Community Guidelines

At a glance

These highlights are a practical summary. The complete Guidelines below control.

• Use UniSphere for genuine school-community projects, collaboration, and proof of work.
• Treat people with respect. Harassment, threats, hate, stalking, exploitation, doxxing, fraud, and sexual abuse are prohibited.
• Follow academic-integrity rules, obtain required approvals, and move payments, employment, fundraising, and other regulated arrangements off the Service.
• Respect blocks and consent. Do not spam, scrape, impersonate, manipulate, or evade enforcement.
• Report concerns in good faith. UniSphere may remove content, restrict features, suspend accounts, preserve evidence, and permit appeals.

Purpose and scope

UniSphere is operated by Unisphere Connect LLC (the "Operator," "we," "us," or "our"). UniSphere is designed for people in participating school communities to post projects, find collaborators, communicate, and build a credible record of work. These Community Guidelines (the "Guidelines") explain the behavior and Content allowed on the UniSphere websites, application, communications, and related services (the "Service"). They apply to every Member, profile, project, role, update, join request, connection, message, image, report, and other interaction through the Service.

The Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Policy, and Safety and Takedown Policy also apply. The Privacy Policy controls the handling of personal information, the Copyright Policy controls copyright notice, counter-notice, restoration, and repeat-infringer procedures, the Safety and Takedown Policy controls its dedicated removal procedures, and the Terms otherwise control if a conflict cannot be reconciled.

These Guidelines can also apply to off-platform conduct when it is connected to use of the Service or creates a credible risk to Members, projects, or Service integrity. Examples include threats against a Member first contacted on UniSphere, retaliation for a report, misuse of information obtained from a profile, or evasion of a UniSphere block. UniSphere does not generally police unrelated off-platform disagreements.

Who may participate

Members must be at least 18 years old, affirm that requirement during signup, control an eligible email address from a participating school, use their real identity, and satisfy the eligibility rules in the Terms. School-email verification confirms control of an address at the time of verification; it is not a background check or independent proof of age, enrollment, character, authority, credentials, or skill.

UniSphere is independent. It is not sponsored, endorsed, administered by, or affiliated with Arizona State University, the Arizona Board of Regents, or another participating school unless UniSphere expressly announces a separate written relationship. A school does not automatically receive access to Member content or control moderation merely because its email domain is eligible.

Our community principles

• Be genuine. Represent yourself, your school relationship, your skills, your project, and your progress honestly.
• Build with respect. Disagree about ideas without attacking, degrading, intimidating, or excluding people.
• Protect safety and privacy. Share only what is needed, obtain permission, and do not expose another person's private or confidential information.
• Honor consent and boundaries. Respect a person's decision not to connect, collaborate, meet, or continue a conversation.
• Follow the rules that apply to the work. Comply with law, school rules, instructor directions, licenses, approvals, and contractual duties.

Genuine accounts and honest representation

Identity and affiliation

• Use your real identity and accurate, current profile information.
• Maintain only one personal account unless UniSphere gives written authorization for a test, demo, support, or organizational account.
• Do not impersonate a person or organization, fabricate credentials, misstate enrollment or school affiliation, or falsely claim authority to recruit, hire, fund, sponsor, or represent a school.
• Do not sell, transfer, lend, share, or license an account, access code, or authenticated session.
• Do not create a new account to evade a block, school restriction, suspension, termination, or other protective measure.

Project and proof-of-work claims

Project descriptions, roles, team rosters, updates, status labels, and completed-project records must reflect genuine activity. Do not fabricate participation, inflate results, falsely claim ownership or authorship, create sham projects to manipulate discovery, or pressure another Member to confirm work they did not perform.

A UniSphere record is not a legal determination of authorship, inventorship, ownership, employment, academic credit, or compensation. Team members should use separate written agreements when appropriate for intellectual property, confidentiality, attribution, expenses, responsibilities, decision rights, publication, and departure.

Respectful participation

Harassment, threats, hate, and violence

Do not engage in or encourage conduct that targets, degrades, frightens, coerces, or endangers another person. Prohibited conduct includes:

• Credible or implied threats of violence, celebration of targeted violence, instructions to harm a person, or glorification intended to intimidate a target.
• Harassment, stalking, repeated unwanted contact, dogpiling, blackmail, extortion, humiliation, shaming, or retaliation.
• Hateful conduct, dehumanization, slurs, exclusion, or threats directed at a person or group based on race, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, disability, age, veteran status, or another protected characteristic.
• Encouraging self-harm or suicide, mocking a person for self-harm, or using a vulnerability to manipulate or threaten them.
• Coordinating abuse through other accounts, services, groups, or people.

