Terms of Service

Version 3.0.0 · Effective 2026-05-28

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of Arafa, a professional social network operated by Abtikarat Louis Trading and Services WLL ("Arafa", "we", "us"). By creating an account or otherwise using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms and by our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use Arafa.

1. Eligibility

  • You must be at least 18 years old.
  • You must be physically present in a GCC country (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Oman or Bahrain). Access from non-GCC IPs, VPNs, Tor, or datacenter IPs is blocked at the firewall.
  • One personal account per phone number. Sharing or selling accounts is prohibited.
  • Each business may operate one Business profile per Commercial Registration (CR) number. The person registering the Business profile must be authorised by the company.
  • Providing false identity information, a fake CR number, or impersonating another person results in immediate suspension.

2. Content ownership and license

You retain full copyright in everything you upload to Arafa — your photos, your bio text, your posts, your products. We do not claim ownership of your content.

You grant Arafa a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, cache, display, transmit, resize, and re-encode your content solely to operate and deliver the Service to you and to other Arafa users. This license ends when you delete the content or your account, except for backups (which roll off within 30 days) and for content others have already shared (e.g. screenshots in messages — we cannot retrieve those from other users).

3. No scraping, no harvesting, no AI training on Arafa data

You may not, and may not permit any third party to:

  1. Scrape, crawl, harvest, copy, store, or aggregate data from the Service using automated means, scripts, bots, browser automation, or any non-human access pattern.
  2. Use the Service to compile a database, dataset, directory, or any derivative collection of Arafa users or content.
  3. Circumvent or attempt to circumvent any technical measure designed to protect user content, including signed URL tokens, rate limits, browser-proof tokens, geofencing, and the GCC-only firewall.
  4. Bulk-download images, profile data, messages, or any other content. "Bulk" means more than what a real human user would consume in normal use.
  5. Use any Arafa data — including images, text, profiles, social-graph information, or messages — to train, fine-tune, evaluate, benchmark, or distil any machine learning model, including but not limited to large language models, computer vision models, facial recognition systems, voice cloning models, or recommendation systems, without our prior written consent.
  6. Reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract source code, models, or trade secrets from the Service.

Breach of this Section 3 causes irreparable harm to Arafa and to its users. You agree that we are entitled to immediate injunctive relief in the courts of Qatar, in addition to all other remedies available at law (including monetary damages).

4. Termination and breach

Arafa may suspend or permanently terminate your access without prior notice if we believe, in good faith, that you have violated any part of these Terms, the Privacy Policy, applicable law, or the rights of another user. Examples include scraping, spam, impersonation, harassment, sexually explicit content, dangerous misinformation, or any attempt to compromise Arafa or other users.

Breach of these Terms gives Arafa standing to seek injunctive relief, account termination, and monetary damages in the competent courts of Qatar. Sections 2 (license), 3 (no scraping), 5 (no malware), 7 (governing law) and 8 (general) survive termination.

5. No binaries, no malware, no exploits

You may not upload binary executables, installers, malware, ransomware, spyware, exploits, browser extensions, payload droppers, or any content designed or intended to compromise Arafa, our infrastructure, or any user’s device.

You MAY share code as text within a post, message, or product description — for example, sharing a JavaScript snippet, SQL query, or shell command. Such code must be clearly marked as code (e.g. inside a fenced code block ```), and Arafa will render it as inert text for display only. We will not execute uploaded code, and we will not link to executable downloads on user-generated content surfaces.

6. Reporting abuse and stolen content

  • To report abuse, harassment, fake accounts, or inappropriate content: use the in-app Report button on any post or profile.
  • If someone has copied your Arafa profile photo or content to another website, use the dedicated form at /app/report-stolen-image. We will generate a ready-to-send DMCA / takedown notice that you can email to the offending host.
  • Security vulnerabilities: email security@arafa.qa. We acknowledge within 72 hours.

7. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Qatar. Any dispute arising out of or in connection with the Service or these Terms shall be resolved exclusively by the competent courts of Doha, Qatar. This choice of law and forum applies regardless of where you access the Service from. Qatar Law No. 13 of 2016 (PDPPL) and any subsequent personal-data legislation in Qatar control questions of personal data.

8. General

  • Severability: If any provision of these Terms is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions stay in full force.
  • Entire agreement: These Terms and the Privacy Policy together form the entire agreement between you and Arafa, superseding any prior communication.
  • No waiver: Our failure to enforce any right is not a waiver of that right.
  • Assignment: You may not assign these Terms. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
  • Force majeure: Neither party is liable for failure caused by events beyond reasonable control.

9. Session management and inactivity

  • Your first login requires a one-time phone OTP verification, delivered by Firebase Authentication.
  • Once verified, subsequent sessions on web and mobile rely on a refresh-token mechanism. Each time you use Arafa, your refresh token is automatically renewed, granting you another 30-day window of access without re-verification.
  • If you do not use Arafa for 30 consecutive days, your refresh token expires and you will be required to re-verify with a fresh phone OTP on your next visit. This protects abandoned accounts and unattended devices.
  • You can sign out from any device at any time via Settings → Sessions. Doing so immediately revokes all tokens issued to that device.
  • Every session is tracked on the server in a revocation list. An admin-initiated revocation (for example in case of suspected account compromise) takes effect within seconds across all of your devices.
  • Refresh tokens are bound to the user-agent and IP address recorded at the time of issuance. A token used from a materially different device or geographic region may trigger an automatic security check, including a request to re-verify with a phone OTP.

10. Chat message deletion and retention

Sender's deletion window

A sender may delete their own message within forty (40) seconds of sending. After this window the message is permanent and remains visible to all conversation participants.

Effect of deletion

Deletion is a hide from non-subscribed participants. It is not a guarantee of erasure. Once you send a message, the message is no longer under your sole control — the recipient has equal authority over what was shared with them. By using Arafa Messaging you agree that other participants may, at our option through a paid subscription, retain and view your deleted messages indefinitely while their subscription is active.

Chat Deleted-View subscription

A paid subscription (QAR 10 / month, QAR 100 / year, QAR 500 / 5 years) entitles the subscriber to view the full text of messages deleted by other participants in conversations the subscriber participates in, but only for deletions that occur during an active subscription window of the subscriber. Past deletions (before subscription start, or between subscription cancellation and re-subscription) are not retained for the subscriber and cannot be recovered.

Cancellation and refund

A subscriber may cancel at any time. The current twenty-four (24) hour day will be charged in full. Any remaining time after the current day will be refunded pro-rata at the plan's daily rate (price ÷ plan-days). Refunds are issued via the original payment method within seven (7) business days subject to SADAD processing.

Disclosure under court order

Where a competent Qatari court issues a lawful order, an authorised Arafa super-administrator may generate an export of conversation contents that have not been erased. The export covers only the messages that remained in the system at the time of the order. Participants are notified of the disclosure within twenty-four (24) hours unless the order prohibits notice.

11. Version

Current version: 3.0.0
Effective date: 2026-05-28
When we materially change these Terms, we bump the version. The next time you log in you will be required to re-accept the new version before continuing to use Arafa. Every acceptance is logged with your IP, user agent, and a SHA-256 hash of the exact document text.