Terms of service

This document describes the rules that govern our marketplace.

These are our Terms of Service. They apply to cakkie.com as well as all of the websites and apps we own or operate. (By "we," we mean Cakkie and our affiliates, who may also be referred to as "us.") These terms describe how we expect you to behave when using Cakkie, regardless of whether you are a registered user or an unregistered site visitor on our site. Please read these rules thoroughly: by using our site, you agree to abide by them.

Each section has a summary (in italics throughout). We wrote these to give you a quick overview, but you'll need to read all of the sections to get all of the details.

1. About licenses and third-party content

We've included the terms and conditions for using our website and app, which we work hard to keep running smoothly (1a). That means we have the authority to prevent people from using our website, app, and services if necessary (1b).

You are not permitted to use our intellectual property (1c), but you are permitted to post your content to Cakkie. You are responsible for this content (1d), and we are not responsible for any content you encounter from other users (1e). If you believe someone is using something you've copyrighted, please notify us (1f).

1a. We allow you to use our website, app, and services.

We are technically providing you with a ' limited license ' to the site and app. This is what it means.

We welcome you to use our website, app, and services (known as the services). You may have this access (or limited license) as long as you comply with these terms of use and all of our other Terms of Service that apply to you.

We will do our best to ensure that our services are safe and functional, but we cannot guarantee that you will have continuous access. We may even discontinue providing certain features or services entirely, and we are under no obligation to do so.

1b. We have the authority to refuse you access to our services.

We reserve the right to revoke your right to use our services at any time.

We may terminate your access to Cakkie if you violate our Terms of Use or other parts of our Terms of Service. This is known as terminating your license, and if it occurs, we will notify you and you must immediately cease using our services.

1c. We retain ownership of our intellectual property.

Using our services does not permit you to use any of our trademarks or intellectual property, such as copyrights and patents. Even though we allow you to use our services, we retain all of our intellectual property rights.

Our logos and names are registered trademarks in certain jurisdictions. Any other product or company names, logos, or similar marks and symbols you see on Cakkie may be trademarked by our partners or other Cakkie users.

1d. Cakkie allows you to share your content with the world.

1d.i. You're accountable for the content you post.

You are accountable for how you use our website and what you post there. You consent to reimburse us for our legal fees and costs if a claim is brought against us due to something you posted on the website (the lawyers refer to this as "indemnification").

You acknowledge that we are not responsible in any way for any content you submit for posting on (or through) our website or that you submit to us for posting. You also agree to only post or give us content that:

1. you have the right to post
2. is legal
3. doesn’t violate anyone’s rights, including intellectual property rights.

You acknowledge and agree that Cakkie is not liable for any harm caused by content posted by others and that you will pay damages to and defend Cakkie, our partners, staff members, and representatives in any legal proceedings or government actions we may face as a result of your content.

1d.ii. Others have rights to what you post.

You grant others rights to your content by posting it on the site.

When you post content on our site, you grant us and our affiliates a perpetual right (referred to as an "irrevocable and non-exclusive worldwide license") to use, edit, and share that content anywhere in the world without payment of royalties. If your name, voice, and image appear in the content you post, we also might use those on the site or in our day-to-day business. For example, if you’re a freelancer, we might share your profile with clients we think could be a good match.

You also give each user and site visitor the right to access and use your content through the site. They also have the right to use, copy and share your content – as long as they do it through the site, and follow both our Terms of Service and the law.

We might show ads near your content and information, without compensating you. Depending on the choices you make in your profile, we might also include your name or photo when promoting one of our features.

1d.iii. We welcome your suggestions.

We would love to hear your suggestions on how to improve Cakkie. Here’s what happens when you share them.

You can send us feedback and suggestions on how to improve our services. If you do, you agree that your ideas are gratuitous and unsolicited and that you do not expect or demand anything in return, unless we have specifically asked for your ideas and offered something in return (we like to keep our word).

You agree that we are free to use, change, and share the idea as we see fit, without being obligated to compensate you in any way. And, if you do send us an idea, you agree that this does not limit our ability to use similar or related ideas, including those we already have or obtain from others.

1e. Third parties also post on Cakkie.

Anyone else who uses our site is responsible for what they post or link on Cakkie.