Sexual exploitation and intimate content

• Do not post, request, threaten to share, trade, or distribute nonconsensual intimate images or videos.
• Do not create or publish sexualized digital forgeries or deepfakes of an identifiable person without consent.
• Do not post sexual content involving a person under 18, sexualize a minor, solicit sexual content from a minor, groom or entice a minor, or facilitate child sexual exploitation or trafficking.
• Do not use intimate material for coercion, revenge, humiliation, extortion, or retaliation.
• Do not use UniSphere to offer or arrange adult services or other prohibited regulated activity.

Urgent removal requests for nonconsensual intimate depictions, including digital forgeries, must follow the Safety and Takedown Policy. If anyone is in immediate danger, contact 911 or the appropriate local emergency service.

Privacy, confidential information, and doxxing

• Do not reveal or solicit another person's home address, private contact information, precise location, financial information, health information, government identifier, school record, authentication credential, or other sensitive information without authorization.
• Do not publish information to enable harassment, surveillance, identity theft, unwanted contact, or physical harm, even if individual facts can be found elsewhere.
• Do not upload trade secrets, confidential employer or school material, protected research, education records, source code, credentials, or personal data you lack authority to share.
• Do not screenshot, record, or redistribute a private conversation in a misleading, exploitative, or harmful way. Lawful reporting, safety documentation, and obtaining professional advice are not prohibited when handled responsibly.

Lawful and trustworthy collaboration

Fraud, scams, spam, and manipulation

• Do not deceive Members about a project, sponsor, employer, compensation, credentials, funding, product, service, deadline, or intended use of their work or information.
• Do not run pyramid schemes, advance-fee schemes, fake recruiting, credential theft, phishing, malware distribution, deceptive fundraising, or other fraud.
• Do not send unwanted bulk messages, repetitive promotions, mass recruiting, chain messages, or automated outreach.
• Do not buy, sell, trade, or coordinate fake connections, join requests, project participation, reactions, reports, or other engagement.
• Do not submit a knowingly false report or coordinate reports to punish, silence, or overwhelm another Member.

Regulated, illegal, or dangerous activities

A project may discuss an opportunity that could later involve compensation, employment, fundraising, sales, or another arrangement, but those activities must be completed off-platform using appropriate agreements and services. UniSphere does not process payments, hold funds, verify work authorization, execute employment arrangements, or perform tax reporting for Members.

Do not use the Service to offer, arrange, transact, recruit for, or provide an activity that requires licensing, registration, institutional approval, or specialized regulatory compliance unless UniSphere has expressly enabled that category in writing. This includes financial or investment services, lending, gambling, legal or medical services, controlled substances, weapons transactions, adult services, human-subject research without required approval, and illegal or dangerous goods or services.

Academic integrity and responsible research

• Follow the academic-integrity, research, acceptable-use, and collaboration rules that apply to you.
• Do not arrange cheating, plagiarism, fabrication, unauthorized collaboration, exam assistance, impersonation, completion of graded work for another person, or false authorship.
• Keep study groups and academic projects within the instructor's and institution's rules.
• Obtain required institutional review, participant consent, data-use authorization, safety approval, export-control review, or other permission before conducting research or collecting data.
• Do not treat UniSphere as a confidential research repository or as approval to recruit research participants.

Intellectual property and attribution

• Submit only content you own or have permission to use, and follow applicable licenses and attribution requirements.
• Do not copy another person's code, design, writing, image, research, data, trademark, project description, or other work in a way that infringes or misappropriates rights.
• Do not remove authorship, copyright, trademark, license, or provenance information to mislead others.
• Use the Copyright Policy for copyright complaints and counter-notices. Use legal@unisphereconnect.com for other rights claims that cannot be handled through ordinary reporting.

Messaging and personal boundaries

• Contact people for genuine, relevant collaboration and make your purpose clear.
• Stop contacting someone when they decline, ask you to stop, leave a project, or block you.
• Do not pressure someone to meet in person, share private information, provide unpaid work, transfer money, sign an agreement, or move to another service.
• Do not add or retain someone in a project or conversation to defeat their expressed boundary or a protective control.
• Use caution with off-platform meetings and transactions. Verify the person and terms independently, meet safely, and keep copies of agreements you may need.

