Terms and conditions

01Who we are and what these terms cover

The sigil. app (the “App”) and the website sigil.st (the “Site”) are provided by:

Provider: FIRST LAYER S.R.L.
Registered office: Via della Giunchiglia 71, 06131 Perugia (PG), Italia
VAT and tax code: 03994330540
REA: PG - 370965
Email: team@firstlayersrl.com
PEC: firstlayer@pec.it

The App is licensed to you through the App Store under Apple’s Licensed Application End User License Agreement (the “Standard EULA”). These terms complement it with rules specific to sigil.. If they conflict on licensing matters, the Standard EULA prevails; mandatory consumer protection law prevails over both.

How we handle personal data is described in our privacy policy.

02What sigil. is for

sigil. is a tool to protect your own data on your own phone: photos, videos and documents that belong to you or that you have the right to keep, in case your phone is stolen or someone forces you to open it or hand over your data. The principles behind the product are in our Manifesto.

sigil. is not designed or marketed for explicit or sexual content, and we discourage using it for content of that kind, even where it is lawful.

03Acceptable use and prohibited uses

You may use sigil. only for lawful purposes. You must not use the App or the Site for:

child sexual abuse material, or any content that sexualises minors, including drawn or AI-generated material. We have zero tolerance for this: if we become aware of it, we report it to the competent authorities and cooperate with them;
intimate or sexual images of other people shared or kept without their consent, and generally any content involving people who have not consented where consent is required (for example covert recordings);
content that infringes other people’s rights: privacy, image rights, copyright, trade secrets;
storing, hiding or transferring content that is illegal under the law that applies to you;
hiding evidence of a crime, or obstructing lawful investigations, searches or seizures;
using self-destruct to destroy data you are legally required to keep or hand over (for example under a court order or in legal proceedings);
harassing, threatening, blackmailing, extorting or controlling other people, or installing the App on someone else’s device without their consent;
breaching export control laws or international sanctions;
circumventing purchases, tampering with the App beyond what the law allows, or attacking the Site and its tools.

If you break these rules we may revoke your licence, refuse support and, where the law requires, report the facts to the authorities. You are directly responsible, towards third parties and towards us, for damage caused by prohibited use, within the limits set by law.

04We can’t see your content, so the responsibility is yours

Your content is encrypted on your phone with a key only you can produce. We never receive it, and we cannot see, scan, moderate or remove it. That is why you are solely responsible for what you keep with sigil. and for complying with the laws of the country you are in.

We cooperate with authorities within the law. But we have no content, keys or account data to provide: at most the emails you sent us.

If you learn that sigil. is being used unlawfully, especially for child abuse, report it to the police or the competent authority and, if you wish, write to us at team@firstlayersrl.com.

05Your sign, your recovery phrase and the risk of data loss

sigil. works without an account and without a server. That brings limits you accept knowingly:

Sign and phrase. If you forget your sign and lose your recovery phrase, your vaults can no longer be opened. Nobody can recover them, including us: there is no reset.
No backup. sigil. doesn’t save your vaults to the cloud, and vault files are excluded from device backups. If your phone is lost, broken or reset, your vaults may be lost with it.
Deleting the App. Deleting the App deletes your vaults.
Changing phones. Follow the instructions in the App before you switch devices.

Keep a copy of anything irreplaceable outside sigil., somewhere safe.

06Decoy vault and self-destruct

These are free features, off by default, that you turn on yourself after an explicit warning. The decoy pattern opens a decoy vault with photos you chose and erases nothing: your other vaults stay on the phone, hidden. Self-destruct erases all vaults after the number of wrong signs you choose, within the time window you choose, with no warning and no countdown.

Self-destruct is irreversible. Erased data cannot be recovered, not even with the recovery phrase, and not by us.
Other people can trigger it. For example a child, or anyone trying random signs: choose a sensible threshold.
They are meant for unauthorised access (theft, robbery, threats from private individuals), not for authorities acting lawfully. In many countries, erasing data during a check or an investigation, giving a false code (including the decoy pattern), or refusing to give one when the law requires it can be a criminal offence.
We don’t provide legal advice or legal protection. If in doubt, talk to a lawyer.
A forensic examination of the phone may reveal that other vaults existed: we don’t promise their existence can never be proven.

Using them is your choice, made with this information.

