Prohibited uses & content

FreelancerPeople ("the Platform") is a marketplace operated from India where independent sellers offer freelance services and digital products to buyers around the world. This policy is the detailed list of what you may not do, sell, request, or publish here. It applies to every surface we operate: SERVEs and custom contracts, digital products and their files, job posts and proposals, profiles and portfolios, messages, reviews, deliverables, and every upload. It applies to everyone who uses the Platform: buyers, sellers, and visitors, all of whom must be 18 years of age or older. The Platform is not directed to children.

FreelancerPeople is an intermediary. Sellers are independent professionals, contracts form directly between buyer and seller, and we do not initiate, select, or modify the content sellers publish. Because we host content that other people create, Indian law, including the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Intermediary Guidelines made under it, requires us to tell you clearly what is not allowed and to act on valid complaints. The categories below do that in plain words. You must also follow the laws of your own country: something legal where you live can still be banned here, and something allowed here can still be illegal for you to do.

This policy is part of our Terms of Service and works alongside our Community Guidelines (how we expect people to behave), our IP & Copyright Policy (how rights holders file complaints), our Payment Terms, our Privacy Policy, and our Trust & Safety overview. The lists below are illustrative, not exhaustive: conduct that clearly undermines the safety or integrity of the marketplace can be treated as a violation even if it is not spelled out word for word. If you are not sure whether something is allowed, ask through our Support page before you proceed.

1. Illegal activity and regulated goods or services

The Platform is for lawful professional work only. You may not offer, request, advertise, facilitate, or pay for anything that is unlawful in India or in your own jurisdiction, and dressing an illegal request up as a SERVE, a custom contract, or a digital product does not make it legitimate.

• Weapons, ammunition, explosives, or instructions for making them.
• Drugs, controlled substances, or services to source or promote them.
• Counterfeit goods, forged documents, fake identification, or fake credentials and certificates.
• Stolen goods, stolen data, or access to accounts and systems you do not own.
• Unlawful gambling or betting services, or content that encourages them.
• Work that violates export controls, trade sanctions, or any other applicable regulation.
• Any service whose purpose is to help someone commit, conceal, or profit from a crime.

If you are asked to do something unlawful, decline the request and report it to us.

2. Content that harms India's security or public order

Indian law prohibits certain categories of content outright, and they are banned on the Platform no matter where you are located. You may not publish, upload, or share content that:

• Threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security, or sovereignty of India, or its friendly relations with other states.
• Threatens public order, or incites violence or the commission of a cognizable offence.
• Promotes enmity between groups of people or is intended to intimidate or terrorize the public.
• Encourages money laundering or unlawful gambling.
• Violates any law for the time being in force.

3. Defamatory, obscene, hateful, or privacy-invasive content

FreelancerPeople is a professional environment, and content that demeans, degrades, or endangers people has no place on it.

• Defamatory content, or statements you know to be false about a person or business.
• Obscene or pornographic material.
• Content that is invasive of another person's privacy, including their bodily privacy.
• Hateful or harassing content, including content that attacks or demeans people on the basis of gender, religion, caste, race, or ethnicity, or any comparable characteristic such as sexual orientation or disability.
• Threats, stalking, bullying, or sustained unwanted contact directed at any person.

If intimate images or videos of you are shared on the Platform without your consent, including morphed or fabricated sexual imagery, report it immediately: we remove such content within 24 hours of a valid complaint.

4. Content harmful to children

The Platform is for adults, and nothing on it may put children at risk. Content that is harmful to children is prohibited in every form. Anything that sexualizes a minor, whether real, drawn, edited, or computer-generated, results in immediate and permanent account termination and reporting to the lawful authorities. There are no warnings, no second chances, and no exceptions to this rule.

5. Intellectual property infringement and pirated products

You must own, or hold the necessary rights to, everything you upload, sell, or deliver. Infringing other people's work harms creators and exposes buyers to legal risk, and it is one of the most closely watched categories on our digital products marketplace.

• Pirated, leaked, ripped, re-uploaded, or re-hosted software, e-books, courses, music, video, fonts, or stock assets, including paid products marketed as "premium for free".
• Cracked or nulled themes, plugins, scripts, and templates.
• Keygens, license generators, activation keys, and tools that bypass DRM, license checks, or other technical protections.
• Warez, torrents of protected works, and links or instructions for obtaining any of the above.
• Plagiarized digital products, stolen designs, and work copied from another creator and sold as your own.
• Using another person's trademarks, brand assets, or identity without authorization, or passing off someone else's portfolio as yours.

Rights holders can file a copyright or trademark complaint through the process described in our IP & Copyright Policy, which explains the required declaration, how takedowns work, and how the affected seller can respond. Repeat infringement leads to account termination.

6. Malware and harmful code

No file on the Platform, whether a product file, a delivery, an attachment, or a preview, may contain code designed to harm, spy on, or take control of a device or its data. The ban is absolute and applies to:

• Viruses, worms, trojans, ransomware, spyware, keyloggers, cryptominers, and any other malicious code, in any upload or deliverable.
• Services to create, conceal, or distribute malware.
• Hacking, account-takeover, credential-cracking, denial-of-service, or unauthorized-access services of any kind.

An honest note on detection: uploads to the Platform are checked by file type signature, and executable files are refused, but we do not run antivirus scanning and we do not open or inspect the contents of archives such as ZIP files. The prohibition applies whether or not our checks catch a file, and a seller who uploads harmful code is fully responsible for it. Buyers should treat downloaded files with the same sensible caution they would apply to any file from the internet, and report anything suspicious to us straight away.

