This document forms part of your agreement with Xscade Technologies Private Limited.
This Acceptable Use Policy (the "AUP") sets out what may not be done with the Service. It forms part of the Agreement between you and Xscade Technologies Private Limited ("Xscade", "we", "us" or "our"). Capitalised terms that are not defined here have the meanings given in the White-Label Reseller Agreement (the "Reseller Agreement").
1. Purpose and scope
1.1 Purpose. The Service exists to help businesses invite their genuine customers to share honest feedback and reviews, to respond to reviews, and to manage their Google Business Profiles. Any use that undermines the authenticity of reviews or misleads the public is prohibited.
1.2 Who must comply. This AUP applies to you, your personnel and contractors, and every End Customer and its authorised users (each a "User"). Section 3 also governs how Users present review pages and review drafts to Reviewers.
1.3 Your responsibility for End Customers. You are responsible for your End Customers' compliance with this AUP. Your Customer-Facing Terms must contain restrictions at least as protective as this AUP (the template terms of service published on the Partner Site include them), and you must enforce them.
1.4 Precedence. Under the Reseller Agreement, the prohibitions in this AUP always apply, whatever any other Partner Document says.
2. Google Policies
2.1 Compliance. Users must comply with Google Policies, including Google's rules on prohibited and restricted content for Google Maps user-contributed content, the guidelines for representing a business on Google, and the terms and policies for the Google Business Profile APIs. Where Google Policies are stricter than this AUP, Users must follow Google Policies.
2.2 Authority over profiles. Users may connect and manage only Google Business Profiles that they own or are authorised to manage.
2.3 Google's decisions. Google may remove reviews, restrict review requests or suspend Business Profiles at its discretion. We are not responsible for Google's decisions, and we may restrict the Service where Google requires it.
3. Reviews and feedback
3.1 Fake reviews. Users must not:
- (a) write, post, buy or sell reviews, or ask anyone to post a review, that does not reflect a genuine experience with the business;
- (b) review their own business, have owners, employees, their relatives or agents do so, or post reviews about competitors;
- (c) post a review on a Reviewer's behalf, or have Reviewers post from devices or Google accounts controlled by the business; or
- (d) use the Service to generate review text in bulk, or for anyone who has not been a customer of the business.
3.2 Incentives. Users must not offer, give or promise money, discounts, free products or services, gifts, entries into a contest or draw, or any other benefit in exchange for a review, for a particular rating, or for changing or removing a review.
3.3 Staff rewards. Features that reward a business's employees for reviews they help generate may be used only to reward employees for inviting customers to leave honest reviews. Employees must not write reviews, post on a customer's behalf, pressure customers, or pass any part of a reward on to a Reviewer, and rewards must not depend on the rating or content of a review.
3.4 Review gating. Users must not discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively ask only satisfied customers for reviews. Features that invite private feedback (such as feedback forms or review shield settings) may be used only if every Reviewer, whatever rating or feedback they give, is offered a clear and equal opportunity to post a public review on Google. Users must not configure or word any review page, QR code flow, message or in-person request so that only satisfied customers are directed to Google, or so that dissatisfied customers are delayed, discouraged or prevented from posting a public review.
3.5 AI-assisted review drafts. The Service may suggest review wording based on the choices a Reviewer makes on a review page. Users must ensure that:
- (a) drafts are offered as optional suggestions that the Reviewer is free to edit, rewrite or discard, and that the Reviewer chooses their own rating;
- (b) the Reviewer alone decides whether to post a review and posts it personally from their own Google account;
- (c) Reviewers are not instructed or pressured to post a draft unchanged, to include particular keywords or claims, or to give a particular rating; and
- (d) the options from which drafts are generated describe products, services and experiences that the business actually offers, so that a draft reflects what the Reviewer actually experienced.
3.6 Replies to reviews. Users are responsible for every reply published from their account, whether written by them, suggested by AI or published automatically under settings they enabled. AI-suggested replies must be reviewed before publication unless the User has deliberately enabled automatic replies. Replies must not disclose a Reviewer's personal information beyond what the Reviewer made public, must not harass, threaten or retaliate against Reviewers, and must not contain false or misleading statements.
3.7 Requests for reviews. Users must not misrepresent who is asking for a review or why, and must not suggest that a review is required to receive a product, service, warranty, refund or any other benefit.
4. Impersonation and misrepresentation
Users must not:
- (a) impersonate any person, business or brand, or misrepresent their identity or affiliation;
- (b) create or manage a Business Profile, review page or QR code for a business they are not authorised to represent;
- (c) state or imply that they, the Partner Site or the Service is Google, is operated by Google, or is endorsed by, certified by or affiliated with Google, or use Google's names or logos other than as Google's brand guidelines allow;
- (d) in the case of Partners, present the Partner Site as being operated or endorsed by Xscade or GMBQrcode, or use the Marks in customer-facing branding, contrary to the Reseller Agreement; or
- (e) publish false or misleading information in a Business Profile, post or reply, including about prices, offers, locations, opening hours, qualifications or affiliations.
