Acceptable Use & Community Policy

Last updated: 11 July 2026

Vtag exists to make it easy for a stranger to reach a vehicle owner without either person's privacy being invaded. That only works if people use it in good faith. This policy sets out what "good faith" means in practice, how we find out when it isn't happening, and what we do about it.

1. Purpose & who this applies to

This policy applies to everyone who touches the Platform: Public Scanners submitting an Alert, Account Holders receiving one, and Program Participants operating under our Partner Program Terms. It is incorporated into, and supplements, our Terms of Service Section 15 and our Public Scanner & Emergency Alert TermsSection 8. Those documents set out the contractual obligation; this one explains it in depth and describes what actually happens when it's broken.

2. Definitions

• "Prohibited Content" — any message, photo, selfie, or other Content that violates Sections 3–14 of this policy.
• "Enforcement Action" — any step we take in response to a violation, from flagging a single Alert to permanently blocking a phone number or device, as described in Section 17.
• "Investigation" — the admin review process described in Section 18, which precedes most Enforcement Actions.
• "Appeal" — a request that we re-examine an Enforcement Action, described in Section 19.

3. Fake & false Alerts

Every Alert must describe something you genuinely believe is happening. You may not submit an Alert that is invented, exaggerated, staged, or sent as a prank, a test, or a way to annoy or embarrass someone. This applies at every priority level — a fabricated "lights on" report is still a violation, even though it seems trivial, because it wastes an Owner's attention and erodes trust in every genuine Alert that follows it.

4. Emergency Alert misuse

In addition to Section 3, you may not: use Emergency priority for a situation that isn't genuinely urgent, in order to bypass the extra attention Emergency Alerts get; submit a selfie or incident photo that doesn't actually depict the situation you're reporting; or submit repeated Emergency Alerts about the same vehicle without a genuinely new incident each time.

5. Spam & commercial solicitation

Don't use an Alert to advertise a business, offer a paid service (including a competing vehicle-security product), or send any message whose real purpose is commercial rather than genuinely about the vehicle. This includes sending the same or near-identical message to multiple vehicles.

6. Harassment, threats & stalking

Don't use Vtag to threaten, intimidate, demean, or repeatedly contact someone in a way they'd reasonably find harassing. Don't use it to monitor a vehicle's movements or an owner's routine, or to coerce someone into an action (moving a vehicle, making contact, paying money) through fear rather than a genuine, proportionate report. This applies equally to a Scanner harassing an Owner through repeated Alerts and to an Owner attempting to track down or intimidate a Scanner (see also Section 13 and our Terms of Service Section 7).

7. Illegal activity & content

Don't use Vtag for anything that is unlawful under Indian law, including content that promotes violence, incites hatred against a group, or is obscene under Sections 67 and 67A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. We have zero tolerance for content that sexualises or endangers a child in any way — such content is reported immediately to the National Crime Records Bureau's Cyber Crime portal and other relevant authorities, with no warning and no opportunity to appeal.

8. Impersonation

Don't claim to be Vtag staff, the police, an insurance company, a government body, the vehicle's owner, or another Scanner. Don't create an Alert that implies an official or authoritative source when it isn't one. This includes using language designed to make an Alert look like an official notice, fine, or legal demand.

9. QR duplication & sticker transfer misuse

Our Terms of ServiceSection 8 sets out the contractual rule: Vtag Tags may only be transferred through our official process, and duplicating or counterfeiting a QR code is prohibited. In practice, this means you may not: photograph or copy a Vtag QR code to reuse it on a different sticker or surface; manufacture a look-alike QR code designed to intercept Alerts meant for a genuine Vtag Tag; or transfer a Tag to a new vehicle or owner outside the dashboard's transfer flow. Any of these can result in Alerts being misdirected to the wrong person, which is exactly the harm this section exists to prevent.

10. Scraping, bots & automated abuse

Don't use a script, bot, or other automated tool to submit Alerts, request OTPs, or interact with the Public Scanner Portal at a rate or pattern a genuine person wouldn't. Don't scrape data from the Platform, including vehicle plates, Alert content, or any page that isn't meant to be bulk-collected. We rate-limit and Turnstile-gate the flows most exposed to this (Section 15) — attempting to defeat those protections is itself a violation, independent of what you were trying to do once past them.

11. Reverse engineering & unauthorised access

Don't decompile, reverse-engineer, or attempt to extract the source code or underlying logic of the Platform. Don't probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of our systems except through the responsible-disclosure channel in our Terms of ServiceSection 21. Don't attempt to access any account, admin function, or data you are not authorised to access, including by guessing, brute-forcing, or exploiting a bug rather than reporting it.

12. Malware & malicious code

Don't upload, link to, or attempt to deliver malware, spyware, ransomware, or any other malicious code through an Alert, an uploaded photo, a message, or any other Content submitted to the Platform. This includes embedding malicious links disguised as something else (for example, a fake "view incident details" link).