Security and platform integrity

• Do not access or attempt to access an account, message, project, school tenant, database, system, or feature without authorization.
• Do not probe, scan, test, bypass, or interfere with security, authentication, school boundaries, rate limits, blocking, moderation, or access controls without written authorization.
• Do not introduce malware, harmful code, denial-of-service traffic, or other material intended to disrupt the Service or another system.
• Do not scrape, crawl, harvest, mirror, index, or systematically collect Member profiles, projects, messages, contact details, or Service data without written permission.
• Do not use bots or automation to create accounts, message Members, submit requests, manipulate results, or take actions ordinarily performed by a human unless UniSphere expressly enables the automation.
• Do not use Service data to build surveillance, facial-recognition, advertising, recruiting, credit, insurance, housing, or eligibility profiles about Members without express authorization and all required legal compliance.

Reporting, blocking, and urgent help

Report concerns in good faith

Use the in-app reporting control when available for a profile, project, message, or update. Select the closest reason, explain the concern briefly, and include only relevant information. For urgent safety concerns or intimate-image removal requests, contact support@unisphereconnect.com. For copyright claims, contact legal@unisphereconnect.com. For general support and appeals, contact support@unisphereconnect.com.

A report is not confidential from UniSphere personnel and service providers who need it to review the issue. UniSphere may preserve a restricted snapshot of reported content and relevant context even if the original content changes or is deleted. UniSphere generally does not identify a reporter to the reported Member, but may disclose information when required by law, necessary for fairness, or authorized by the reporter.

Blocking

Blocking can reduce direct discovery and interaction between accounts, but it cannot erase information already received, remove shared project history, prevent every indirect encounter, or control conduct outside UniSphere. Do not evade or help another person evade a block.

Emergencies

UniSphere is not an emergency service and does not continuously monitor reports or email. If you or another person faces immediate danger, call 911 or the appropriate local emergency service. Do not wait for UniSphere to respond.

How enforcement works

UniSphere may investigate reports, review reported content and limited relevant context, request information, preserve evidence, and use automated or manual systems to identify abuse. UniSphere is not required to monitor every interaction or take a specific action in response to every report.

Depending on the circumstances, UniSphere may take one or more of these actions:

• Provide education, a warning, or a direction to stop the conduct.
• Reduce distribution, remove content, redact a reported message, or close a project or role.
• Reject or reverse a join request, connection, participation record, or other action affected by abuse.
• Limit messaging, discovery, posting, uploads, project administration, or another feature.
• Temporarily suspend or permanently terminate an account and take reasonable steps to prevent recreation.
• Preserve evidence, notify a service provider or school when legally permitted and reasonably necessary, or refer apparent criminal conduct, exploitation, credible threats, or emergencies to appropriate authorities.

Enforcement decisions can consider severity, actual or potential harm, intent, context, target vulnerability, scale, repetition, prior conduct, evasion, cooperation, credibility of available information, and legal requirements. Serious conduct can result in immediate permanent termination even without a prior warning. Similar cases can have different outcomes when relevant facts differ.

UniSphere may withhold details or act without advance notice when disclosure could endanger someone, reveal private information, compromise an investigation, enable abuse, create legal risk, or undermine security. UniSphere may not be able to tell a reporter the full outcome because another Member's account and safety information is private.

Appeals

When practicable, UniSphere will give a Member a general reason for a material content or account restriction and an opportunity to appeal. Send an appeal to support@unisphereconnect.com within 30 days after the decision and include your account handle, the date or reference for the decision, the specific outcome you challenge, and a concise explanation of why it should be changed. Include new information that was not available during the original review.

An appeal does not automatically pause an enforcement action. UniSphere will reconsider the record and any relevant new information in good faith; when staffing reasonably permits, a person other than the original decision-maker will conduct that review. UniSphere may affirm, modify, or reverse the decision. One appeal is ordinarily available for each decision unless UniSphere requests more information or identifies a material process error.

Appeals cannot be used to contact, intimidate, or discover the identity of a reporter or affected person. UniSphere may limit repeat, abusive, fraudulent, or substantially identical appeals.

Changes to these Guidelines

UniSphere may update these Guidelines as the Service, risks, and law change. For a material change, UniSphere will provide reasonable advance notice, ordinarily at least 30 days, unless a faster change is reasonably necessary for safety, security, legal compliance, or to prevent abuse. Continued use after the effective date of an update means the revised Guidelines apply.

Contact

General questions, support, and appeals: support@unisphereconnect.com

Urgent safety and intimate-image removal requests: support@unisphereconnect.com

Copyright notices, counter-notices, and legal correspondence: legal@unisphereconnect.com. Mailing address: Unisphere Connect LLC, 551 E Apache Blvd, Apt 1228, Tempe, AZ 85281.