5. Spam and communications
5.1 No spam. Users must not use the Service to send, or to support the sending of, unsolicited bulk or commercial messages by email, SMS, WhatsApp, voice call or any other channel, including review requests to people who are not customers or who have not agreed to be contacted.
5.2 Lawful requests. Review requests may be sent only to genuine customers and must comply with applicable law, including consent requirements and India's rules on unsolicited commercial communications. Users must honour opt-out requests and must not send review requests at an excessive frequency.
5.3 Content quality. Users must not publish spam, repetitive, keyword-stuffed or off-topic content in Business Profile posts or replies.
6. Unlawful and harmful content
Users must not use the Service to create, upload, publish, store or transmit content, or to carry out activity, that:
- (a) is unlawful, or promotes or facilitates illegal activity or illegal goods or services;
- (b) is defamatory, obscene, pornographic, invasive of another person's privacy, or insulting or harassing on the basis of gender, religion, caste, race, ethnicity or any other protected characteristic;
- (c) is harmful to children;
- (d) infringes any patent, trade mark, copyright or other proprietary right;
- (e) deceives or misleads about the origin of a message, or knowingly communicates false or misleading information;
- (f) threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states or public order, or incites the commission of an offence;
- (g) contains malware or anything designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer resource;
- (h) collects or publishes sensitive personal data, such as health, financial, biometric or government identity information, of Reviewers or others without a lawful basis; or
- (i) otherwise breaches applicable law, including consumer protection and advertising law.
7. Sanctions and restricted parties
7.1 Partners. You must not market, sell or provide the Service to any person or entity that is the target of sanctions applicable to you or to us, including sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council or under Indian law, or for use in a country or region subject to comprehensive sanctions.
7.2 Users. No User may use the Service if they are, or act for, such a person or entity, or in breach of applicable export control or sanctions laws.
8. Platform integrity and security
Users must not:
- (a) reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or decrypt the Platform, or attempt to derive its source code, models, prompts or algorithms, except to the extent applicable law expressly permits this despite this restriction;
- (b) copy, frame, mirror, sublicense or resell the Platform, except as the Reseller Agreement permits Partners to resell the Service;
- (c) access or attempt to access accounts, data or systems they are not authorised to access, including data of other Partners or End Customers;
- (d) probe, scan or test the vulnerability of the Platform, or breach or circumvent any security or authentication measure, without our prior written consent (please report suspected vulnerabilities to info@xscade.com);
- (e) circumvent usage limits, Platform Tier restrictions, a Suspension or any other technical limitation;
- (f) use bots, scrapers or other automated means to access the Service, except through interfaces we provide for that purpose;
- (g) interfere with or disrupt the Platform, or place an unreasonable load on it, including through denial-of-service attacks;
- (h) share account credentials with anyone outside the User's organisation; or
- (i) use the Service, or any output of it, to build or train a competing product or service.
9. AI features
Users must not:
- (a) use AI features for purposes unrelated to managing their own business's reviews, feedback and Business Profile;
- (b) attempt to manipulate AI features to bypass their safeguards, extract system prompts or other confidential information, or produce content that this AUP prohibits;
- (c) generate content at volumes inconsistent with normal business use, or call AI features through scripts or other automation;
- (d) use AI output to train or improve any AI model;
- (e) publish AI output without reviewing it for accuracy and suitability, or present it as professional legal, medical, financial or other advice; or
- (f) use AI features in breach of the usage policies published by the providers of the underlying AI models.
10. Your responsibilities for End Customers
10.1 Informing End Customers. You must make End Customers aware of the restrictions in this AUP, including through your Customer-Facing Terms.
10.2 Acting on breaches. If you become aware that an End Customer is breaching this AUP, you must promptly take appropriate action, which may include warning the End Customer, requiring it to change its configuration or content, or cancelling its subscription.
10.3 Cooperation. You must respond to our enquiries about a suspected breach within 2 Business Days, or sooner if we reasonably tell you the matter is urgent, and give us the information we reasonably request.
10.4 Complaints and legal process. You must promptly forward to us any complaint, notice or legal process you receive about the Platform or about content hosted on it.
11. Reporting a breach
Anyone may report a suspected breach of this AUP to info@xscade.com. Please include the relevant web address, QR code or account, a description of the issue and any supporting evidence.
12. Enforcement
12.1 Our actions. We may investigate suspected breaches. Acting reasonably and in proportion to the breach, we may take one or more of the following actions: require changes; remove or disable content, review pages or QR codes; restrict features, including AI features or feedback routing; suspend an End Customer's account; suspend the Partner Site under the Reseller Agreement; or terminate the Agreement under the Reseller Agreement.
12.2 Notice. Where practicable, we will tell you before taking action and give you an opportunity to remedy the breach. We may act without notice where the breach is serious (for example, fake or incentivised reviews, unlawful content or a security threat), where the law requires it, or where notice could prejudice an investigation.
12.3 Authorities. We may preserve information and disclose it to law enforcement or other authorities where the law requires.
12.4 No liability. We are not liable for any action we take in good faith under this AUP.
13. Changes
We may update this AUP under clause 18 of the Reseller Agreement. Changes that Google makes to Google Policies apply from the date Google publishes them.