Acceptable Use Policy

This page says what you may and may not do in OurPath, including how you communicate with your co-parent. It forms part of the Terms of Service and the Professional Portal Terms.

Effective from 19 September 2026. Version 1.1.

Why this policy exists, and what it is not #

OurPath is used by people who often do not like each other, sometimes for good reason. We are not going to pretend otherwise, and we are not going to police tone.

This policy is not a civility code. You are allowed to be terse, cold, formal, unfriendly and unhappy. You are allowed to disagree, to refuse, to say no, and to say it briefly. Many parents using OurPath are communicating with someone they would rather never speak to again, and a message that reads as cold is often a message that took considerable self-control to write.

What this policy covers is a much shorter list: conduct that harms a child, threatens or abuses a person, or breaks the law. That is where we act, and outside it we stay out of your arrangement.

We also are not your referee. If your complaint is that your co-parent is unreasonable, unhelpful or difficult, that is a matter for mediation, a solicitor or a court. We will not adjudicate it and we will not take sides. Section 13 of the Terms of Service explains our neutrality.

1. You must not use OurPath to harm a child #

This comes first because it matters most.

Do not use OurPath to:

• create, share, request or store any material that sexually exploits or abuses a child, or any indecent image of a child;
• groom, solicit or attempt to make contact with a child;
• share information about a child with anyone who presents a risk to that child;
• record, encourage or facilitate any other form of abuse or exploitation of a child.

Where we become aware of material of this kind we will report it to the police and, where appropriate, to the National Crime Agency, and we will preserve the evidence. We will do this without notifying the account holder. There is no warning stage and no appeal before we act.

2. You must not abuse, threaten or harass anyone #

Do not use OurPath to:

• threaten violence against anyone, including your co-parent, your children, a professional, or our staff;
• harass, stalk or intimidate anyone;
• send messages designed to frighten, humiliate or degrade;
• send a high volume of messages intended to overwhelm, distress or exhaust rather than to communicate;
• make discriminatory attacks on someone's race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other protected characteristic;
• share intimate images of anyone without their consent;
• breach a non-molestation order, restraining order, injunction or bail condition. If a court has restricted your contact with someone, that restriction applies in OurPath exactly as it does everywhere else, and using our app to contact them is a breach of the order.

Please read this alongside the Safeguarding Statement, which explains what we do when we learn of a risk, and — importantly — what we cannot do.

3. Communication between parents #

Within the limits above, how you talk to each other is your business. But OurPath exists to make an arrangement work, so we ask a few things, and two of them are rules rather than requests.

Rules:

• Do not use the record as a weapon. Deliberately provoking your co-parent in order to produce a message you can export is a misuse of the product. We built the record to reduce arguments, not to manufacture them. Exports contain the whole thread over the range you select, including your own messages, which makes this strategy less effective than people expect.
• Do not misrepresent the record. Do not present a partial export as complete, doctor a document and present it as ours, claim we have certified something we have not, or claim that a record is admissible in court. The verifier exists so that anyone can check, and misusing a certified export is the kind of thing a court takes seriously.

Requests, which are not rules:

• Write what you would be content for a judge, a Cafcass officer and eventually your children to read. It is a reasonable test and the record is permanent.
• Keep the thread about arranging the care of your children.
• When tone assist offers a calmer version, consider it. You can always decline, and it will never block you.

4. Honesty about what you record #

Do not deliberately enter false information — a cost that was never incurred, a receipt that is not yours, an event that did not happen, an approval you did not give.

We do not verify what either of you enters, and we could not. But the record is permanent, both of you can see it, and a fabricated entry sitting in a certified export is a great deal harder to explain than an argument you lost.

5. Technical and general rules #

Do not:

• access another family's data, or attempt to;
• use someone else's account, share your credentials, or let anyone else use yours;
• attempt to alter, delete or forge records, or to defeat the hash chain or the verifier;
• probe, scan, penetration-test or attack our systems without our written permission — if you find a vulnerability, tell us at security@ourpath.app and we will treat you well;
• scrape, bulk-download or systematically extract data;
• reverse-engineer, decompile or attempt to derive our source code, except as the law expressly permits;
• use bots, scripts or automated tools against the service;
• upload malware, or anything designed to disrupt or damage;
• use OurPath to send spam or marketing;
• use OurPath for any commercial purpose, or to build a competing product;
• remove, obscure or alter any notice, seal or attribution on an export;
• impersonate anyone, including us;
• do anything unlawful.

6. What we do about breaches #

We act proportionately, and we tell you what we have done unless there is a safeguarding or legal reason not to.

What we never do as an enforcement measure:

• We never delete or alter a shared record. We cannot, and we would not if we could. Enforcement does not touch the evidence.
• We never remove your export access. Even a closed account keeps it. Your children's records are not a punishment.
• We never tell one parent what enforcement action we have taken against the other. You will see that a professional has access, because that is a product feature; you will not be given a report on your co-parent's conduct to use against them. If you want a finding about their behaviour, that is what a court is for.

7. If you want to report something #

When you report something, tell us what happened, when, and what you would like us to do. We will acknowledge within 2 working days (immediately, for safeguarding), investigate, and tell you the outcome to the extent we lawfully can.

In an emergency, call 999. Do not report an emergency to us. We do not monitor messages in real time and we may not read your email for hours.

8. Appeals #

If we suspend or close your account and you think we are wrong, email appeals@ourpath.app. A person who was not involved in the original decision will review it, and we will respond within 10 working days.

Your export access continues while an appeal is being considered.

9. Changes #

We may change this policy. Material changes get 30 days' notice by email and in the app.

Our Path Digital Ltd · Registered in England and Wales, company number 17406043

Version 1.1 · Effective 19 September 2026