Havara Community Guidelines

Effective September 16, 2026

Last updated October 3, 2026

1. What these guidelines are

Havara is your community's private space. These are the rules for what you post there, and an honest description of the reporting, blocking, and moderation tools that actually exist in the app.

These guidelines explain the conduct we expect from everyone who posts on Havara, and how moderation really works. They are a plain-language companion to our Terms of Service. The "Acceptable use" and "Community moderation" sections of the Terms are the binding rules, and breaking these guidelines is a breach of those Terms. The Privacy Policy explains who can see what you post.

They apply to everything you post, everywhere in the app: community and group chat, direct messages, announcements and comments, events, bulletins, emergency alerts and responses, violation-case appeals and comments, architectural-review and resident requests, poll and survey responses, vendor listings and recommendations, your profile, questions you ask the AI "Ask" feature, and every photo, video, or file you attach. A direct message is private to its participants unless a participant reports it, the chat filter holds or flags it, or someone on your community's board who received it makes it into a request (Section 10). It is not exempt from these rules: recipients can report it.

2. The short version

Six rules.

1. Be a decent neighbor. Disagree about the fence, not about the person.
2. No harassment, hate, or threats. Ever, anywhere in the app, including DMs.
3. Keep other people's private information out. No posting someone's SSN, finances, health details, or anything similar, and no posting photos of neighbors to shame them.
4. No spam, scams, or solicitation. The member directory is not a lead list.
5. Emergency alerts are for emergencies. They punch through the mutes and quiet hours everyone sets in Havara, by design.
6. Use the tools, not the flamewar. Report content that breaks the rules; block people you don't want to hear from.

3. Be a good neighbor

This is the app version of the community you already live in. The standard is the same.

Havara communities are small, real, and permanent in a way most online spaces are not: the person you argue with tonight is the person you pass at the mailboxes tomorrow. So:

• Argue the issue, not the person. Sharp disagreement about community decisions (budgets, rules, elections, violations) is legitimate and welcome. Personal attacks are not.
• Assume good faith first. A board member entering a violation case and a resident appealing it are both doing their jobs.
• Take neighbor disputes off the platform when they escalate. Havara is a venue, not a mediator or a court. Your community's governing documents and the law govern disputes between members and with the board (Terms, "Community moderation and member-to-member disputes").
• Post to the right audience. Channels are for the community; groups are for their members; DMs are for the people in them. Screenshotting someone's DM into a channel to embarrass them is a fast way to violate the harassment rule.

4. What's not allowed

The same list as the Terms of Service, in plain words. It applies to DMs too.

Do not post or send:

• Harassment, hate, or threats: abusive, hateful, threatening, or defamatory content, or content that is sexually explicit or that depicts or incites violence;
• Other people's private information: someone's government ID numbers, financial details, health or medical information, background-check or credit information, home-security details, or private communications shared to embarrass them (see Section 5 for the full sensitive-data list);
• Impersonation: pretending to be another person, a board member you are not, or a resident of a unit you don't live in;
• Spam and solicitation: unsolicited commercial messages, pyramid or scam content, or using the member directory or any community data to sell, canvass, or harvest contacts;
• Content that breaks the law or someone's rights, including copyright and privacy rights;
• Malware or break-in attempts: no probing, scraping, credential attacks, or trying to see communities, cases, or documents you aren't authorized to see;
• AI-training harvesting: content on Havara may not be scraped or used to train, fine-tune, or evaluate any machine-learning or AI model.

Boards are bound too. Board members must follow the same content rules in the records they create: violation cases, announcements, notes. Moderation power is not an exemption from the conduct rules.

5. Sensitive data stays out

Never type these into any Havara surface (chat, cases, requests, documents, anywhere).

Do not put into the app, about yourself or anyone else:

• Social Security numbers or other government identification numbers;
• bank, card, or other financial account numbers;
• passwords or credentials;
• health or medical information;
• background-check or credit information.

This mirrors the prohibited-data list in the Terms of Service. It protects your neighbors, and it protects your community: Havara is not built or offered as a HIPAA-, GLBA-, or PCI-regulated service, so data requiring those regimes must not live here. If we or a board find such data, it may be removed.

6. Photos, videos, and files

Attachments go to the same audience as the message; the app blocks executables and caps files at 50 MB; and the camera doesn't quietly save to your photo roll. The consent rule is on you.

