Terms of Service
In short. Past is an encrypted drive. We hold your bytes but not your keys, so we cannot read, recover or hand over your files. You pay per terabyte, cancel any time. We store one copy with our hosting provider plus snapshots — this is not a backup service: keep your own copy of anything you cannot afford to lose. If you lose your passkeys and recovery code, your data is gone for good, and nobody can undo that.
1. Who we are
Past is operated by Past SAS, a French société par actions simplifiée with a share capital of €1,000, registered with the Paris Trade and Companies Register (RCS Paris [pending]), 173 rue de Courcelles, 75017 Paris, France (“Past”, “we”). Contact: [email protected], phone [pending]. Full details in the legal notice.
2. The service
Past provides an end-to-end encrypted personal drive at past.app/<handle>, with apps for the browser, iOS and Android. Files and photos are encrypted on your device before they leave it. The encryption keys live in your passkeys and your recovery code; they never reach us.
A subscription covers one household: the payer's drive and up to nine more, each invited by the payer, each its own account with its own keys. Storage is measured across the household.
Because we never hold your keys, we cannot read your files, search them, restore them if you lose your keys, or give them to anyone, including you, without your passkey or recovery code.
3. Your account
You must be 16 or older. You choose a handle; it is your address and cannot be changed. You are responsible for every device that holds a passkey for your drive and for your recovery code. Anyone who holds them holds your data: keep the recovery code offline and revoke lost devices from the app.
You must not use Past to store or share content that is illegal where you live or where we operate, to attack the service, or to circumvent storage measurement. We cannot see your content, but we act on court orders and credible reports concerning shared links, and we may suspend an account used to abuse the service.
4. Price, trial, payment
Prices are shown on past.app: a yearly plan billed once a year and a monthly plan, each including 1 TB for the household, plus a metered charge per additional terabyte kept beyond the first, measured monthly and rounded up to the whole terabyte. Prices are in dollars or euros and include applicable taxes unless stated otherwise at checkout.
Every subscription starts with a 30-day free trial. A card is required; nothing is charged until the trial ends. Cancel during the trial and you pay nothing. Payment is handled by Stripe; we never see your card number.
We may change prices with 30 days' notice by email; a change applies from your next billing period, and you may cancel before it applies.
5. Cancellation, withdrawal, refunds
You can cancel any time from the app (Members → Billing) or by email. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid period.
If you are a consumer in the EU, you have 14 days from signing up to withdraw without giving a reason. Since the first 30 days are free, cancelling during the trial exercises this right at no cost.
After the trial, payments are not refunded when you cancel: the trial is the time to decide. You keep the service until the end of the period you paid for. We do refund the unused part of a period if we stop the service, change these terms or the price in a way you do not accept, or if the service was unavailable for more than 7 consecutive days for reasons within our control.
6. End of the subscription and your data
When a subscription ends — you cancel, the trial ends without payment, or a payment fails after Stripe's retries — the household's drives become read-only for 14 days: you can still open them and download everything, but nothing can be added or changed. After those 14 days, the accounts and their encrypted data are deleted from our provider. Nothing is kept beyond that. The apps let you keep a full copy on any device or disk.
An account that stays unclaimed (no passkey enrolled) for 7 days after signup loses its claim link; a new one can be issued while the subscription is live.
7. Storage, snapshots and what we do not promise
Your encrypted data is stored on a storage server in Germany operated by Hetzner Online GmbH. We keep server snapshots for 30 days and a periodic off-site copy. These protect against everyday accidents; they are not a guarantee.
Past is not a backup service and is not a guarantee against data loss. We provide it on a best-efforts basis (obligation de moyens). We do not promise that the service will be available without interruption, or that data will never be lost, corrupted or unavailable.
You must keep your own copy of anything you cannot afford to lose. The apps are built for this: every file can be exported, and a full copy can be kept on a computer or an external disk.
8. Liability
To the fullest extent permitted by the law that applies to you:
- Events at our providers. We are not liable for loss of, damage to, or unavailability of your data caused by events at or affecting our hosting or infrastructure providers, including fire, flood, power or network failure, hardware failure, data-centre incidents, insolvency, seizure or shutdown, or their errors.
- Your keys. We are not liable for data that becomes unreadable because your passkeys or recovery code were lost, stolen or destroyed. By design, we cannot recover it.
- Force majeure. We are not liable for any failure caused by events beyond our reasonable control (article 1218 of the French Civil Code), including the events listed above, natural disasters, war, strikes, government action and large-scale attacks on the internet.
- Indirect loss. We are not liable for indirect losses: lost profits, lost business, lost time, or the cost of recreating data.
- Cap. Where liability cannot be excluded, our total liability for all claims in any 12-month period is limited to the amount you paid us during the 12 months before the event.
Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury, for our fraud, gross negligence or wilful misconduct, or any liability that cannot be limited under the law of your country of residence. If you are a consumer, you keep every right your national consumer law gives you; where a clause above conflicts with it, the law prevails and the rest of the clause stands.
9. Sharing
Share links you create carry their decryption key in the link itself. Whoever has the link can read what it shares, until you delete the link or it expires. You are responsible for what you share and with whom.
10. Changes to the service and these terms
We may change the service and these terms. Material changes are announced by email or in the app at least 30 days before they take effect. If you do not accept a change, cancel before it applies; using Past after that date means you accept it.
11. Law and disputes
These terms are governed by French law. Consumers also benefit from the mandatory protections of the law of their country of residence.
If you have a complaint, write to [email protected]; we answer within 30 days. Consumers in France may then refer the dispute free of charge to our consumer mediator, CM2C — Centre de la Médiation de la Consommation de Conciliateurs de Justice, 49 rue de Ponthieu, 75008 Paris, cm2c.net. Otherwise disputes go to the competent courts; for consumers, those of their place of residence or ours.