Terms of Use

Effective 4 October 2026. Version 1. Applies to the Oulak iPhone app and this website. Please read it together with the privacy policy.

1. Who I am and what these terms are

Oulak is made by Baturhan Cihan, an independent developer in Türkiye, publishing as "Oulak". In these terms "I", "me" and "Oulak" mean that person, and "you" means the person using the app. My postal address is Istanbul, Türkiye. My contact address is baturhancihan@gmail.com.

These terms are an agreement between you and me. They cover the Oulak iPhone app and this website. The privacy policy explains what I do with your data, and it is part of how Oulak works, but it is a separate document.

You accept these terms by continuing at sign in, after you have seen the notice with links to the terms and the privacy policy. If you do not agree, do not use Oulak. When the terms change in an important way, the app asks you to accept the new version before you go on (section 15).

2. Who can use Oulak

You must be at least 13 years old to use Oulak. The app does not check your age, so you promise that you meet this. If I learn that someone under 13 has an account, I will delete it.

If you are under 18, or under the age of adulthood where you live, you need the permission of a parent or guardian to use Oulak, and to start a Premium subscription. Premium is billed to an Apple Account, and the person who holds that account is responsible for it.

You may use Oulak only if you are allowed to do so under the law that applies to you, and only if I have not removed or suspended your account.

3. Your account

You can only sign in with Apple. You choose a username when you start. Other people use it to find you and send you letters, so treat it as public. It must not be offensive, misleading or someone else's name.

You are responsible for what happens under your account and for keeping your device and Apple Account secure. One person, one account. Do not sell, share or hand over your account. If you think someone else is using it, write to me.

Oulak needs your approximate location to measure how far a bird must fly. What I do with it is described in the privacy policy. Without it Oulak cannot work out a flight. You can change the number of times you update your location only within the limits the app shows.

4. What Oulak is, and why it is slow

Oulak is for text letters between people who know each other. There are no photos or files. You can write only to people you add by username or invite. Each letter is carried by a bird over the real distance between you and the recipient, so delivery takes real time: minutes, hours, sometimes much longer. Some birds fly faster than others, some are slower at night, and some leave only after dark.

This slowness is the product, not a fault. For that reason:

• I do not promise any delivery time. The times the app shows are estimates worked out from distance and bird speed. A letter can arrive later because of an outage, maintenance, a problem at Apple or another provider, your phone settings, or a poor connection.
• Oulak is not for anything urgent or time critical, and it is not an emergency service. If you or someone else is in danger, contact your local emergency services.
• A letter becomes readable to the recipient only after the bird has landed. The sender can always read it.

I may change, add or remove features, birds, wardrobe pieces, flight times and limits, and I may pause or end the service (see section 12 for what happens then). I will try to keep changes fair, and where a change takes away something you paid for, section 9 applies.

5. Your letters and the licence I need

Your letters are yours. You keep every right you have in what you write. I do not claim to own it.

To run Oulak I need your permission to handle your letters. You give me a limited licence, free of charge, worldwide and not exclusive, to store, copy, transmit and show your letters, and to process them, but only for these purposes: delivering them to the person you wrote to, keeping the service working (including backups and security), reviewing a report, and meeting legal duties. I do not use your letters for advertising, and I do not sell them. I do not routinely read letters. I may read a letter if it has been reported, if it is needed to deal with abuse or a serious safety concern, or if the law requires it.

The licence ends when your letter is deleted, except where the privacy policy says that a copy stays for a limited time (for example a copy attached to a report, or technical backups) or where the law requires me to keep it. The person you wrote to has their own copy until they delete it, or until either account is deleted. See the privacy policy for the details of deletion and retention.

You promise that you have the right to write what you write and that it follows section 6. You are responsible for your letters. Letters are private. Please do not share what someone wrote to you in a way that harms them.

6. Rules for using Oulak (zero tolerance)

Oulak has zero tolerance for objectionable content and abusive users. We do not allow it and we remove it. Do not use Oulak to:

• harass, bully, stalk, threaten or intimidate anyone, or to incite or glorify violence;
• send hate toward people because of who they are, such as their race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age;
• send sexually explicit content, or sexual content to someone who does not want it, and never anything sexual or exploitative that involves a minor;
• encourage or glorify suicide or self harm;
• send spam, scams, phishing, unwanted advertising or chain messages, or ask for money or personal details under false pretences;
• pretend to be another person or organisation, or give a false username;
• share other people's private information without their permission;
• send anything illegal, or anything that infringes someone else's rights;
• send malware or try to break, overload, scrape, reverse engineer or get around the app, its limits, a block or a suspension, including by opening a new account after your account was removed;
• use Oulak to give a false picture of where you are in order to harass or deceive someone.

I use an automatic text filter on some text I can check, such as usernames, bird names, and city and area names. It is not perfect. Letters are not scanned automatically, so reports from people matter. A report is the main way I find out.

7. Reporting and blocking

You are in control of who writes to you.

