim for 99 % availability on a yearly average. Announced maintenance, abuse defence, force majeure and outages beyond our control (for example network, payment or data-centre providers) do not count. This is a target and not a guaranteed quality; statutory rights for defects of digital products (sections 327 ff. BGB) remain. The free tier is voluntary and has no availability commitment.

We may develop and adapt the service where there is a valid reason, you incur no extra cost and we inform you as the statute requires (sections 327r, 327s BGB).

You must not, in particular:

• use the service to store or send unlawful content, including criminal content and malware;
• spam or bypass third-party security controls;
• carelessly share credentials or the Glint recovery secret;
• overload or scan the infrastructure.

You are responsible for content on your addresses to the extent the law provides. We may block addresses, drop mail and terminate accounts where there is a concrete suspicion of abuse or unlawfulness.

Glint and the base account are free unless the site states otherwise. Premium is a subscription. Prices shown at checkout include statutory VAT where due.

The Premium contract runs for an indefinite period; the fee is charged monthly or yearly in advance depending on your plan. You may cancel at any time with at most one month’s notice. With monthly payment it ends at the end of the paid month. With yearly payment it ends one month after we receive the cancellation, or at a later date you choose; fees already paid for the time after the end are refunded pro rata. We may cancel with one month’s notice to the end of a billing period.

You cancel through the cancellation function “Cancel contracts here” (button “Cancel now”, no login needed), through the Stripe customer portal in Billing, or in text form to the email in the legal notice. After submitting you immediately receive a confirmation with the date and time of receipt.

Prices are total prices including statutory VAT. Businesses may enter a VAT ID during ordering; tax is then shown as the law requires.

The statutory cooling-off right for consumers remains (see Withdrawal). Termination for cause remains.

If payment fails we may restrict Premium after a grace period. Remaining data then follows the residual plan, including shorter retention.

Consumers have a right of withdrawal. Details and the model form are under Withdrawal. If Premium starts during the withdrawal period with your express request, we may charge for the service already provided.

The privacy notice applies. Message content is stored encrypted. We do not sell personal data.

We are fully liable for intent and gross negligence and for harm to life, body or health.

For slight negligence in breaching a cardinal duty, liability is limited to typical foreseeable damage. Other slight negligence is excluded. Product liability, guarantees and mandatory rules, in particular on defects of digital products (sections 327 ff. BGB), remain.

Towards businesses, liability for slight negligence is further capped at the fees paid in the twelve months before the damaging event. We are liable for data loss only where you kept appropriate backups outside the service and the damage would have occurred despite them. Cloakmail is not an archive and no substitute for a backup.

For the free tier we are liable — outside the unlimited cases above — only for intent and gross negligence.

Only you know the Glint recovery secret and we cannot restore it. We are not liable for its loss, disclosure or passing on where we are not responsible for the cause. Anyone presenting the secret is treated as authorised toward us as long as we neither know nor grossly negligently overlook a lack of authority.

We may change these terms where a change in law, an official or court decision or new security requirements make it necessary, or where the change only clarifies or covers matters that leave service, price and term untouched. We announce the change in text form at least six weeks before it takes effect. If you do not object within that period, the new terms apply; we point that out separately. An objection entitles you to cancel as of the change date.

Changes to the main services, prices or term, and changes that shift the balance of performance and payment in our favour, take effect only with your express consent; changes to digital products under sections 327r, 327s BGB remain.

German law applies, excluding the UN CISG. Mandatory consumer protection at your residence remains.

If you are a merchant, a public-law legal entity or a special public-law fund, venue is the provider’s seat.

If a clause is invalid, the rest of the contract remains.

We do not participate in consumer arbitration.