What Porchlight is
A personal safety check-in. You say where you are going and when you should be there. If that time passes and you have not checked in, the people you named are told, then told again 4 minutes later, on a ladder that ends with the suggestion that they call 911.
It is free. There is no card, no trial, and nothing to buy inside it.
What it is not
- Not an emergency service. It does not call 911 or the police, for you or for anybody. 911 comes first, always.
- Not a monitoring service. There is no monitoring centre, no staff on call, and nobody watching a screen. An alert is raised by a deadline passing.
- Not a way to follow a person. A watch can only be started on yourself, and it reads no position. The one exception is the alarm you press yourself, which sends your position once, to the people you named.
- Not a substitute for your own judgement, or for the people already in your life.
Your account
An account needs an email address and a password. Keep the password to yourself: whoever is signed in as you can start and end your watches. One account is for one person. Porchlight is not directed to children under 13.
What you may not use it for
Porchlight carries your words to other people. What you call a watch, where you say you are going, a plate, a sealed note, and the sentence you write when you press the alarm for somebody else all reach the people you named, and some of it arrives as a notification on their phone in the middle of the night. So these are not allowed:
- Using it to threaten, harass, frighten or deceive anybody.
- Raising an alarm, or letting a watch go overdue, in order to alarm the people you named. A practice run is fine when its name says that is what it is.
- Inviting a person again after they have said no.
- Using another person's name or email address as your own.
- Trying to reach another person's account, watches or record, or to interfere with the service.
Leaving, removing and reporting
Anybody can leave, at any time. You can remove a person you named. You can stop watching over a person who named you. You can delete your account. None of these needs anybody else to agree. Support says where each one is, and Delete your account says how to do that one without the app.
If somebody is misusing Porchlight, write to support@porchlight.watch and say what happened. A person reads it, and a reply can take a few days. An account that is used against these terms may be closed.
A report to us is not a report to the police. If you are being threatened, call 911.
What you write is yours
You give Porchlight permission to store what you write and to send it to the people you named, because that is the product. You give it no permission to do anything else with it. The privacy policy says what is kept, who carries it, and how to delete it.
No warranty
Porchlight is provided as it is. It is built with care and it is tested, and it can still fail. A notification can be late, or never arrive: a phone can be switched off, out of battery or out of signal, a permission can be declined, and the services that carry a notification can delay one or drop it. The people you named can be asleep.
So do not make Porchlight the only thing between you and harm. Tell somebody where you are going. If something is wrong, call 911.
To the extent the law allows, Porchlight is offered without warranty of any kind, and the project and the people who build it are not liable for loss or harm that comes from using it or from not being able to use it.
The law that applies
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Missouri.
If these change
The date at the top changes with them, and the change is written plainly rather than left to be discovered. Using Porchlight after a change means the terms as changed apply.
Getting in touch
The address is the one above, and the same one on every page of this site. Nothing sent to it raises an alarm, and nobody is reading it at 2am.
If you are in danger right now, call 911.