7. Fraud, deception, and money laundering

Honest dealing is the foundation of the marketplace. Any attempt to obtain money, work, access, or advantage through false statements or hidden intentions is prohibited.

• Fake reviews, purchased ratings or engagement, coordinated rating manipulation, and orders placed only to inflate metrics.
• Impersonating another person, a brand, or FreelancerPeople itself, or claiming qualifications and experience you do not have.
• Phishing, or tricking anyone into revealing passwords, verification codes, or payment details.
• Misleading listings, bait-and-switch pricing, and patently false or misleading information presented as fact.
• Using stolen or unauthorized payment methods, or raising false chargebacks or refund claims after receiving what you paid for.
• Using orders, wallets, or payouts to launder money, disguise the source of funds, or move value that does not correspond to real work or a real product.
• Promoting unlawful gambling or get-rich-quick schemes.

Genuine disagreements about the quality of a delivery belong in the dispute process described in our Refund & Cancellation Policy; deception to win a dispute is itself a serious violation.

8. Off-platform payments and circumvention

Escrow protection, dispute resolution, and refunds only work when money and communication stay on the Platform, and the service fee shown before you confirm an order is what funds them. Taking a relationship that began here off the Platform to avoid those protections or fees is prohibited.

• Soliciting, offering, or making payment outside the Platform for work or products that originated here, whether by bank transfer, payment app, gift card, cryptocurrency, or any other method.
• Sharing or requesting contact details in order to move a deal off the Platform before an order or contract is in place.
• Encouraging another user to cancel or refund an order so the work can be completed off the Platform.
• Understating the real price of work in a listing or offer and collecting the balance elsewhere.

Exchanging what is genuinely needed to deliver an active order is fine; the line is intent. Keeping everything on the Platform is also the only way our protections, described in the Payment Terms, can apply to you.

9. Adult content

FreelancerPeople is a professional marketplace, and sexually explicit content does not belong on it. You may not offer, request, or deliver pornographic or sexually explicit services or content, and it may not appear in listings, digital products, portfolios, profiles, or messages. Sexual services of any kind are prohibited without exception.

10. Privacy violations and misuse of personal data

You will often handle other people's personal information in the course of an order. You may use it only for that order, and you must protect it.

• Doxxing: publishing or threatening to publish someone's private information.
• Sharing, selling, or publishing another person's personal data without their consent.
• Scraping, harvesting, or compiling user data from the Platform.
• Using information received through an order for marketing, profiling, or any purpose beyond delivering that order.

How FreelancerPeople itself handles your information is described in our Privacy Policy.

11. Platform integrity and account abuse

The Platform must work fairly for everyone, so interfering with how it operates, or with how enforcement works, is prohibited.

• Bots, automated scraping or crawling, and any bulk automated access to the Platform.
• Probing, scanning, or testing the security of the Platform without our prior written permission, or attempting to bypass authentication, rate limits, identity verification, or other technical restrictions.
• Creating multiple accounts to evade enforcement, operating an account for someone who is suspended or banned, or buying, selling, sharing, or transferring accounts.
• Bulk, repetitive, or unsolicited messages, and using profiles, listings, or reviews to advertise unrelated or off-platform offers.
• Interfering with another user's ability to use the Platform, or overloading our systems.

If you discover a genuine security vulnerability, do not exploit it: report it responsibly through our Support page so it reaches the right people.

12. How violations are handled

We find violations through automated pattern checks on submitted content, human review, and, most importantly, reports from users. When we act, we weigh the severity of the conduct, its impact, intent, and history, and apply a proportionate response. Depending on the circumstances that can mean a warning, removal of the content or listing, restriction of features, temporary suspension, or permanent closure of the account. The enforcement ladder and the appeal path are described in our Community Guidelines; money-related holds follow our Payment Terms and Refund & Cancellation Policy.

• Where a court order or a notification from an appropriate government agency identifies unlawful content, we remove or disable access to it within 36 hours.
• For content complaints in the categories above, we act within 72 hours of a valid complaint where the law requires it, and complaints about non-consensual intimate imagery are actioned within 24 hours.
• We provide information to lawfully authorized government agencies within 72 hours of a valid order, and we preserve records as the law requires.
• We remind users periodically, at least once a year, that failing to comply with this policy and our Terms can lead to removal of content, suspension, or termination of the account.

If your content or account was actioned and you believe we got it wrong, you can appeal: actioned content can be appealed from the case record in your account, and a suspended account holder can still sign in to raise a support ticket about the suspension.

13. How to report a violation

Reports from users are one of the most effective ways violations are found, and acting early protects everyone.

• Use the report option shown on profiles, listings, digital products, and messages.
• For anything else, or anything urgent, open a ticket on our Support page; you will receive a ticket number so you can track it.
• Rights holders should file copyright and trademark complaints under the IP & Copyright Policy.

Include enough detail for us to act: what happened, who was involved, and links or references to the content. Knowingly filing false reports to harm another user is itself a violation, and we do not tolerate retaliation against anyone who reports a concern in good faith.

14. Questions and contact

If anything in this policy is unclear, or you are not sure whether a service, product, or request is allowed, ask before you proceed. You can reach us any time through our Support page or by email at support@freelancerpeople.com.

Complaints about content or conduct on the Platform, including complaints under this policy, are handled by our Grievance Officer, reachable at support@freelancerpeople.com and through the Support page. We acknowledge grievances within 24 hours, provide a ticket number for tracking, and resolve them within 15 days. We would rather answer a question early than resolve a problem later.