Acceptable Use Policy

1. Purpose

This Acceptable Use Policy establishes rules for using SierraTec Survey safely, lawfully, and responsibly. It applies to Customers, workspace members, administrators, API users, survey creators, and anyone using the Service on their behalf.

2. Legal Compliance

You may use SierraTec Survey only for lawful purposes and must comply with laws applicable to your surveys, communications, respondents, data collection, research, and organization.

3. Fraud, Phishing, and Impersonation

You may not use the Service to conduct fraud, phishing, credential theft, deceptive impersonation, payment scams, identity theft, or other deceptive or unlawful activity.

4. Malware and Technical Abuse

You may not distribute malware, malicious code, exploit kits, or harmful files; attempt unauthorized access; probe or test SierraTec systems without authorization; bypass security controls; or interfere with Service availability.

5. Harassment, Threats, and Exploitation

You may not use SierraTec Survey to threaten, harass, stalk, exploit, extort, intimidate, or facilitate unlawful harm against another person.

6. Unlawful Discrimination

You may not use the Service to facilitate unlawful discrimination or to make decisions prohibited by applicable civil-rights, employment, housing, credit, education, healthcare, or other laws.

7. Privacy and Unauthorized Data Collection

You may not collect, disclose, sell, or otherwise process personal information unless you have the rights, notices, permissions, consents, and lawful basis required for that activity.

8. Highly Sensitive and Regulated Data

You may not assume every SierraTec plan or feature is suitable for PHI, education records, financial information, biometric data, government information, or other regulated data. Use such data only where SierraTec has expressly approved the configuration and any required agreement is in place.

9. Spam and Communications

You may not use the Service to send unlawful spam or unsolicited communications. If SierraTec offers email or SMS distribution, you are responsible for applicable consent, identification, suppression, unsubscribe, and opt-out requirements.

10. Intellectual Property

You may not upload or distribute material that infringes copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, trade-secret, or other rights.

11. Illegal Goods, Services, or Activity

You may not use SierraTec Survey to facilitate transactions or conduct that are prohibited by applicable law or sanctions.

12. Survey Misrepresentation

You may not falsely represent who sponsors a survey, why information is being collected, whether a response is anonymous, or how respondent information will be used.

13. Research and Human Subjects

Researchers remain responsible for required ethics review, institutional approval, consent, and human-subject protections. SierraTec does not provide IRB or ethics approval by hosting a survey.

14. Security Controls and Access

You may not share credentials in violation of account rules, circumvent workspace-member limits, bypass rate or plan restrictions, or misuse API keys, SSO, SCIM, or administrative features.

15. Scraping and Competitive Extraction

You may not scrape SierraTec platform content at scale, systematically extract proprietary content, or use the Service to create a substantially similar competing platform except where applicable law expressly permits the activity.

16. Respondent Experience

Survey creators should avoid deceptive dark patterns and should provide notices, consent language, accessibility accommodations, contest rules, or incentive conditions required for the intended audience.

16A. Children and Student Data

You may not use SierraTec Survey to collect personal information from children in a manner that violates COPPA or other applicable child-privacy law.

When collecting student or education-record information, you are responsible for applicable FERPA, state student-privacy, parental-consent, school-notice, institutional-approval, and data-governance requirements.

17. Enforcement

SierraTec may investigate suspected violations and restrict or suspend accounts, surveys, collectors, integrations, API keys, or workspaces when reasonably necessary to protect users, respondents, SierraTec, or third parties.

18. Reporting Abuse

Suspected phishing, fraud, unlawful surveys, or other abuse may be reported to info@sierratecsecure.com or another abuse-reporting channel SierraTec publishes.

19. Changes

SierraTec may update this Policy as threats, products, or legal requirements evolve. Material changes will be communicated where required by law or contract.