What the app technically accepts (checked at the storage layer; anything else is refused at upload):

Executables, archives, and unknown binary types are refused by the storage rules, not just the interface.

How attachments behave:

• An attachment is visible to the same audience as the message you attach it to (a channel, a group, a DM) and is stored in a private bucket served through expiring signed links, never public URLs. If the message is made into a request (Section 10), a copy of its photo goes with the request, where the person who filed it and every administrator of your community can see it.
• Photos or videos you capture in-app for chat are not saved to your device's camera roll. They go only to the conversation.
• Photos on violation cases and architectural requests are part of the board's case record and follow that record's visibility (only the cited resident and the board's compliance holders see a violation case).

The conduct rules for media:

• Get consent before posting recognizable photos or videos of your neighbors, especially of children. A community channel is not a public street.
• No surveillance posting. Don't use the app to publish doorbell/security footage of identifiable neighbors to shame them; if footage documents a genuine rule violation or safety issue, send it to your board through the proper channel (a report, a request, or a violation case) rather than the community feed.
• Media content follows every rule in Section 4. An image can harass just as effectively as a sentence.

7. Emergency alerts

Alerts override the mutes and quiet hours everyone sets in Havara, by design. Treat them like a fire alarm.

An emergency alert goes to every approved member of your community other than the person who raised it. It deliberately bypasses the notification mutes and quiet hours people set in Havara, because a genuine emergency should. By default it does not override a phone's own silent mode, Focus or Do Not Disturb settings, so it will not sound on a phone that has been silenced. On Android, you can choose to let Havara's "Emergency alerts" notification channel override Do Not Disturb, in your phone's notification settings for Havara. That power comes with a strict rule:

• Raise an alert only for genuine, time-sensitive community safety matters: fire, flood, gas leak, an intruder, a missing child, an urgent hazard.
• Announcements, complaints, reminders, and disputes are never alerts. Misusing alerts is a serious violation of these guidelines and can lead to loss of access.
• Alerts are not a substitute for emergency services. Call 911 first. Havara is a neighbor-notification layer, not an emergency responder.

8. Reporting content

Report anything that breaks these rules, including DMs. Your community's moderators review it. Reports can't be deleted through the app, and moderators can see who filed them.

How: long-press (or use the menu on) the offending message and choose Report; in the web console, choose Report under the message. This works on any message that isn't yours, including photo, video, and file messages with no text. Pick a reason (spam, harassment, hate, violence, sexual content, self-harm, or other) and optionally add detail (up to 1,000 characters).

What happens next, exactly:

• The report goes to your community's moderators (the board/admins, plus any member the board has granted moderation capability). It does not go to other residents.
• Reports are not anonymous to moderators. They can see who filed the report, when, and why. Other members cannot.
• You can follow your reports. Profile, then Reports you've filed (in the Support section), lists each report you filed and its status: received, being reviewed, closed, or no action taken. You are not told what was done to the other person, and the app does not notify you when a status changes. If the board hides what you reported, you will see it marked as removed in the thread like everyone else.
• You can report each message once. Reporting it again does not create a second report: the app still thanks you, and the duplicate is discarded.
• Reports are permanent moderation history, with one exception. They cannot be deleted through the app (no delete path exists), and they survive even if the reported message or the reported account is later deleted. The one exception: if the reporter deletes their own account, their reports are removed with it (see the Privacy Policy, How long we keep data).
• Reporting a DM shares it with moderators. The DM stays private to its other participants, but your report (reason and detail) and the message you reported become visible to your community's moderators, so they can judge it and act. That is the mechanism by which a private message can be moderated at all.

Reporting a declared interest. A board member's declaration that they or their family have an interest in a vendor can be reported too: on the vendor's page in the app, or on the vendor in the web console, choose Report beside a declaration that isn't yours, and pick a reason (harassment, hate, spam or an advert, or something else such as private information). This works differently from a message report:

• The report goes to Havara as well as being visible to your community's moderators. Havara reviews every report on a declaration and is the only one who can act on it; your board cannot close it.
• The person who made the declaration cannot see the report or who filed it, even if they are a moderator.
• You can report each declaration once, and not one you made yourself. You can follow it in Reports you've filed, marked "Declared interest".
• Report a declaration for what its words say (abuse, hate, spam, or private information about someone), not because you think the interest is wrong or out of date. That is a question for your board and the person who declared it, who can withdraw it.

