Terms of Use for Rate My Ditch
Effective date: 4 October 2026
Rate My Ditch is operated by Alexander Ottolangui, operating under the app studio name Rate My Fav Apps ("we", "us", or "our").
These Terms of Use explain the rules for using Rate My Ditch. By using the app, creating an account, using a guest session, or submitting content, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree to them, you should not use the app.
Rate My Ditch is a humorous entertainment app. It is not intended to provide safety advice, travel advice, access advice, outdoor-activity advice, or a recommendation to visit any location shown in the app.
For questions or support, contact ratemyditch@gmail.com.
Rate My Ditch allows users to find, create, rate, review, save, and share ditch locations on a map. Depending on the features available to your account, the app may also provide profiles, friends, notifications, leaderboards, reporting, blocking, privacy controls, and other social features.
The app is intended as a joke and social review experience. A ditch being listed, rated, reviewed, shared, or shown on a map does not mean that it is safe, legal to access, publicly accessible, suitable to visit, or recommended by Rate My Ditch.
Rate My Ditch is intended for users aged 18 or over and is not designed for children.
By using the app, you confirm that you are at least 18 years old and are legally able to agree to these Terms under the laws that apply to you.
The app may allow some features to be used through a guest or anonymous session. Guest users may be able to browse Public ditch content but are restricted from account-only features.
Account-only features may include creating ditches, uploading images, submitting reviews or ratings, saving favourites, using friends and profile features, blocking users, managing marketing permissions, receiving account-based notifications, and deleting a registered account.
If you create an account, you are responsible for keeping your login details secure and for activity carried out through your account. You must not use another person's account without permission or attempt to gain access to an account that is not yours.
Some actions may require you to accept the current version of these Terms before you can continue.
Signed-in users may have profile and friendship features. Where available, profile visibility can be set to Public, Friends only, or Private.
A Public profile may be discoverable and viewable by other signed-in users. A Friends-only profile is intended to be viewable only by the profile owner and accepted friends. A Private profile is intended to be viewable only by the profile owner.
Friend-request settings are controlled separately. If you allow friend requests, the app may make enough limited profile information available for another signed-in user to find you and send a request even when the rest of your profile is not Public. Protected profile content remains subject to the applicable access controls.
Friend requests can be accepted, declined, cancelled, or removed. Accepted friendships may affect access to Friends-only ditches, profiles, leaderboards, and other social features.
Blocking another user may remove or disable an existing friendship or pending friend request and may reduce the blocked user's content from being shown to you where the app supports that behaviour.
You must not use profile, friend, search, messaging-related, reporting, or blocking features to harass, stalk, threaten, impersonate, intimidate, or target another person.
When the feature is available, a ditch can be set to Public or Friends only.
Public means that the ditch may be discoverable and viewable by anyone using the parts of Rate My Ditch that provide access to Public content, including guest users where guest access is supported.
Friends only means that the ditch is intended to be accessible only to the creator and accepted friends of the creator. Access is enforced through the app and Firebase security controls.
The creator may be able to change a ditch between Public and Friends only. If visibility changes, who can view the ditch may change immediately or as soon as the updated permissions take effect.
You must not attempt to bypass visibility controls, security rules, authentication checks, or other access restrictions.
Rate My Ditch may allow users to share ditch links through the device sharing system and third-party apps such as messaging or social-media services.
Public ditch shares may include the ditch name, rating, a shortened description, and a link back to the ditch.
Friends-only ditches may also be shared, but the external share message is designed to use a privacy-safe generic message and link rather than exposing protected ditch details such as the ditch name, rating, description, or coordinates.
A shared link does not change a ditch's visibility and does not grant access by itself. A recipient opening a Friends-only link must still be the creator or an accepted friend with access. Forwarding a Friends-only link to someone else does not make that person authorised to view the ditch.
If a ditch is deleted, becomes unavailable, or its visibility changes, a previously shared link may stop working or become restricted.
Once you choose to share content through another app or service, that third party may process the information under its own terms and privacy practices. Rate My Ditch does not control what a recipient does with content that they were legitimately able to see or receive.
Users may create, submit, upload, rate, review, or otherwise provide content including ditch names, descriptions, ratings, images, map coordinates, reviews, review images, usernames, display names, and profile images.
You are responsible for content you submit and for choosing an appropriate visibility setting for content where a visibility choice is available.
By submitting content, you confirm that you have the right to submit it and that doing so does not violate another person's rights or applicable law.
You must not submit content that includes private or sensitive information about another person without permission. You should also avoid placing your own sensitive personal information into ditch names, descriptions, reviews, images, usernames, or other content fields.
User-generated content may be inaccurate, incomplete, outdated, misleading, offensive, or unsafe. Rate My Ditch does not verify every submission and does not endorse user-generated content merely because it appears in the app.
