Introduction

Fidei provides secure communication services for Catholic families and individuals, including Fidei Email (with contacts and calendar management) and Fidei Chat (encrypted messaging). These services are provided to our customers so that they may continue using the Internet services they want and need to use while keeping a clean conscience about supporting a business sharing their values.

In order to use Fidei services you must agree to these terms of service, which outline what is considered acceptable use of services provided by Fidei.

At Fidei Technology LLC, we strive to make our customers happy and attempt to live out our vocation as Catholic business owners with integrity. If, for whatever reason, you disagree with anything in these terms of use, our privacy policy, or anywhere else on our website and in our business dealings please do not hesitate to contact us and we will do our best to make it right.

General Rules

Fidei provides services only to individuals who are at least 18 years old, or to minors who have obtained permission from their parents or guardians.

We require payment in order to use Fidei services (except for limited trial accounts created through our invite system). Before activating any accounts purchased from Fidei, successful payment must be received by Fidei Technology LLC. If payment for a renewal fails, Fidei will make a best effort to contact the applicable customer to resolve the payment issue. If after fourteen (14) days payment has not been received then we will suspend the account for which payment is outstanding. If after fourteen (14) more days after account suspension payment is not received the applicable account(s) will be permanently terminated. This action cannot be reversed.

By using Fidei services, you agree to abide by all national and international laws and regulations and to not use our services for any illegal purposes. This includes but is not limited to spamming, misrepresentation (spoofing), phishing, harassment, or sharing illegal content.

We monitor the utilization of our services for out of the ordinary usage patterns in order to prevent abuse of Fidei servers and our IP and domain reputation, which has a direct impact on all of our customers.

In using Fidei services, you agree to not disrupt the Fidei network and servers. This includes but is not limited to attempting to access Fidei servers outside the realm of services provided, staging a denial-of-service attack, attempting to work around rate limits by spoofing your IP address or by other means, sending spam (junk) mail, using Fidei Email to send email to mailing lists containing persons who have not specifically agreed to be contacted by you in this manner, or using Fidei Chat to harass or spam other users. Any violations of this rule will lead to immediate account suspension to be followed by an investigation. If the investigation determines that one or more of these violations were intentional then the account will be immediately terminated without recourse to a refund. If an unauthorized attempt to access user data through any of the above or other means was intentional then legal action may be taken.

We take the issue of spam very seriously. Sending spam utilizing Fidei services hurts Fidei for all other customers. If an account is found to have sent spam we will immediately suspend the account and conduct an investigation. If we determine that the spam was sent intentionally we will terminate the account without recourse to a refund. We also reserve the right to charge a spam policy violation fee to the payment method on file not to exceed $500 if we determine that spam was sent intentionally from an account.

Fidei Chat Community Guidelines

In addition to our general rules, Fidei Chat users must follow these community guidelines:

Be Charitable: Interact with others with Christian charity. Remember that there is a real person on the other side of every message. Treat others as you would like to be treated.

Respect Privacy: Do not share others' personal information without permission. Respect the privacy and dignity of all users.

Keep Content Appropriate: Do not share content that is sexually explicit, violent, or contrary to Catholic teachings. This is a family-friendly service designed to be safe for users of all ages.

No Impersonation: Do not pretend to be someone else or create fake accounts. Be honest about who you are.

Trial Account Limitations: If you have been invited to try Fidei Chat, your trial account has certain limitations. You can receive and reply to messages, but cannot initiate new conversations or create groups. These limitations are lifted when you upgrade to a paid account.

Family Features and Child Safety

Fidei offers special features for families to ensure a safe environment for children:

Child Accounts: Family administrators can mark accounts as "child accounts." These accounts have special restrictions - they can only send and receive messages from other family members. This ensures children can safely use Fidei Chat without exposure to strangers.

Family Groups: Family accounts automatically include a family group chat, making it easy to stay connected with your loved ones.

Parental Controls: Parents maintain control over their children's communication, providing peace of mind while teaching responsible digital communication.

Service Quotas and Limits

Fidei Email

Fidei Email has generous email quotas that will not be reached by the vast majority of our customers. Every base account has a storage quota of 7 GiB. Additional storage space may be purchased. Please see our FAQ for more information.

