1. Platform Overview

AvatarWalk is a digital marketplace for live walking tours where users can:

• Book real-time, virtual walking tours with local hosts (“Avatars”)
• Watch pay-per-view live walks hosted by Avatars
• Invite friends to watch a booked tour with them in a watch party
• Register as an Avatar and earn income via paid live content

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old to use AvatarWalk. By using the platform, you confirm that you meet the age requirement for your jurisdiction.

3. User Accounts

• Users must create an account to book or host tours.
• You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your login credentials.
• You may not impersonate another individual, use a false identity, or misrepresent your affiliation.

4. Avatars and Earnings

• Avatars are independent contractors, not employees of AvatarWalk.
• Earnings are generated through pay-per-minute tours and pay-per-view walks.
• Avatars are solely responsible for their tax filings, income reporting, and business compliance.

5. Payment and Refund Policy

• Payments are collected through secure third-party payment processors.
• A booking may be cancelled before the session goes live, and a cancelled booking is refunded in full — by either party. Once a session is live it cannot be cancelled, and a session that ends early is billed for the time delivered. The cancellation policy sets out each case and is the authority on refunds.
• Outside those cases, refunds are issued for service failure, fraud, or platform error.

6. Content Guidelines

• All users and Avatars must follow local laws, including filming permissions, privacy rights, and public conduct.
• Prohibited content includes but is not limited to: hate speech, harassment, sexually explicit material, violence, and illegal activity.
• AvatarWalk reserves the right to suspend or terminate accounts violating these terms.

7. Intellectual Property

• AvatarWalk owns all rights to its brand, software, trademarks, and platform content (except content Avatars create during walks).
• Avatars retain rights to their live content but grant AvatarWalk a license to display, market, and moderate that content.

8. Walk Interruptions

AvatarWalk is not responsible for technical issues that disrupt walks, including poor internet connectivity, device malfunction, or third-party errors.

9. Session Monitoring

• AvatarWalk staff may watch any live session while it is in progress, for safety, security, and fraud prevention.
• Before each session begins, both the Avatar and the client are shown a notice that the session may be monitored, and must acknowledge it to continue. That acknowledgement is recorded.
• There is no on-screen indicator during a session and no notification at the moment monitoring actually happens. Neither party is told when staff have joined, either at the time or afterwards.
• The distinction matters: you are told in advance that a session may be watched, and you are not told when it is being watched. Any session may be viewed at any point without either party knowing it is happening right then.
• Staff join as viewers only. They cannot send video or audio into a session, post in chat, or speak to either party.
• This monitoring does not record. Watching a session produces no video or audio file, and nothing of what staff saw is kept afterwards.
• Every time a member of staff is given access to watch a session, AvatarWalk writes an internal audit record identifying the staff member, the session, and the stated reason.

10. Live Location While Hosting

• While an Avatar is hosting a live session, their device sends their location to AvatarWalk roughly every 10 seconds, so that staff can see a real-time map of sessions in progress, the client who booked the walk can follow it on the walk’s live map, and, when the client drops a destination pin, the pin can be checked as within reach and a walking route worked out.
• This location is precise, not approximated — unlike the location shown publicly on a tour’s page and map, which is deliberately offset so strangers cannot find where the Avatar is standing.
• It is collected only during a live session, never before one starts or after one ends.
• Only the most recent position is kept. Each update overwrites the last, so no movement history or route is stored, and the record is deleted when the session ends. The one exception is the destination pin the client sets during the walk, which is kept on the booking only while the walk is live and is deleted when the walk ends — or, if nothing ends the walk, within about a day of its scheduled end. The client’s live map draws the path walked since the client opened the walk (up to roughly the last half hour of walking); that path is held only on the client’s screen and is not stored.
• It is visible to AvatarWalk staff, and to the client who booked the session on the walk’s live map, but only while the walk is live. It is not shown to anyone else, including anybody else watching the walk and friends in a watch party. While a destination pin is set, the Avatar’s current position and the pin are also sent to Google, about every 75 metres walked, to calculate the walking route (see the Privacy Policy, section 11).
• Hosting requires granting your browser’s location permission. You may withdraw it at any time in your browser or device settings.

11. Watch Parties

• A client who has booked a tour may invite up to four friends to watch it with them, free, from booking until the tour ends. Friends need their own AvatarWalk account and must meet the eligibility requirement in Section 2.
• Invitations are made with a single shareable link. Anyone who has the link can accept while places remain, without the client approving each person, so the client is responsible for whom they share it with. The client can reset the link, after which it admits nobody new, and can remove any friend at any time.
• Friends can watch the tour, read the booking’s details and post in the tour chat, and during the live tour can join a video and audio call with the client and the other friends. The Avatar is not part of that call, and from it is told only how many friends there are; anything a friend posts in the tour chat is seen by the Avatar too. Friends are not shown the Avatar’s live location.
• Everyone in a watch party, in the party call and in the tour chat, is bound by these Terms, including the Content Guidelines in Section 6.
• The party call is neither recorded nor monitored by AvatarWalk staff. The tour itself remains subject to Session Monitoring under Section 9.
• There is no report button inside a watch party. To report conduct in one, contact info@avatarwalk.com.
• AvatarWalk may make watch parties unavailable, for everyone or for a particular client, at any time.

12. Privacy

See our full Privacy Policy for information on how your data is used, stored, and protected, including the monitoring, live-location and watch-party practices described in Sections 9, 10 and 11.

13. Termination

We reserve the right to suspend or remove users at any time for violations of these Terms or misuse of the platform.

We also terminate, in appropriate circumstances, the accounts of users who repeatedly infringe the copyrights of others. What counts as repeated, how a strike is recorded and when it is withdrawn are set out in our Copyright Complaints policy.

14. Copyright Complaints

AvatarWalk carries material published by its users, including tour photographs and live video walked in public places. If you believe material on the platform infringes a copyright you own or represent, our Copyright Complaints page names our designated agent, registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, and sets out how to file a notice, how to file a counter-notice if your material was removed in error, and the consequences of a notice made in bad faith.

15. Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or your use of AvatarWalk will be resolved by binding arbitration seated in New York, New York. Judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction.

Class action waiver. Disputes will be arbitrated only on an individual basis. You and AvatarWalk each waive any right to bring or participate in a class, collective, consolidated or representative action, and the arbitrator may not consolidate the claims of more than one person or preside over any form of representative proceeding. The arbitrator may award relief only in favour of the individual party seeking it, and only to the extent needed to resolve that party's own claim.

If this class action waiver is found unenforceable as to any claim, then the arbitration agreement above does not apply to that claim, and that claim alone will be heard in a court located in New York, New York. The remainder of this section continues to apply to every other claim.

Small claims. Either you or AvatarWalk may instead bring an individual claim in a small claims court that has jurisdiction, if the claim qualifies to be heard there. Choosing small claims does not waive anything else in this section.

Your right to opt out. You can decline arbitration and the class action waiver, and nothing else changes if you do. Email info@avatarwalk.com within 30 days of first accepting these Terms, from the address on your account, saying that you opt out. That is all it takes — no form, no reason, and no effect on your account or your bookings. If you opt out, disputes between you and AvatarWalk are heard in a court located in New York, New York, and the rest of these Terms continues to apply.