Effective Date: March 11th 2025
By using our products, you agree to the terms of our Policies and Procedures.
Deletion
A registered account, once created, cannot be fully deleted. This is due to two factors. First, removal of an account would impact posted survey results that users have participated in and second, it might invalidate surveys that may have been shared or linked to elsewhere. Undoing this type of dependency would undermine data integrity in the system.
However, on the Profile Management page, users can mark their account deleted and this will flag it as “inactive”. Inactive accounts will no longer be visible, won’t be included in rankings or reports and login will be disabled. The account will only be re-activated by sending a detailed request to the Support team.
Removal (making it inactive) of an account is immediate but re-activation may take 3-5 business days after a request is received.
Suspension
An account can be suspended without warning for failure to adhere to the website’s Terms of Use or when the account owner has been reported for abuse by other users.
We will strive to review every case and every report made against an account with fairness and impartiality. We may issue an email warning should it be warranted but we reserve the right to suspend the account without warning if the infraction is clear and obvious. In some cases, we may contact the owner and request corrective action, in which case, the owner will have 48 hours to rectify the infraction to our satisfaction or have the account suspended.
A suspended account becomes inactive immediately and can only be reactivated upon request to the support team but re-activation may take 3-5 business days after a request is received.
Inactivity
There is no current period of time of inactivity set by which an account will be archived for inactivity. We do reserve the right to archive accounts should it be required for system performance but we will not do so without sending at least two warnings to the account owner first. This would only apply to accounts that have not logged in for at least 18 months.
The email address entered when registering is also a login name, therefore, to change it, the user will need to be logged in. For security reasons, when changing the email address, the system will send an email notice to both email addresses (old and new). It is the user's responsibility to ensure they have working email addresses before using them on the SOS website.
The username is also used for authentication but it cannot be changed by the user.
SOS uses a popular and secure third party service to process online payments. The advantage with this method is that no personal or financial information is stored on our website. When paying for a subscription, the user will be redirected to the 3rd Party Service and this is expected. Once the transaction is processed successfully by that service, we will get notified and the subscription will begin immediately. This process should not take more than a few minutes. Problems with payments should be reported to the 3rd Party Support website. Problems with the subscription should be addressed to the SOS support team.
SOS has a strict no-refund policy. This is because we believe membership costs are reasonable and are one-time payments, not recurring.
Email communications in SOS are kept at a minimum but some announcements are necessary. We will send email notices from time to time to alert users of important changes to our policies, upcoming upgrades which could cause downtime, and major feature announcements.. Members will also receive email notices if their account has been flagged for policy violation. Users must respond to these violations notices within the indicated timeframe (normally 48 hours) or possibly face suspension.
If you receive a notice from SOS but are not sure if it is legitimate or not, verify the News page or contact Tech Support to confirm its validity. All notifications mentioned above should also be on the News page.
Individuals or Organizations may wish to take advantage of additional benefits by purchasing a higher cost one-time membership. The main benefit of being a Sponsor is the increased visibility of surveys in search results. All sponsored surveys will profit from equal visibility by rotating sequentially in the search results.
Customers wishing to purchase sponsorship, should minimally create a Basic account and then send a written request for further verification of identity and credentials. The sponsor request and approval process may take up to 5 business days. The Sponsor feature is not available during the BETA development phase of the website.
SOS is a very small organization. Requests for Technical Support or Information must be sent via the website. We will attempt to answer all inquiries as fast as possible. The Support levels are Basic (7-10 days response time), Full (3-5 days response) and Priority (1-2 days response). SOS staff will keep issues updated with any progress on issues as often as possible.
Being hosted on a 3rd party provider, some technical issues may need to be referred to outside services and resolution in these cases would follow the external service agreements and would not be bound by the policy terms herein.
All technical or access issues must be reported within 2 weeks of occurrence or we cannot guarantee our ability to fully remedy the problem and recover any potential loss of information.
SOS takes all possible abuse or Terms of Service violations very seriously. Users can report possible violations using Support page. Make sure to fill out all relevant information requested on the form. Reporting parties and information will be kept strictly confidential. We will answer notices and start an investigation if required within 3 business days. Corrective actions may take longer depending on circumstances and severity.
Users being notified of violations must answer within 48 hours or face immediate suspension.
SOS will notify the reporting party of the outcome of the investigation after completion of the process.