13. Evidence & selfie misuse

Emergency Alert selfies and incident photos exist to help an Owner understand and respond to a specific situation — nothing more. Regardless of which side of an Alert you're on:

• An Owner may not publish, screenshot for public posting, or otherwise redistribute a Scanner's selfie or incident photos beyond what's reasonably necessary to report the incident to police, an insurer, or Vtag — see our Terms of Service Section 7.
• Nobody may use an Emergency Alert selfie or its metadata to attempt to identify, locate, or contact the Scanner outside the Platform.
• A Scanner may not submit a selfie or photo that doesn't genuinely belong to the situation being reported — including someone else's photo, a stock image, or an old photo passed off as current (see Section 4).
• Nobody may attempt to access evidence or selfie storage outside the signed, time-limited link generated for their specific, authorised role in that specific Alert.

14. Prohibited content

Beyond the specific categories above, no Content on the Platform may:

• Contain hate speech targeting a person or group based on religion, caste, gender, sexuality, disability, or similar characteristics.
• Sexualise, endanger, or exploit a minor in any way (Section 7 — zero tolerance).
• Glorify or incite violence, self-harm, or criminal activity.
• Dox or publicly expose someone's private information obtained through the Platform (Section 13).
• Infringe someone else's copyright or trademark — see our Terms of Service Section 18 for how to report this specifically.

15. How we detect misuse

Most misuse is caught before a human ever looks at it. We run automated checks — duplicate-Alert detection, location-consistency checks against a Scanner's recent activity, OTP-failure monitoring, and pattern-based review triggers for an unusually high number of Emergency Alerts on a single QR code in a short window — described in more depth in our Public Scanner & Emergency Alert TermsSection 9. We deliberately don't publish the exact thresholds these checks use, the same way a bank doesn't publish its fraud-scoring rules — doing so would just tell people how to stay under them.

These automated signals route a submission to human review (Section 18); they don't by themselves impose our more serious Enforcement Actions.

16. Reporting abuse

If you receive an Alert you believe is spam, harassment, or clearly fabricated, email abuse@getvtag.com with the Alert's date/time and, if you have it, a screenshot. Because a Scanner's identity is never shown to an Owner (by design — see our Public Scanner & Emergency Alert Terms), there is no self-service "block this sender" button in the dashboard for an Owner to use directly — we look up the underlying Scanner record on our side and act on it, which is a more effective control than a per-Owner block would be anyway, since it stops the same Scanner from targeting any vehicle, not just yours.

Report other Platform misuse — a Program Participant, a piece of content, a suspected security issue — the same way, or to grievance@getvtag.com for anything privacy-related. See our Grievance Officer page for formal escalation and response timelines.

17. Enforcement actions

We use a two-tier system, matching the level of authority to the severity of the action:

• Content-level review — any authorised Vtag administrator can classify a specific Alert as flagged, fake, abusive, or cleared, with a note explaining why. This is recorded against the Alert and logged in our internal audit trail; it doesn't by itself block anyone from submitting future Alerts.
• Account-level action — blocking a phone number or device from the Public Scanner Portal, temporarily or permanently, requires a higher level of administrative authority than content-level review, precisely because it's a more serious step. It, too, is logged with who took the action, when, and why.

Beyond these, we may withdraw a Program Participant's enrolment (see our Partner Program Terms Section A17), remove Content, suspend or terminate an Account Holder's account under our Terms of Service Section 28, and refer conduct to law enforcement under Section 29 of that document where it may be criminal.

18. Investigations

When something is reported to us or flagged by an automated signal, an administrator reviews the underlying Alert record — including, where relevant, the Scanner's verification history and any evidence submitted — and records a decision with a note. We aim to review reports promptly, but we don't commit to a fixed turnaround time for every case, since a straightforward spam report and a disputed Emergency Alert genuinely take different amounts of diligence to get right. We may request more information from the person who reported an issue, and, where the facts are genuinely unclear, may leave an Alert's status as flagged pending further information rather than force a premature fake/abusive/cleared determination.

19. Appeals

If you believe an Enforcement Action was taken in error, you can ask us to reconsider it.

• As a Scanner: because the Public Scanner Portal doesn't use accounts, there is no in-app appeal button. Email grievance@getvtag.com from the mobile number that was blocked or the Alert that was marked fake/abusive, explain why you believe it was wrong, and an administrator who was not involved in the original decision will re-review it. A successful appeal moves the Alert's status to cleared and, where applicable, lifts a block.
• As an Account Holder or Program Participant: email grievance@getvtag.com or use the escalation path on our Grievance Officer page, which carries a committed acknowledgement and resolution timeline.

We do not guarantee a specific outcome on appeal, and reserve the right to uphold an Enforcement Action after review — but every appeal gets an actual second look, not a rubber stamp of the first decision.

20. Consequences at a glance

This table is illustrative, not exhaustive or binding — every case is reviewed on its own facts under Section 18, and we may respond more or less severely than the table suggests where the specifics warrant it.

21. Relationship to our other policies

This policy sits alongside our Terms of Service, our Public Scanner & Emergency Alert Terms, our Privacy Policy, and our Partner Program Terms. If this policy conflicts with one of those on a conduct-and-enforcement matter it specifically addresses, this policy controls; on everything else, the more specific document controls per its own terms.

22. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as new misuse patterns emerge or our detection and enforcement tools change. We'll post the updated policy with a new "Last updated" date; continued use of the Platform after a change takes effect is acceptance of it.

23. Contact & how to report

• Report an abusive or fake Alert: abuse@getvtag.com
• Privacy, grievances & appeals: grievance@getvtag.com — see our Grievance Officer page
• General support: support@getvtag.com