We’re not responsible for the accuracy or reliability of any content shared by other people on our site unless they’re officially working for us when they share or post the content. Any content represents the views of the person sharing it, not Cakkie.

Our site might also contain links or other access to third-party websites and applications. These sites and applications are owned and run by other parties, not Cakkie. If we use a link or application that goes to a third-party website, it doesn’t mean that we endorse it and you agree that you use it without our endorsement.

1f. You can make a copyright complaint

If you think the content on our site infringes your rights, you can ask to have it removed.

We’re committed to following Nigerian copyright and related laws and need site visitors and users to follow them as well. That means you can’t use our site to store or share anything that infringes on anyone’s intellectual property rights, including their rights under Nigerian copyright law.

If you own copyrighted work and think your rights under Nigerian copyright law have been infringed by anything on our site, you can ask us to take it down by sending us a detailed email.

2. What you’re allowed to do on Cakkie

You can only use our services for work, purchase, sales, delivery and to learn from the information we share.

Our website and services are intended for use by businesses, individuals, and consumers. We operate our marketplace to assist users in finding each other, forming working relationships, selling, buying, delivering, making, and receiving payments for their work.

You can also use some of our services, such as our Cakkie blog, to obtain information that we believe will be interesting and useful to our site visitors and users. While we make every effort to ensure that this information is up-to-date and accurate, errors may occur. We make no guarantees about the information on our website, so never use it as tax or legal advice. You should also always double-check the information.

3. What you’re not allowed to do on Cakkie

Some uses of the website are prohibited. Here, we discuss those topics in much more detail, covering:

1. posting unacceptable content (3a)
2. acting misleadingly or fraudulently (3b)
3. treating others unfairly (3c)
4. abusing our feedback system (3d)
5. other uses that aren’t allowed (3e)

In short, you're not allowed to use our services to do (or encourage others to do) anything illegal, fraudulent or harmful. If you don't see something on one of the lists below, you shouldn't assume it's allowed. If you are unsure, please contact us.

3a. Posting unacceptable content

You can’t offer, share, support or try to find anything that:

1. is illegal or defamatory
2. is violent, discriminatory, or harassing, either generally or towards a specific person or group (or encourages others to be), including anyone who is part of a legally protected group
3. is sexually explicit or related to sex work or escort services
4. is in any way related to child exploitation
5. would infringe on any intellectual property rights, including copyrights
6. would violate our Terms of Service, another website’s terms of service, or any similar contract
7. would go against professional or academic standards or policies – including improperly submitting someone else’s work as your own, or by ghost-writing essays, tests, or certifications
8. involves purchasing or requesting a fake review or is connected in any way to making or sharing misleading content (like ‘deep fakes’ or ‘fake news’) which is intended to deceive others.

3b. Acting in a misleading or fraudulent way

On Cakkie, you can’t do anything dishonest or meant to fool others.

You can’t misrepresent yourself, your experience, skills, professional qualifications, or that of others. This includes:

1. lying about your experience, skills, or professional qualifications
2. passing off any part of someone else’s profile or identity as your own
3. using a profile picture that isn’t you, or misrepresenting your identity
4. impersonating or falsely attributing statements to any person or entity, including a Cakkie representative or forum leader
5. falsely claiming or implying you’re connected to a person or organization (including Cakkie) – for example, you can’t say you work for a particular company when you don’t, and agencies can’t use a freelancer’s profile if they’ve stopped working together.
6. violating our Terms of Service, another website’s terms of service, or any similar contract
7. going against professional or academic standards or policies – including improperly submitting someone else’s work as your own, or by ghost-writing essays, tests, or certifications
8. purchasing or requesting a fake review that is connected in any way to making or sharing misleading content (like ‘deep fakes’ or ‘fake news’) which is intended to deceive others.

Similarly, you must always be honest about who’s doing the work. That means you can’t:

1. lie about your experience, skills, or professional qualifications
2. falsely claim one freelancer will do a job when another will do it – including submitting a proposal on behalf of a freelancer who can’t or won’t do the work.

