Terms of use
These general terms of use (hereinafter the "Terms") govern the use of the scopemy.city service, published by Help4Housing Sàrl (hereinafter "we" or "us"). They apply to the website, to the WhatsApp reporting channel and to the related notifications (together, "the Service").
1. Two offerings, two frameworks
scopemy.city comes in two distinct offerings:
- The citizen observatory, available at scopemy.city. It is free of charge for citizens, free of advertising and independent of public authorities. These Terms apply to it in full.
- The platform for public authorities, a white-label version provided on a subscription basis to municipalities, cantons, groupings of municipalities or organisations (for example a property management agency or a campus). On an instance of this kind, the client public authority is responsible for the service it provides to its population. The instance is available at its own address (a subdomain of scopemy.city or the public authority's own domain), in its colours. Its own terms, legal notice and privacy policy may supplement or replace these Terms; if so, they are published on the instance. The relationship between the public authority and us is governed by a separate contract.
A public authority that is a client of the platform has no say over the publication of reports on the citizen observatory. The observatory's moderation rules (Article 7) are the same for all locations, whether or not the municipality concerned is a client.
A public authority may request a demonstration or open a free 30-day trial. At the end of the trial, the trial space becomes read-only; it is deleted with its data 60 days later if it has not been converted into a subscription. Quotes and purchase orders are drawn up from an indicative price list; the platform does not collect any payment online.
2. Purpose of the Service
The Service makes it possible:
- to report a problem observed in the public space, via WhatsApp or from the website;
- to view published reports, confirm them, vote and follow their progress;
- to support a report with a "Me too", with or without an account, to subscribe by e-mail to the news of an area and to send a thank-you to a service;
- to forward reports to the competent public services.
On the instance of a client public authority, a services portal allows its staff to handle the reports assigned to them, to exchange internal notes and attachments, which are never published, and to publish an official response signed by the service, which appears on the report page. Staff cannot see the contact details of the people who submit reports. A service may also announce a date of intervention, displayed on the report page, and entrust a report to an appointed contractor by means of a personal link that is time-limited and revocable.
The Service facilitates communication between the population and the authorities. It guarantees neither intervention nor resolution: dealing with a problem is a matter for the competent authorities.
3. Acceptance of the Terms
When you create an account, or when you report from the website without an account, you accept these Terms by ticking the box provided for that purpose. When you report via WhatsApp, the Service's first message tells you where to read the Terms and the privacy policy; by continuing the exchange, you accept the rules of use set out therein. Merely consulting the website creates no obligation on your part, other than compliance with the law and with Articles 5 and 6.
You must be at least 16 years old to report or to create an account.
4. User account
An account is not required to consult the observatory or to report via WhatsApp. You can also report from the website without an account: an e-mail address is enough, confirmed by a link before moderation. An account is still required to confirm a report, to vote, to follow reports and to receive notifications on your device.
You are responsible for the accuracy of the information you provide and for the confidentiality of your password. If you notice any unauthorised use of your account, write to us without delay at contact@scopemy.city.
You may delete your account at any time from your personal area or by writing to us.
5. Reporting via WhatsApp
5.1 Automated exchanges
The Service's WhatsApp number (+41 79 816 25 50) responds by means of an automated program that guides you step by step: photo, location, category, optional description, then confirmation. You are the one who chooses the category. Each report is then reviewed by a person before publication. You may at any time ask to speak to a person by writing to contact@scopemy.city. You may send a voice note instead of a written description: it is never published, and the moderation team writes the description from it before publication.
5.2 Messages you receive
By writing to us, you agree to receive messages relating to your reports: acknowledgement of receipt, request for clarification, publication or rejection, status changes. We do not send any advertising messages. In accordance with WhatsApp's rules, our free-form replies are only possible within 24 hours of your last message; after that, only message templates approved by Meta can be sent to you. Once only, when a report has stayed open for 30 days without news, we may ask you whether it is still relevant.
5.3 Stopping messages
Send STOP (or ARRÊT, DÉSABONNER, UNSUBSCRIBE) to stop receiving messages. The request takes effect immediately. Your reports that have already been published remain visible, without your number.
5.4 WhatsApp and Meta
The channel relies on Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform. Your use of WhatsApp remains subject to the WhatsApp terms of service. Messages sent to a business account pass through Meta's infrastructure, including in the United States. Details are set out in the privacy policy. If you do not wish to use WhatsApp, you can report from the website.
6. Content rules
You undertake:
- to submit only accurate information, in good faith;
- not to publish any defamatory, insulting, hateful, discriminatory, violent, obscene or unlawful content;
- to avoid photographing recognisable people, number plates, the interior of dwellings or any other element that would make it possible to identify a third party;
- to submit only photos that you took yourself or that you have the right to disseminate;
- not to use the Service to settle a private dispute, to harm a person or to advertise;
- not to disrupt the Service, not to circumvent its security measures and not to collect data by automated means without our written consent;
- not to impersonate another person, an authority or us.
On WhatsApp, the rules of WhatsApp's Business Messaging Policy also apply: no sales, no solicitation, no collection of financial information.
7. Moderation, statement of reasons and appeal
7.1 How we moderate
Each report is reviewed by a member of the moderation team before publication. We check that it concerns the public space and that it complies with Article 6. We may blur part of a photo, correct a category, merge duplicates, reject or remove content and, in the event of repeated abuse, suspend an account or a number.