You keep any ownership rights you already have in content you submit.
By submitting content to Rate My Ditch, you give us permission to host, store, process, reproduce, display, and make that content available as reasonably needed to operate, secure, moderate, maintain, and improve the app and its features.
This includes showing authorised users ditch listings, reviews, ratings, images, profiles, map markers, leaderboards, and other app content in accordance with the visibility and access settings that apply.
This service-operation permission is separate from the optional marketing permission described below.
Rate My Ditch may offer a separate, optional marketing permission to signed-in users.
If you choose to give this permission, Rate My Ditch may reuse content you submit for Rate My Ditch marketing and promotion. Depending on the content and features supported, this may include ditch listings, reviews, ratings, photos, and similar submitted material on Rate My Ditch websites, social-media accounts, app-store pages, and similar promotional material.
Giving marketing permission is optional and is not required to use the ordinary features of the app.
You may change or withdraw your marketing permission through the available settings. Turning it off stops future marketing use under that permission, but it does not automatically remove material that has already been published. If you want help with previously published material, contact support at ratemyditch@gmail.com.
Marketing permission does not override another person's rights. You must still have the right to submit any material you upload.
Signed-in users may be able to review or rate ditches, save favourites, and appear in or view leaderboard features.
Reviews and ratings must reflect genuine use of the app and must comply with these Terms and the Community Guidelines. You must not create fake reviews, manipulate ratings, coordinate artificial voting, or use multiple accounts or automated methods to distort results.
Leaderboard results, review counts, averages, rankings, and other calculated information may change when content is added, edited, removed, moderated, or deleted.
Friends-only leaderboards or similar features may be restricted to accepted friends or authenticated users as applicable.
You must not use Rate My Ditch to submit, upload, create, share, or promote content or behaviour that:
· is illegal or facilitates illegal activity
· is abusive, threatening, harassing, hateful, discriminatory, or targeted at another person
· encourages violence, self-harm, dangerous behaviour, or reckless conduct
· encourages trespassing or entering unsafe, private, restricted, or hazardous areas
· contains sexually explicit content that is inappropriate for the service
· contains another person's private or personal information without permission
· impersonates another person, organisation, or service
· is spam, fraudulent, deceptive, malicious, or deliberately misleading
· infringes copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, or other rights
· contains malware, scams, harmful links, or attempts to compromise another user or the service
· creates a material safety, privacy, legal, moderation, security, or app-integrity risk
You must not misuse the app, interfere with its operation, attempt to bypass security or privacy controls, scrape or harvest data without permission, probe for vulnerabilities, overload services, automate abusive activity, manipulate rankings or ratings, or use the app in a way that may harm us, other users, or third-party services.
Rate My Ditch is a humorous entertainment app. It does not recommend, encourage, or endorse:
· sleeping in ditches
· drinking outdoors
· entering unsafe locations
· trespassing
· entering private land without permission
· entering restricted areas
· accessing roadsides, waterways, construction sites, hazardous terrain, or other unsafe outdoor locations
· putting yourself or other people at risk
You are responsible for your own safety and legal compliance.
Do not rely on Rate My Ditch to decide whether a place is safe, legal, accessible, accurate, publicly accessible, or suitable to visit. If a location appears unsafe, inaccessible, private, restricted, or otherwise inappropriate, do not visit or enter it.
Rate My Ditch is not an emergency service. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, contact the appropriate emergency services in your location. In the United Kingdom, call 999 in an emergency.
The app may use your foreground device location while the app is open or actively being used, subject to your device permissions, to show your position, support map features, and help you interact with nearby locations.
The app may display user-created map markers and may provide search features for places or locations through Google services.
Map information, place-search results, user-created coordinates, directions, access information, and other location-related information may be inaccurate, incomplete, outdated, or misleading.
We do not guarantee that a location shown in the app exists, is safe, is legal to access, is on public land, is publicly accessible, or is suitable for any purpose.
You are responsible for following local laws, signs, property boundaries, access restrictions, safety guidance, and common sense.
Rate My Ditch provides in-app reporting and blocking features for supported content and accounts. Reports may relate to ditch locations, reviews, users, images, usernames, profiles, or related behaviour.
Reports are currently reviewed manually. Submitting a report does not guarantee that content will be removed or that account action will be taken.
We may review reported content, related user-generated content, relevant account activity, and available app records in order to assess safety, legal, privacy, abuse, moderation, and app-integrity concerns.
We may remove, hide, restrict, or delete content; restrict access to features; suspend or remove accounts; or take other proportionate action where we believe content or behaviour violates these Terms, the Community Guidelines, the Safety Disclaimer, the Moderation and Reporting Policy, applicable law, or creates a material risk.
