Terms of Use
Plain terms for a site with no accounts. Using OBSCURA OS means you accept what is below.
Last updated: October 7, 2026
What you are agreeing to
OBSCURA OS provides browser-based tools at obscuraos.com. By using the site you agree to these terms. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the site.
No account, and what follows from that
There is no registration and no server-side copy of your work. Everything you create lives in your browser's local storage on the device you used. Clearing your browser data, switching browsers, switching devices, or using private browsing will lose it. Keeping backups of anything you care about is your responsibility, and every tool provides an export or download for exactly that purpose.
What is free, and what is paid
The Workspace is free for every purpose, personal or commercial, with no account, and every other tool is free to open and to check a file with. Saving or exporting results outside the Workspace, the Sovereign Suite application and the Photo Editor as a whole, and the other features listed on the Pro page, are paid for: OBSCURA Pro, one application on its own, or a day with one tool.
- OBSCURA Pro. A subscription, monthly or yearly, sold through Stripe, for one person, covering everything (Pro) or one application on its own, with the features listed on the Pro page. Team (up to 25 people at one organisation) and Business (up to 100) are no longer sold; a Team or Business subscription bought before 7 October 2026 carries on under these terms until it is cancelled. A free trial, where offered, is not charged if cancelled before it ends. A subscription renews until cancelled; cancelling stops the next renewal and Pro stays on to the end of the period paid for. Pro is delivered as a signed key that is checked on your device; the key is for the people the plan covers, and publishing or reselling it ends the subscription without a refund. On Team and Business the subscription’s key can also give each person a key of their own, which stops working when their seat is removed or the subscription ends; the data processing agreement covers what is kept about them.
- A day with one tool. Saving from one free tool for 24 hours from payment, paid once. It covers that tool alone. It does not renew, and there is nothing to cancel. A day or week pass bought before they were withdrawn keeps the terms it was sold on.
- Invitations. A subscriber can send an invitation link from the Pro page. It takes 25% off the first payment for a Pro or Team subscription, for somebody who has not paid for OBSCURA before. Business neither sends nor takes invitations. When that person makes their first payment, the subscriber who invited them is credited one month of their own plan, taken off their next bill by Stripe; once per person invited, while the inviting subscription is live. An invitation used by the same person who sent it earns nothing. Credits have no cash value and end with the subscription.
- Commercial use. Using the free parts of OBSCURA OS inside a business, for paid work or for clients, is permitted at no charge; the terms of that grant are in COMMERCIAL.md in the repository. Pro features at work need a paid plan, or a Team or Business plan or a pass bought earlier.
- Payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your card details.
- Refunds are covered on the refund page, which forms part of these terms.
Acceptable use
The Acceptable Use Policy forms part of these terms and is incorporated into them by reference. Using OBSCURA OS, and buying a licence, means you accept it. Read it before you buy, because breaching it ends your licence immediately and without a refund.
In short: these tools exist to protect confidential material that is lawfully yours or lawfully entrusted to you. They may not be used to tamper with evidence, to defeat a duty of disclosure you owe to a court, regulator, auditor or counterparty, to extort anyone, to deliver malicious code, to deal in illegal goods, to handle material whose possession is unlawful, to harass or locate a person against their will, or to misappropriate someone else’s work. You are responsible for knowing which duties apply to you. If a preservation notice, litigation hold or production order covers material, that obligation overrides any use of this software.
You also may not resell access to the site, or automate use in a way that degrades the site for others.
Everything here runs inside your browser, so we hold no documents and cannot inspect, retrieve, decrypt or produce them for anyone, including ourselves and including law enforcement. That is a design decision, not an oversight, and it does not change. We respond to lawful process to the extent of the information we actually hold, which is limited to the payment records our payment processor keeps.
Provided as-is
OBSCURA OS is provided as is, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including any warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. We do not warrant that the site will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that it will meet your requirements.
The privacy and security tools implement well-understood techniques, and each page describes what its technique does and does not defend against. They are not a guarantee of safety in any particular situation. If you are in danger, or a matter is legally significant, treat this software as one part of a plan and not the whole of it, and get advice from someone qualified to give it.
Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, OBSCURA OS is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, profits, revenue, or business, arising out of your use of or inability to use the site. Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose.
Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.
No advertising
OBSCURA OS shows no advertising and loads no advertising scripts. The site is paid for by voluntary contributions, not by anyone's attention.
Intellectual property
The site, its design, and its code belong to OBSCURA OS. Whatever you create with the tools belongs entirely to you: we acquire no rights in it, which is straightforward given that we never receive it.
Changes
These terms may change; the current version is always on this page with its date. Material changes to the licence will not be applied retroactively to a licence period you have already paid for.
Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada that apply there, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules.