Terms of Service

Acceptance of these Terms

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) govern your access to and use of frostbloom.xyz, an independent online journal published by Frostbloom (“we”, “us”). By reading, browsing or otherwise using the site, you accept these Terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the site.

These Terms work together with four other documents, each of which is incorporated by reference: our Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, User Agreement and Editorial Policy. Where a subject is covered in more than one document, the more specific provision governs.

You must be at least 16 years old, or the age of digital consent in your jurisdiction if that is higher, to use the site. If you are below that age, you may browse only with the involvement of a parent or guardian who accepts these Terms on your behalf.

The service we provide

Frostbloom is a free editorial journal on lipstick science and beauty technology. No account is required to read it, nothing on it is sold, and no part of it is gated behind registration.

We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, revocable, non-transferable licence to access and read the site for your own personal, non-commercial use. The licence ends automatically if you breach these Terms. Nothing in these Terms transfers any ownership to you.

Acceptable use

You agree to use the site lawfully. In particular, you must not:

• Use the site for any unlawful, fraudulent or misleading purpose, or to violate the rights of any person.
• Scrape, harvest, mirror or systematically copy the site or its content by automated means — including search engines, spiders, bulk-downloaders and model-training crawlers — without our prior written permission.
• Attempt to gain unauthorised access to the site, its servers or any connected system, or probe, scan or test the vulnerability of any part of it.
• Interfere with or disrupt the site: no overloading, no denial-of-service traffic, no injecting malicious code, no tampering with security or integrity controls.
• Frame, mirror or hot-link the site or its images within another site, or present our content in a way that suggests endorsement, sponsorship or affiliation that does not exist.
• Remove, obscure or alter any copyright notice, attribution, trademark or disclaimer appearing on the site.
• Republish our articles, in whole or in part, on another site, app, newsletter, publication or automated feed without written permission.

Breaching these rules ends your licence immediately and may result in access being restricted at the network level, in addition to any legal rights we hold.

Your responsibilities

You are responsible for your own device, connection and security, and for all activity carried out through them while visiting the site.

If you send us material — a story tip, a correction, a question, a complaint — you confirm that it is accurate to the best of your knowledge, that you have the right to send it, and that it does not infringe anyone's rights or break the law. Our handling of submissions is governed by the User Agreement.

Nothing you send us obligates us to publish, respond or act. We read everything that reaches the desks; we answer what we can.

Intellectual property

The site and all of its original content — articles, analysis, photography, illustrations, layout, typography and design — are owned by Frostbloom or its licensors and are protected by copyright, trademark and other intellectual property law.

You may share links to our articles freely. You may quote brief passages with clear attribution to Frostbloom and a link to the original. Beyond that, reproduction, republication, translation, adaptation, screen-scraping or any form of commercial reuse requires our prior written permission.

Our name, logotype, design and trade dress may not be used in connection with any product or service without our prior written permission, in a way that could imply endorsement.

Our content may not be used to train, fine-tune or evaluate machine-learning models, whether the model is operated by you or by a third party. Automated crawlers are blocked and this prohibition survives independently of that blocking.

If you believe content on the site infringes your rights, write to [email protected] with the specific material, your claim and proof of your rights. We review every notice and remove or correct confirmed infringements promptly.

Accounts, subscription and termination

The site has no user accounts. There is nothing to log into, and therefore no account for you to close. The newsletter subscription works through your own email application: to stop receiving it, simply stop sending it — nothing is stored on our side.

Where you have sent us correspondence, you may ask us to delete the associated personal data at any time: [email protected]. Deletion requests are handled under the Privacy Policy and within the deadlines the law sets.

We may restrict or terminate your access to the site — including at the network level — at any time and without liability, if we reasonably believe you have breached these Terms, or where continuing to provide access would harm the site, its readers or our legal obligations.

Provisions that by their nature should survive termination survive it — including intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, governing law and dispute resolution.

Third-party links

Our reports cite and link to external sources: regulators, standards bodies, peer-reviewed research, trade press. Those links are provided as reference. We have no control over, and assume no responsibility for, the content, accuracy, privacy practices or availability of any third-party site.

No professional advice

Frostbloom publishes analysis of cosmetic science for general information. Nothing on the site is medical, dermatological, legal or purchasing advice, and it is no substitute for consultation with a qualified professional about your own skin or health.

Disclaimer of warranties

The site is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied — including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

We strive for accuracy and we correct errors in public, as our Editorial Policy sets out. But we do not warrant that the site is complete, current, error-free, or that it will be available without interruption. Product formulations change, markets move, and a report written today can be out of date tomorrow.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Frostbloom and its contributors shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, data, goodwill or intangible losses, arising out of or in connection with your access to or use of — or inability to access or use — the site.

Because the site is provided free of charge, our total aggregate liability for any claim arising out of these Terms shall not exceed one hundred pounds sterling (GBP £100).

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited under the law applicable to you. If you are a consumer, you also retain the mandatory protections of the law where you live.

Indemnity

If you use the site for commercial purposes, or if your breach of these Terms gives rise to a claim by a third party, you agree to defend and indemnify Frostbloom against the claims, damages, costs and expenses — including reasonable legal fees — arising from your misuse of the site or your breach of these Terms. This does not apply where the claim results from our own error.

Dispute resolution

If a dispute arises out of these Terms or the site, we would rather settle it by talking than by lawyers. The steps below apply in order:

• Informal resolution first: write to [email protected] describing the issue. We will acknowledge within 14 days and negotiate in good faith for at least 30 days before either side takes further action.
• If negotiation fails, disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales, sitting in London, as set out in the Governing Law section below.
• Consumers resident elsewhere in the world are not affected: nothing in these Terms deprives you of the mandatory protections of the courts where you live, and you may bring proceedings there.
• Each dispute is handled individually. To the extent permitted by law, you may not bring a claim as a plaintiff or participant in a class or representative action against us.

Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them, their subject matter or their formation — whether contractual or non-contractual — are governed by and construed in accordance with the law of England and Wales.

The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction over any such dispute or claim, sitting in London. For non-consumer users, and for any dispute where the mandatory consumer protections of your home jurisdiction do not apply, this jurisdiction is exclusive.

For consumers resident outside England and Wales: the governing-law and jurisdiction clauses above do not limit the mandatory consumer rights you hold under the law of the country where you are habitually resident, and you may bring proceedings in the courts of that country.

Changes to these Terms

We may revise these Terms at any time. The date at the top of this page shows when the current version took effect.

For material changes — a new restriction, a change of governing law, a change in how we handle your data — we will announce the change on the site before it takes effect, and where a change affects data you have already sent us, we will notify you directly where we can.

Continued use of the site after a revised version takes effect means you accept it. If you do not accept a change, stop using the site.

General

If any provision of these Terms is held to be invalid or unenforceable, that provision is severed and the remainder stays in force.

These Terms, together with the four documents incorporated by reference, are the entire agreement between you and Frostbloom about the site. They replace any earlier arrangement on the same subject.

Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them in connection with a reorganisation of the publication.

A person who is not a party to these Terms has no right to enforce any of them.

Contact

Questions about these Terms: [email protected]. Data protection requests: [email protected]. Editorial corrections: [email protected]. Intellectual property notices: [email protected], marked for the legal desk.