• Report. On a letter you received, open its menu and choose Report this letter. Pick a reason and, if you like, add a note. The text you report is sent to me for review. The person you report is not told who reported them.
• Block. Open a letter and choose Block. Blocking is silent. You keep your old letters, nothing new from that person reaches you, you cannot write to them until you unblock, and they are not told. You can block someone while you report them.
• My review. I review every report, and I aim to do so within 24 hours of receiving it. I act on what I find (section 8).

Reports sent in bad faith, or in large numbers to hurt someone, are themselves a breach of these terms.

8. What I do when the rules are broken, and how to complain

When a report or my own check shows that a rule has been broken, I may, depending on how serious it is:

• remove the content (for example a letter's text is replaced by a notice that it was removed);
• warn the person;
• suspend the account, which stops it from sending letters, and stops its letters that have not yet arrived from being delivered;
• remove the account for good.

For serious breaches (for example threats, sexual content involving a minor, or repeated abuse) I may act at once and without a warning. I may report suspected serious crimes, and anything that threatens someone's life or safety, to the authorities, and I may share information with them where the law allows or requires. Content involving minors is escalated and kept as the law requires.

If I restrict or remove your content or account, I will tell you what I did and why, and how to complain, unless the law stops me. If you think I made a mistake, write to baturhancihan@gmail.com and say what happened. A person (me) will look at it again and reply within 7 days. If an automatic filter blocked something harmless, such as a username, tell me and I will check it. If I remove your account for breaking these rules, I do not owe you a refund of Premium, except where the law says otherwise.

9. Oulak Premium (subscriptions)

Oulak is free to use with three birds. Oulak Premium is an optional auto-renewing subscription. It is the only thing Oulak sells. There are no single purchases, no gifts and no extra credits.

What Premium includes. Premium adds more birds, the Premium wardrobe pieces, seeing birds that are on their way to you, and recalling a bird before it lands. The recall has a limit, shown in the app, of a few uses in any 24 hours. The exact list is shown in the app on the Premium screen and may change over time (section 4).

Plans. Premium is offered monthly and yearly, and as family versions that can be shared through Apple Family Sharing. The prices, the length of each period and any free trial are shown in the app before you subscribe. A free trial, where offered, turns into a paid subscription when it ends, unless you cancel before then.

Billing is by Apple. You buy Premium through Apple's in-app purchase. Apple charges your Apple Account when you confirm the purchase, and again at each renewal. I never see your card or payment details. Apple's terms for in-app purchases apply, and Apple's decisions about payment are Apple's.

Auto-renewal and cancelling. Premium renews automatically for the same period and at the then current price unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. You manage or cancel it in Settings on your iPhone, then your name, then Subscriptions. Deleting the Oulak app, or deleting your Oulak account, does not cancel the subscription, so cancel first. After you cancel, Premium stays on until the end of the period you already paid for.

Family Sharing. If you choose a family version, Apple lets the people in your family group use Premium according to Apple's Family Sharing rules. If someone leaves the family group, or the plan ends, they lose Premium.

Price changes. If the price changes, Apple tells you in advance and, where Apple's rules or the law require it, asks for your consent. If you do not agree, the subscription ends at the end of the period you have paid for.

Refunds. Apple takes payment, so Apple decides refunds. Ask Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com or through Apple Support. I cannot refund an Apple purchase myself. Where the law gives you a right to withdraw from a distance contract or to a refund, that right is not affected, and you use it through Apple. By starting Premium straight away you ask for it to begin at once.

When Premium ends. When Premium stops, the Premium birds and pieces are locked again. Letters you already sent keep flying and arrive normally. Your account and your free birds stay.

10. What belongs to Oulak

The Oulak app, its name and logo, the birds, the illustrations and animations, the wardrobe, the text of the app and the site, and the code behind them belong to me or to the people who license them to me. I give you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the app on Apple devices that you own or control, for your own non-commercial use, in line with these terms and the Apple Media Services terms (the "Usage Rules").

You may not copy, sell, rent, sublicense, scrape or reverse engineer the app, or use the birds, the art or the name outside the app without my written permission. If you send me ideas or feedback, I may use them without paying you or crediting you.

11. Other companies' services

Oulak relies on services of other companies: Apple (Sign in with Apple, push notifications, App Store billing), Supabase (hosting and the database), RevenueCat (handling purchases) and Google Firebase (usage counts and crash reports, if you allow them). Their own terms and privacy policies apply to what they do. The privacy policy lists what each one receives. I am not responsible for services that I do not run, but I am responsible for choosing them with care.

12. Ending your use and deleting your account

You can stop using Oulak at any time. You can delete your letters without deleting your account (Profile, Privacy, Delete all letters), and you can delete your account in the app (Profile, Privacy, Delete account). Deleting cannot be undone. Because a letter belongs to a conversation between two people, the other person loses the letters they had with you too. The privacy policy explains in full what is deleted and what is kept for a while. Cancel a Premium subscription with Apple first (section 9).