We’re particularly invested in avoiding fraud and misrepresentations when it comes to payments. This means:

i. Freelancers can’t fraudulently charge a client in any way, including by:

1. falsifying the hours, keystrokes,requirements, or clicks recorded in the Cakkie app
2. reporting or billing time you haven’t worked
3. reporting time worked by someone else and claiming you did the work
4. demanding bribes or other payments without the intention of or without providing services in exchange for the payment.

ii. Clients can’t engage in fraud related to payments, including by:

1. posting jobs with payment terms that are objectively unreasonable or disproportionate to the scope of services requested.
2. demanding services without the intention of or without providing payment in exchange for the services

iii. Delivery agents can’t engage in fraud related to payments, including by:

1. Asking for payment at item delivery from the clients or freelancers
2. demanding bribes or other payments without the intention of or without providing services in exchange for the payment.
3. falsifying the hours, keystrokes, or clicks recorded in the Cakkie app
4. reporting or billing time you haven’t worked
5. reporting time worked by someone else and claiming you did the work

3e. Other uses that aren’t allowed

Cakkie relies on technology and trust – here’s how we maintain those things:

• You can’t copy, share or give away your account. You can’t have multiple accounts and you can’t sell, trade, or give your account to anyone else without our permission.
• You can’t go around us. In particular, you can’t talk to another user or ask for or share a way to get in touch - a means of direct contact - outside of Cakkie before you’ve agreed to a service contract. This means you can’t add your contact details to a job post, your profile, communications, or other content. (There are exceptions to this for Enterprise clients.)
• You can’t promote other organizations – including advertising any other websites, products, or services. You also can’t use our site to recruit freelancers or clients to join another agency, website, or company, unless you pay us a fee to do so. For more information, take a look at Section 7 of our User Agreement.
• You can’t interfere with our technology or tamper with our site or services. That means you can’t:
1. bypass any security features we’ve put in place to restrict how you use the site – you’re not allowed to try and get around restrictions on copying content
2. use a robot, spider, scraper, or similar mechanisms on our site without written permission
3. interfere with or compromise our systems, server security, or transmissions
4. copy, distribute, or otherwise use any information you found on Cakkie, whether directly or through third parties (like search engines), without our consent (no scraping allowed)
5. col justify-start items-startlect or use identifiable information, including account names)
6. overwhelm the site with an unreasonable or large amount of information
7. introduce any malware or any other code or viruses that could harm us, our customers, or our services
8. access our services through any technology other than our interface
9. frame or link to the services without our written permission
10. reverse engineer, decipher, modify, or take source code from our site that is not open source without our written permission.
11. use our services to build a similar service, identify or poach our users or publish any performance or benchmark analysis relating to the site

4. Enforcing our terms of use

If you break any of these rules, we can suspend your account and stop you from using Cakkie (3a). If you see someone else breaking these rules, please let us know (3b).

4a. We enforce these rules

We have the right to look into any potential violations of these terms of use and might decide to pause, change or take away any content on our site when we do.

We can’t guarantee that we’ll take action against every potential violation, but just because we don’t take action against one breach doesn’t waive our right to take action against any future breaches, whether they’re related to the first breach or not.

If we do suspect rule-breaking, we can stop you from using our site at any time. If we disable or close your account, you won’t be able to use any of our services, but these things will stay in place:

• our rights to use and share your feedback
• our users’ and visitors' rights to share your content (1d.ii)
• your agreement to all the rules laid out in section 3 on this page.

5. Definitions

Here, we explain some of the terms we’ve used in our Terms of Use. Any other terms in italics should be defined when they’re mentioned, in the User Agreement or Terms of Service.

An affiliate is anyone or anything that in any way manages, is managed by, or shares management with us.

A client is someone using our site to find freelancer services from another user.

A deep fake is a video or image that has been changed to replace one person with another in a deliberately misleading way, without asking the person whose face has been used.

A freelancer is an individual or agency using our site to offer their services to clients.

Freelancer services refer to the work freelancers do on Upwork.

A means of direct contact is information that would let someone get in touch with you directly (or find the information to do that) so you can bypass our site. For example, phone numbers, email and physical addresses, social media accounts, and personal websites with contact information are means of direct contact.

Site services are all services, applications, and products – apart from freelancer services – that people can access through Upwork.

Content is what users post to Upwork themselves, like comments, profiles, feedback, images, or other information. It includes anything posted as a response to questions asked by other users or Upwork.

A delivery agent is an individual using our site to deliver items to the users