Reporting is for rule violations, not for disagreements. Reporting a message because you dispute the board's budget doesn't remove the budget.

If someone is in immediate danger, call 911 before reporting anything in an app.

9. Blocking people

Blocking is personal, immediate, silent, and reversible. It hides them from you; it doesn't punish them.

• Block any member from their profile or a message. Blocking hides that person's chat and direct messages from you across all your communities, enforced in the database, not just visually.
• The blocked person is not notified, and blocking is invisible to everyone but you: only you can see your block list.
• Unblock any time in Profile, then Blocked accounts (in the Support section).
• Blocking does not remove the person's content for anyone else, and it is not a report. If the content breaks the rules, do both: report it and block them.
• Blocking does not exempt anyone from community governance. A blocked board member's official case records and announcements still exist in the system, because governance records aren't personal messages.

10. How board moderation works

Your community is moderated by your own board and its appointed moderators (your neighbors, not Havara staff), with one exception: the words of a declared interest, which only Havara can remove. Every moderation action leaves a permanent record.

Who moderates: each community's board and admins, plus any member the board has explicitly granted the moderation capability. Moderators act for their own community only. Nobody can moderate a community they don't hold that role in, and the server verifies this on every action.

What moderators can do:

• Review and triage reports filed by members (Section 8).
• Hide a message. A hidden message shows as removed by the board in the thread, distinct from the neutral "Message removed" shown when an author deletes their own message. Hiding a message also resolves its open reports.
• Record case notes explaining why content was actioned. Notes are immutable (they cannot be edited or deleted), building an audit trail for patterns and appeals.
• Manage membership: approve join requests, change roles, and remove members from their community, per the community's own rules.
• Create, rename, archive and restore community chat channels. Only the board and admins can do this; a member who holds only the moderation capability cannot. Archiving a channel closes it to new posts and keeps everything already in it readable by the same members, and the board can restore it. The community's main channel cannot be archived, and no board member or resident can delete a channel, so archiving never removes what anyone said.
• Pin up to five messages to the top of a community or board channel. Only the board and admins can pin; a member who holds only the moderation capability cannot, and nothing can be pinned in a direct message or a group chat. Everyone who can read the channel sees its pins at the top, including people who join later. A pin highlights a message so neighbors can find it; it does not make a neighbor's words an official association statement. Editing a message, adding a file to it, deleting it or removing it unpins it. Members using the phone app do not see pins yet.

What moderation deliberately cannot do:

• Moderators cannot edit your words. There is no capability to rewrite a message body. A message can be hidden, never altered. What you said stays what you said.
• Moderators cannot remove or edit a declared interest, and cannot close a report on one. Havara alone can replace a declaration's words, with "Removed by Havara", when they break these guidelines (for example they describe a private person beyond what the conflict needs, or carry personal data). The declaration itself, the name of the person who made it and its dates stay, and so does its effect on who may approve that vendor. Havara keeps a record of who removed the words, when and why, but not the words, so a removal cannot be undone; the person who made it can withdraw it and declare again.
• Moderators cannot read your DMs. There is no DM-reading surface for boards or admins; a DM message only reaches moderators if a participant reports it, the chat filter holds or flags it, or someone on your community's board (a board member, an admin or a declarant) who received it makes it into a request with the phone's "Make this a request", and then only that message. In a request, every administrator of your community can read the message's text and any photo it carried (see the Privacy Policy, Section 5).
• Hiding is not erasure: the hidden text is preserved as an immutable moderation record (see the Privacy Policy's retention table), so an abusive message can't be memory-holed by the person who sent it, or by the board.
• Governance actions (invite redemptions, role and membership changes, creating, renaming, archiving or restoring a channel, and pinning or unpinning a message) are written to a board-visible audit log, so moderation power is itself accountable.

Where Havara fits: moderation decisions inside your community are your community's decisions, made by its board. Havara does not review every hide or removal, and board members and community moderators are your neighbors acting for the community, not agents or employees of Havara. Havara may itself act (remove content, suspend accounts) on violations of the Terms of Service, and we are not obligated to monitor content, though we may.