I may suspend or remove an account that breaks these terms (section 8). I may also end or pause Oulak, or stop offering it in a country. If I end the whole service, I will tell you in the app and on this website, and I will try to give you reasonable notice and a chance to export your letters. If you have paid for a period of Premium that I cannot honour, I will work with Apple to refund the unused part where that is possible.

Sections that are meant to continue after the end of your use will continue (for example 5, 10, 13 and 16).

13. The service as it is, and limits on liability

I work to make Oulak reliable, but I am one person and software has faults. Oulak is provided "as it is" and "as available". I do not promise that it will be free of errors, always available, or that letters will arrive at any particular time.

I am not responsible for what other users write, and I do not check or endorse it. Within the limits of this section, I am responsible for losses that I cause to you through my fault. I am not liable for losses I could not reasonably have foreseen, for loss of data caused by something outside my control, or for losses caused by your breach of these terms. Where the law allows it, my total liability to you for anything connected with Oulak is limited to the amount you paid for Premium in the 12 months before the event.

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes liability that cannot be limited or excluded by law. That includes liability for intent or gross negligence, for death or personal injury, and for anything else where the law of your country does not allow it. Nothing in these terms takes away the rights you have as a consumer under mandatory law, for example under Turkish consumer law, or under the consumer law of the EU, the UK or the place where you live. If a part of these terms is not valid where you live, the rest still applies.

14. Apple's part (the clauses Apple requires)

You and I agree to the following about Apple. They apply to the app downloaded from the App Store, and they come from Apple's requirements for custom licence agreements.

• Between you and me, not Apple. These terms are an agreement between you and me, not with Apple Inc. ("Apple"). I, not Apple, am responsible for the app and what it contains.
• Scope of the licence. The licence in section 10 is limited to use on Apple-branded products that you own or control, as the Usage Rules of the App Store allow. The app may also be used by members of your family group, and through volume purchase, as those rules allow.
• Maintenance and support. I, not Apple, am responsible for support and maintenance of the app. Apple has no duty to give any. You can reach me as described in section 18.
• Warranty. I give no warranty beyond what the law requires. If the app does not meet any warranty that applies, you may tell Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price of the app (if any). To the fullest extent the law allows, Apple has no other warranty duty for the app. Any other claim, loss or cost for a failure to meet a warranty is my responsibility, not Apple's.
• Product claims. I, not Apple, am responsible for any claim you or anyone else has about the app or your use of it, such as a claim of product liability, a claim that the app does not meet a legal or regulatory requirement, or a consumer protection or privacy claim.
• Intellectual property claims. If someone claims that the app or your use of it infringes their intellectual property, I, not Apple, am responsible for investigating, defending, settling and discharging that claim.
• Legal compliance. You confirm that you are not in a country that the United States has under an embargo or has labelled a "terrorist supporting" country, and that you are not on any United States government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• Third party terms. You must follow the terms of any third party agreement that applies when you use the app (for example your mobile data contract).
• Third party beneficiary. Apple and its subsidiaries are third party beneficiaries of this agreement. When you accept it, Apple has the right (and is taken to have accepted the right) to enforce it against you as a third party beneficiary.
• Developer details. The developer is Baturhan Cihan, Istanbul, Türkiye, baturhancihan@gmail.com.

15. Changes to these terms

I may change these terms, for example when Oulak changes or the law changes. If a change matters, I will update the date at the top, and the app will ask you to read and accept the new version before you carry on. For changes that are only in your favour, or small corrections, I may just update the page. If you do not agree to a new version, stop using Oulak and delete your account, and cancel any Premium with Apple. The version that applies to you is the one you accepted most recently.

16. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the law of the Republic of Türkiye, without its rules on conflict of laws. Disagreements go first to me: please write to baturhancihan@gmail.com and I will try to settle it fairly. If we cannot, the courts and enforcement offices of Istanbul have jurisdiction.

None of this takes away your rights as a consumer. If you are a consumer, you may also bring a claim in the courts of the place where you live, you keep the protection of the mandatory consumer rules of the country where you live even if they differ from the law chosen above, and in Türkiye you may use the consumer arbitration committees and consumer courts under the consumer protection law within their limits. EU consumers may also use the EU online dispute resolution routes where they are available.

Any dispute about an Apple purchase, a refund or an Apple Account is between you and Apple under Apple's terms.

17. Languages

These terms are published in English and Turkish. They say the same things. If the two differ, the Turkish text applies for people who live in Türkiye, and the English text applies for everyone else. The text you read in the app is the language of your device.

18. Contact

Questions about these terms, reports, complaints and appeals go to baturhancihan@gmail.com. In the app you can also use Profile, then Contact us. The mail from Contact us starts with a few lines of diagnostics that you can edit or delete before you send it (see the privacy policy).

Baturhan Cihan, Istanbul, Türkiye, baturhancihan@gmail.com