07Free, Pro and payments

Free: every feature, with 100 photos and documents and 10 videos per vault, 1 vault plus the decoy vault, with no time limit.
Pro: unlimited photos and videos and up to 7 vaults, as a one-time Pro forever purchase (€39.99) or a yearly subscription (€19.99). There are no free trials and no monthly plans. Prices may vary by country and are those shown by the App Store at the time of purchase.
Subscriptions renew automatically unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the current period, in Settings › [your name] › Subscriptions.
Pro forever is a single payment with no renewals, and can be restored on devices signed in with your Apple Account.
Apple is the seller: payment, billing, refunds and the right of withdrawal are handled by Apple under its terms (you can request a refund at reportaproblem.apple.com). We cannot issue refunds directly.
If a subscription ends, or a vault goes over the free limit, we lock and delete nothing: items stay visible, exportable and deletable; only adding new items stops.

Nothing in this section limits the rights you have under consumer protection law.

08Licence and intellectual property

The App, the sigil. brand, the Site and their content belong to FIRST LAYER S.R.L. or its licensors. You receive a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence under the Standard EULA. Your content stays yours: you grant us no rights over it, and we never receive it anyway.

09Security: what we can and can’t promise

We use strong, widely used encryption, but no software is perfect. In particular, sigil. cannot protect you if:

someone has your phone while a vault is open, or watches you draw your sign;
your sign is short or predictable and someone has forensic extraction tools;
the device is compromised (malware, jailbreak), or someone photographs the screen while a vault is open.

If you find a vulnerability, write to team@firstlayersrl.com: we’ll fix it as soon as we can.

10The website and free tools

The guides, comparisons and reviews on the Site are general information, verified as of the date shown, and are not a substitute for legal or security advice. The free tools run in your browser and are provided as they are, at no cost.

11Updates and availability

We may update the App to fix bugs, improve security or keep up with iOS and App Store rules. We recommend installing updates. Because sigil. doesn’t depend on our servers, the installed App keeps working even if we ever stop distributing it, as far as iOS allows.

12Warranty and liability

If you are a consumer, you have the legal guarantee of conformity for digital content and services under applicable law (in Italy, Articles 135-octies and following of the Consumer Code). Nothing in these terms limits it.

To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for loss caused by:

a forgotten or lost sign and recovery phrase;
a self-destruct triggered by you or by someone else;
deleting the App, or resetting, losing, theft of or damage to the device;
use of the App in breach of these terms or of the law;
third-party services (such as iOS or the App Store) or causes beyond our reasonable control.

These limitations do not apply to wilful misconduct or gross negligence (Article 1229 of the Italian Civil Code), to personal injury, or to rights that the law grants consumers on a mandatory basis (Articles 33–36 of the Italian Consumer Code). If you use sigil. for business purposes, our total liability is limited to the amount you paid for the App in the previous 12 months, except for wilful misconduct or gross negligence.

13Encryption and export

The App contains encryption software. You agree not to use, export or re-export it in breach of the export control laws and sanctions of the European Union, Italy or the United States, or to embargoed countries or sanctioned persons. Some countries restrict the import or use of encryption: complying with local law where you use the App is your responsibility.

14Apple

These terms are between you and FIRST LAYER S.R.L., not Apple. Apple is not responsible for the App or its content.
Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for the App.
If the App fails to conform to an applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, which will refund the purchase price; to the extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation.
Apple is not responsible for claims relating to the App, including product liability, regulatory compliance, consumer protection or third-party intellectual property claims.
Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms and may enforce them against you.

15Ending the agreement

You can stop using sigil. at any time by deleting the App. Remember that this also deletes your vaults. Subscriptions are cancelled in your Apple Account settings. We may revoke your licence if you seriously breach these terms, in particular the acceptable-use rules.

16Changes to these terms

We may change these terms when the App, the law or App Store rules change. We publish the new version with an updated date and version number; if a change affects you significantly, we tell you in advance on the Site and, where possible, in the App. Changes don’t apply retroactively and don’t reduce what you have already bought. If you don’t accept them, you can stop using the App and cancel your subscription.

17Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by Italian law. If you are a consumer living in the European Union, you keep the protection of the mandatory rules of your country of residence and may bring proceedings in the courts where you live (in Italy, the consumer’s court under Article 66-bis of the Consumer Code). For non-consumers, the courts of Perugia have exclusive jurisdiction.

Before taking any action, write to us: most problems can be solved with an email.

18General

If any clause is found invalid, the rest remain in force. Not exercising a right doesn’t mean waiving it. These terms are available in Italian and English; if the versions differ, the interpretation most favourable to the consumer applies.

19Contact

Questions about these terms? Write to team@firstlayersrl.com or to our PEC address firstlayer@pec.it.