We do not have hard limits on sending or receiving email, however, we have a soft limit of 1,000 emails per day in (received) and 150 emails per day out (sent). If we find that these soft limits are consistently or repeatedly reached by an account we will contact the account owner for an explanation of usage. If you anticipate that your usage will repeatedly approach or exceed these limits we ask that you let us know in advance. Depending on your anticipated usage we may ask for a small additional maintenance fee to cover our costs.

Fidei Chat

Fidei Chat is designed for normal personal and family communication. While we don't impose strict message limits, we do monitor for abuse. Messages are end-to-end encrypted and stored on our servers for delivery to all your devices. Large files and media are subject to reasonable size limits.

If consistent high usage (as determined by consistently exceeding our soft limits by a large amount) is putting a strain on Fidei servers we reserve the right to ask for an additional maintenance fee to cover our additional costs and management.

Communication Hygiene

Email Hygiene

Fidei Email customers are encouraged to practice good email hygiene to minimize their storage utilization. Unfortunately, in recent years unreasonably large email storage quotas have become the norm as large email providers who make money by other means have encouraged users to keep virtually all email. This has led to bad email habits.

We encourage our customers to view email as they might view physical mail, albeit with many conveniences such as instantaneous communication and search added. Customers are unlikely to keep physical junk mail around as it would clutter their living quarters and make it more difficult to retrieve important mail in the future. The same applies to email. We receive many emails that contain images and other large attachments that we will never need. After determining that you will no longer need such email, place it in the trash. This will make searching for meaningful email in the future far more effective as it will cut down significantly on false-positive search results. It will also ensure that you never even come close to our quota.

By default, all email sent with the Fidei Email webmail interface will be sent as plain-text. While customers may change this setting so that their email sends as HTML as default, or use another application that sends email as HTML, we strongly encourage users to send email as plain-text (many email applications can be set to use plain-text if they do not do so by default). If pictures or other media needs to be sent then it should be sent as an attachment, not embedded as HTML. HTML email takes up more space, is difficult to search, renders unpredictably at different screen sizes (desktop, mobile, etc.), is difficult for blind and other disadvantaged users to read, and presents potential privacy and security vulnerabilities.

Chat Hygiene

In Fidei Chat, you can delete messages you've sent, though this works on a "best effort" basis - recipients who have already seen the message may still have copies on their devices. Just something to keep in mind as you chat.

Remember that all messages are end-to-end encrypted and synced across your devices. Large media files are subject to reasonable size limits to ensure smooth performance for everyone.

Refunds

We truly wish to provide our customers with the best services possible. If, for whatever reason we fall short of your expectations please reach out and we will do all that we can to make it right. If we are unable to make things right then we will offer a full refund if contacted within 14 days of payment. If contacted outside of the 14-day window after payment we will issue a pro-rated refund for the unutilized time up to 30 days after payment. At 30 days, all sales are considered final and refunds will not be issued.

Liability

Fidei.email actively maintains and improves our services. This means that there will inevitably be errors in our systems. We do our very best to minimize human error but we are fallen men and our efforts will not be perfect. In the event of an error we will work as quickly as possible to resolve it and restore service to its expected behavior.

As part of operating any Internet-based service, including those provided by Fidei.email, upgrades and system maintenance must be regularly performed. We reserve the right to perform such maintenance at any time and without notice. We will do our best to perform such maintenance so as to minimize how it affects most users.

The service is provided “as is” and you agree not to hold us responsible for any damages that arise as a result of the loss of use, data, or profits connected to the performance of this service. Furthermore, you will not hold us liable if confidential material is unintentionally released as the result of a security failure or vulnerability. For sensitive materials, please use a strong encryption scheme such as GPG.

We do, however, work to make Fidei as reliable and error-free as possible.

Refusal of Service

We reserve the right to refuse service without further explanation. Reasons for doing so would include but not be limited to violation of these rules, attacks of any kind on Fidei employees or infrastructure, libel or calumny towards Fidei and/or its employees.

Indemnification

You agree that we cannot be held responsible for any third party claim, demand, or damage, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, arising out of your use of our services. You, and solely you, take responsibility for your actions while using our service.

Terms Modifications

We reserve the right to review and change this agreement at any time. You are responsible for regularly reviewing these Terms and Conditions. Continued use of our services after such changes shall constitute your consent to such changes.

Document History

April 1, 2022 - Previous update (Email service)

August 2, 2025 - Updated to include Fidei Chat service