7.2 A reasoned decision
When we reject or remove content, or suspend an account, we inform the author through the channel they used (WhatsApp or e-mail). The message states the decision, the reason, the rule concerned and how to challenge it. We may dispense with this only if the law or an authority prohibits it, or if the content is manifestly abusive (spam, for example).
7.3 Challenging a decision
You may challenge a decision within 30 days, free of charge, by replying to the message received or by writing to contact@scopemy.city with the reference of the report. A person other than the one who took the initial decision re-examines your request and gives you a reasoned reply, as a rule within 14 days. This internal appeal does not deprive you of any other legal remedy. If you reside in the European Union, you may also refer the matter to a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body within the meaning of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 on digital services, insofar as that Regulation applies to the Service.
7.4 Reporting unlawful content
Anyone may notify us of content that they consider unlawful or contrary to these Terms by writing to contact@scopemy.city with the reference or address of the page, the reasons for the notice and their contact details. We acknowledge receipt, examine the request diligently and inform its author of the action taken.
8. Your content
You remain the holder of the rights to the photos and texts you submit. You grant us a free, non-exclusive licence, for Switzerland and abroad, limited to what is necessary to:
- publish the report on the observatory and, where applicable, on the instance of the public authority concerned;
- forward it to the competent public services;
- produce aggregated statistics and reports on the public space;
- adapt it for moderation purposes (cropping, blurring, translation).
This licence ends when the content is deleted or anonymised in accordance with the privacy policy, except for reports already published. We do not sell your content and do not transfer it to third parties for commercial purposes.
Open data. Once your report is published, its text content and data (title, category, status, description, address and location of the problem, dates, official response) are made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence, with the source credited as "scopemy.city and citizen contributors". By publishing, you accept this dissemination. Your identity never forms part of it. As this licence is irrevocable, copies made by third parties before a deletion or anonymisation cannot be recalled. Photos are not placed under this licence: the API and the widget only provide a link to them.
9. Open data, API and widget
The open data, the API (including the Open311 GeoReport v2 interface and webhooks) and the embeddable widget are described on the Open data and API and integrations pages. Their use is subject to the following rules:
- Credit the source: any reuse states "scopemy.city and citizen contributors (CC BY 4.0)" and, for addresses, "© swisstopo, © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)".
- Rate limits: without a key, 120 requests per minute per IP address; with a key, 600 per minute. Beyond that, the API responds with a temporary refusal. We may adjust these limits to protect the service.
- API keys: they are issued by a client public authority for its own domain, are personal, must be kept secret and may be revoked at any time. A write key makes it possible to submit reports, which are subject to the same moderation as all others.
- Webhooks: notifications sent to a subscriber's server are signed. The subscriber verifies the signature, protects its receiving endpoint and is solely responsible for the use it makes of the data received.
- Widget: it is displayed only on the sites declared by the public authority, and neither sets nor reads any cookie.
- No availability guarantee: the API, the files and the widget are provided without any commitment as to availability or stability, unless there is a written commitment in a client public authority's contract. We announce incompatible changes in the documentation.
- Prohibited uses: attempting to re-identify the people who report, circumventing the rate limits or the keys, presenting the data as an official position of an authority.
10. Availability of the Service
We endeavour to keep the Service available and accurate, but cannot guarantee that it will operate without interruption or error. It depends on third-party services (hosting, WhatsApp, mapping, e-mail delivery) whose availability is beyond our control. We may develop the Service; should we have to close the observatory, we would announce it at least 30 days in advance and allow you to retrieve your data. Availability commitments towards client public authorities are set out in their contract. The report form can be filled in while offline: the draft stays on your device, and the report is only submitted once it has been sent to and accepted by our server.
11. Liability
We are liable for damage caused intentionally or through gross negligence, as well as for injury to life, body or health. Otherwise, and to the extent permitted by law, our liability for slight negligence is excluded, given that the Service is free of charge for citizens. We are not liable for decisions of the authorities or for content published by other users, subject to our obligation to remove manifestly unlawful content that has been notified to us.
You are liable, in accordance with the applicable law, for damage caused by content you submit in breach of the law or of these Terms.
Mandatory consumer rights remain reserved.
12. Suspension and termination of use
You may stop using the Service at any time. We may suspend an account or a number in the event of a serious or repeated breach of the Terms, in a proportionate manner and after a warning, except in cases of manifest abuse. The decision is reasoned and may be challenged in accordance with Article 7.3.
13. Personal data
The processing of your data is described in the privacy policy. The list of our processors is published on the Processors page.
14. Intellectual property
The scopemy.city trade mark, the logo, the visual identity, the editorial texts and the code of the Service are protected. Their reproduction without authorisation is prohibited, subject to the open licences mentioned in the legal notice (in particular the OpenStreetMap data).
15. Changes to the Terms
We may amend these Terms. We announce any significant change at least 30 days before it enters into force, on the website and, if you have an account, by e-mail. If you do not accept the new version, you may delete your account. The version date appears at the top of the page.
16. Governing law and jurisdiction
These Terms are governed by Swiss law. The place of jurisdiction is Geneva, subject to mandatory places of jurisdiction, in particular that of the consumer's domicile (Art. 32 of the Swiss Civil Procedure Code), and to more favourable mandatory provisions of the country of habitual residence of a consumer in the European Union.
Before taking any legal action, write to us at contact@scopemy.city: we will seek an amicable solution.
Publisher
Help4Housing Sàrl
Route de Thonon 119a, 1222 Vésenaz, Switzerland
UID: CHE-421.813.985, Geneva commercial register
Contact: contact@scopemy.city