Honesty about how enforcement works today: moderation on Havara is human and report-driven, with one simple automated check on chat. Every chat and direct message, and the name of any file attached to it, is checked, as it is posted or edited, against a list of slurs and a set of patterns for scam links: a link through a known link shortener, and some disguised addresses (one written out to slip past a link check, one with a name and an @ sign in front of the real address, a numeric address, or one that mixes in letters from another alphabet). It does not catch every look-alike address, so treat an unexpected payment link with care. The check runs inside our own database; no outside service or AI sees your message. There is one exception: when a board member publishes a bulletin and announces it in community chat, creates a poll or adds an upcoming event for the whole community, Havara posts a line in your community's main chat under that board member's name, carrying the bulletin's title, the poll's question or the event's title. Those are the board's own words from the bulletin, poll or event, which the check does not cover, so the line is not checked when it is posted; if the board member later edits it, the edit is checked. A message with a link that looks like a scam is held: you still see it, and we send you a notification that it is held when your notifications are on and outside your quiet hours (the current version of the app also marks it "Held for review"). No other member sees it until a moderator allows it into the conversation (allowing it sends no notification) or hides it; your moderators are notified and review it. A single message can be up to 4,000 characters. A message with a word from the list is posted as normal and flagged to your moderators. The check is a pattern list, so it will miss some things and sometimes catch an innocent message: a few words on the list also have an everyday meaning, and one is spelled the same as a common Spanish nickname, so a message that uses one of them is flagged too. A flagged or held direct message reaches your moderators like any other; a moderator decides every case. There is no other proactive review: other content is reviewed when a person reports it or a moderator sees it. Ask has its own check: each question is sent to OpenAI's moderation service before it is answered, and a refused question is kept where your community's moderators can see it.

Deleting your own message removes its text for everyone. If someone reported it before you deleted it, your moderators keep a copy of its text until 90 days after they close the report, so deleting reported words does not undo the report. Nor does editing them: each report keeps the text the message had when the report was filed, on the same 90 days. Photos and files are not kept for moderators: once a message is deleted, nobody can open them in chat, your moderators included, though a link someone already loaded keeps working for up to an hour. A request someone had already made from your message is separate and stays: it keeps the message's text and a copy of its photo, where the person who filed it and your community's administrators can open them.

11. If your content is removed or your access is restricted

Your board made the call, so your board is the venue. Here's what exists (and doesn't) as a formal appeal.

• Start with your board. Community moderation decisions are your community's decisions; ask the board which rule the content broke.
• Honest disclosure: no formal in-app appeal for content moderation exists today. There is no button to appeal a hidden message. What does exist: the moderation record is permanent (the hidden text and the moderators' case notes are preserved), so there is always an evidence trail for the conversation with your board.
• Violation cases are different: an appeal is built in. If your board opens a rule-violation case against you, you can file an appeal on your own case in the app, and withdraw it. The case's event timeline is append-only, so the history of notices, appeals, and decisions can't be silently rewritten.
• If you believe a board is abusing moderation (using it to silence lawful disagreement, or violating these guidelines itself), contact us at privacy@havara.app. We can't overrule a community's lawful self-governance, but Terms-of-Service violations are ours to act on.

12. What happens when rules are broken

Content can be hidden, membership can be removed, accounts can be suspended, and a few technical guardrails run all the time.

Depending on severity and pattern:

1. Content action: the board hides the message; the moderation record notes why.
2. Community action: the board may restrict or remove your membership in its community, under its own governing rules.
3. Platform action: Havara may suspend or terminate accounts for violations of the Terms of Service, per the Terms' termination section (which also describes your data-export path).

Always-on technical guardrails (these are anti-abuse limits set well above human speed; a person won't hit them, a script will):

Attempting to evade rate limits or other safeguards is itself a violation of the Terms.

13. Who can use Havara

Adults, 18 and up.

Havara accounts are for adults 18 and older: residents, owners, tenants, and board members. The app is not directed to children. See the Privacy Policy's "Children and eligibility" section for the honest description of how this is (and isn't) enforced.

14. Changes to these guidelines

Same discipline as our other documents (versioned, dated, no silent edits).

When we update these guidelines we will update the date at the top of this page and keep a versioned history of the change; prior versions are available on request via privacy@havara.app. Material changes are announced in the app in advance, consistent with the Terms of Service's change-notice commitment.

15. Contact

Questions about these guidelines, or a moderation concern your board can't resolve:

Havara LLC, a Georgia limited liability company

525 Tribble Gap Rd, P.O. Box 724, Cumming, GA 30040

Email: privacy@havara.app