Blocking is a user-level control and is not the same as moderation. Blocking another user does not necessarily remove that user or their content from the service for everyone.
You can also contact ratemyditch@gmail.com about inappropriate, unsafe, illegal, abusive, misleading, or harmful content, or if you need to follow up on a moderation decision.
We are not required to monitor every item of content and cannot guarantee that all inappropriate, inaccurate, unsafe, or unlawful content will be identified or removed immediately.
Signed-in users may receive in-app notifications for supported events, such as friend requests, accepted friend requests, or reviews on ditches they created.
Where push notifications are available, you can choose whether to enable device alerts. Push delivery also depends on device permissions, connectivity, Firebase messaging services, and other technical factors outside our control.
You can change supported notification preferences in the app. We do not guarantee that every notification will be delivered, delivered immediately, or remain available indefinitely.
Registered users can delete their account from within the app by going to Privacy Settings -> Delete Account.
The deletion flow may require reauthentication or another verification step to confirm that the request is coming from the account owner.
The app uses Firebase Cloud Functions and Firebase Admin tools to remove the account and account-linked data where designed to do so. This includes substantial account-linked content and social data, such as profile information, favourites, reviews, ditches, images, friendships, friend requests, blocked-user relationships, notifications, notification tokens, and marketing-permission records, where applicable.
Some limited information may be retained where necessary and permitted for safety, legal, security, fraud-prevention, abuse-prevention, moderation, dispute-resolution, or app-integrity reasons. Report or moderation records may therefore not always be deleted in the same way as ordinary account content.
Users who no longer have access to the app can use the public Account Deletion Page or contact ratemyditch@gmail.com. More information is available in the Privacy Policy and Account Deletion Page.
Your use of Rate My Ditch is also governed by the Privacy Policy.
The Privacy Policy explains what information we collect or receive, how it is used, how Public and Friends-only content works, how social and notification features process data, how marketing permission works, how account deletion works, and how to contact us about privacy matters.
Rate My Ditch relies on third-party services and device features to operate parts of the app. These include Firebase services for authentication, databases, image storage, backend functions, crash reporting, and push notifications; Google Maps and Google place-search services; and the sharing features provided by your device and any external apps you choose to share through.
Third-party services may operate under their own terms, privacy policies, technical requirements, service limits, and availability conditions.
We are not responsible for outages, errors, policy changes, account restrictions, data handling, or other actions of independent third-party services, except to the extent responsibility cannot lawfully be excluded.
We may add, remove, suspend, restrict, replace, or change app features from time to time, including maps, social features, visibility controls, reviews, leaderboards, notifications, moderation features, sharing, and integrations.
We do not guarantee that the app will always be available, uninterrupted, error-free, secure against every possible threat, or compatible with every device or operating-system version.
Where a change materially affects privacy or these Terms, we may update the relevant policy or notify users through the app or another appropriate method.
Rate My Ditch currently does not include advertising, in-app purchases, or subscriptions.
If advertising, purchases, subscriptions, paid features, or other monetisation are introduced later, these Terms, the Privacy Policy, and relevant app-store information may be updated as required.
Rate My Ditch is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis to the extent permitted by law.
We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, legality, accessibility, safety, or current status of user-generated content, ditch locations, ratings, reviews, map information, place-search results, third-party data, or other content shown through the app.
We do not guarantee the behaviour of other users, that Friends-only content will never be copied by an authorised viewer, or that third-party services will always operate as expected.
Nothing in these Terms affects any guarantee, right, or remedy that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.
To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, we are not responsible for losses, damage, injury, costs, or other consequences arising from or connected with:
· reliance on user-generated content or ratings
· visiting or attempting to visit a ditch or other location shown in the app
· unsafe behaviour, trespassing, or entering private, restricted, or hazardous areas
· inaccurate, incomplete, outdated, or misleading map or location information
· content or conduct of other users
· a user sharing, copying, forwarding, or otherwise redistributing content they were able to access
· app errors, downtime, interrupted notifications, failed links, or service interruptions
· independent third-party services or apps
Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability where doing so would be unlawful. This includes any liability or consumer right that applicable law does not allow us to exclude or restrict.
We may update these Terms from time to time to reflect changes to the app, our practices, legal requirements, safety controls, or third-party services.
If we make significant changes, we may notify users in the app or by another appropriate method. The latest version should be available through the app or the Rate My Ditch public support site.
If you continue using the app after updated Terms take effect, your continued use will be subject to the updated Terms, except where applicable law requires a different form of consent or notice.
For support, privacy questions, content reports, safety concerns, account-deletion questions, marketing-permission questions, moderation follow-up, or questions about these Terms, contact:
ratemyditch@gmail.com