2026-09-14

Terms.

What you're buying, how sealing works, and what to keep safe.

What you are buying

You write one letter of up to 1000 characters. We hold it, encrypted, for one calendar year from the moment it is sealed. A solo letter seals when the server confirms payment for its completed draft. If you pay first, your letter seals when you write and seal it from your private link, and its one-year period starts at that moment, not at payment. A pair also needs both letters to be complete. The final opening instant is fixed at that sealing step; a date shown while drafting is provisional. Solo is US$5, once. A pair is US$9, once, for two letters that seal together and become available at the same moment. Local currency, the final price and any tax are shown at checkout. There is no subscription and nothing recurring. The short-letter offer is closed. New letters are for one calendar year only. Previously sealed letters keep their original opening dates and delivery commitments.

No early opening

We do not offer early opening. The service withholds the stored encrypted letter until its opening date. A refund cancels the letter rather than revealing it. This is a server access rule, not a claim that cryptography itself enforces a date.

Your private key

Keep your private link or key email somewhere safe. We do not retain a recovery copy of the key in the letter database. If you lose every copy, we cannot recreate it. Reminder and opening-day emails do not replace the key email.

Your letter is encrypted in your browser. Our letter database stores encrypted content, not the private key. However, the browser sends the key to our server for the key email and certain checks, including refund and Tapestry requests. Those checks can decrypt the letter temporarily in server memory. The email provider also processes the private link. This is not a promise that we could never access a letter. For a letter written for someone else there is one narrow, stated exception: see Letters for someone else.

Pairs

• Two letters — one shared moment. One purchaser pays for both. Each person writes their own letter to their future self.
• Together on one device: you write first, then hand the device over for the other person to write. Checkout comes after both letters are written. There is no invitation deadline in this mode.
• Writing apart: you write first and start a pair checkout. A private invitation link is created for the other person; its email is sent after payment is confirmed. They write through that link and do not pay again. The remote invitation lasts 5 days from when the pair is created, not from when its email is received. One reminder is attempted after day 3 while the pair is paid and still pending; email delivery is not guaranteed.
• Both letters seal only when payment is confirmed and both letters are complete. Their shared one-year wait starts at that sealing step, not when the first person writes or starts checkout. Both become available at the same stored opening instant; their emails may arrive at different times.
• If the remote invitation expires unfinished, the pair cannot seal. Daily processing starts a full refund of the pair payment, if one was taken, and retries if the payment provider is temporarily unavailable. A refund request is not an immediate credit to your bank account.
• The first letter stays as an encrypted, unsealed draft. Once expiry is processed, the invited person's stored delivery address and recoverable invitation link are cleared. The draft content and its delivery address are eligible for daily cleanup 60 days from the draft's original creation, unless it still has a captured payment or belongs to a still-pending pair. Other records are not all erased at that point. After the expired pair payment has been refunded or released, you can choose a new solo checkout while your draft remains. Nothing converts or charges you automatically. Keep your private key: the solo option uses the same encrypted draft, and its one-year wait starts only when it seals as a paid solo letter.
• By default, each letter has its own key and each person receives their own private access link. Use a trusted device and keep those links private. Writing together uses the same browser for both letters; it is not a separate secure session for each person. Only the same-device mode offers an optional exchange. If you both choose it, each receives a link to the other's letter that becomes usable on the shared opening date. Either person can cancel the exchange before then without cancelling their own letter. Remote pairs do not offer an exchange.

Letters for someone else

• A letter for someone else opens one year after it is sealed, the same as every letter. It sells at the one-letter price.
• Once your payment clears, the recipient receives one email: who it is from, the day it opens, and their private link. Nothing about what the letter says. They hear from us again on the morning it opens, and not in between.
• For this letter type only, the assembled opening link (the key inside it) is written down encrypted from the moment your browser seals the letter until that first email is accepted by our email provider, typically minutes, and is deleted the moment it is. Between those two moments the operator could technically read the letter. For a letter to yourself, nothing of the kind is stored.
• The recipient's name and email address are held, encrypted at rest with a one-way lookup hash, for the single purpose of delivering that letter, and are cleared after the letter opens on the same schedule as everything else. The recipient may decline at any time from their link; the letter is then cancelled and you are refunded in full, and you are told only that it was declined.
• You may call the letter off yourself from your private letter page for 60 days after sealing, or until it opens, whichever comes first. If the recipient had already been told, they receive one line saying it will not be opening. After that window, write to us.
• If the recipient's address bounces, the letter stays sealed and still opens; you are told, so that you can supply another address. A letter is never cancelled automatically because an email bounced.
• You confirm that the recipient is an adult who gave you their address, and that the letter is something you would say to their face. We act on a recipient's complaint the same way we act on their decline.

Paying first, writing later

• You can pay for one letter to yourself now and write it later. The paid letter waits, unsealed, and we email you a private link to write and seal it on any device. Its one-year wait starts when you seal it, never when you pay.
• Anyone holding that link can write, seal or refund that one unsealed letter, so keep it private. It cannot open any letter and cannot change where emails go. We keep it only as a one-way hash and an encrypted copy, so that our reminders can include it, and we delete both when the letter is sealed, refunded or cleared.
• Nothing you write in a letter you paid for first reaches us until you seal it. Until then your words are saved only in that browser, encrypted, for up to 100 days, and they do not follow you to another device.
• If you pay first, we email you that link once your payment is confirmed, up to three short reminders in its first week while it is unsealed, one notice before an automatic refund, and a note when a refund happens. Your private key email is sent when you seal it.
• You can refund a letter you paid for first yourself, at any time before you seal it, from its link. If it is still unsealed 90 days after payment, we refund the full amount automatically and close it. We first try to email you about it, and we do not refund sooner than 7 days after that email or before the end of the day it names, in your time zone. If that email cannot be sent, the refund still happens, 7 days later. If a payment needs checking by a person and cannot be confirmed within 3 days, we refund it in full. If the payment provider refuses a refund, we try again, and if it keeps refusing, a person completes the refund by hand. Refunds go back through our payment processor to the original payment method. Once sealed, it is an ordinary letter and the rest of this page applies.

Emails and refunds

A private-key email may be sent when a draft is submitted, before checkout or final sealing. It is not a payment receipt or confirmation that the letter has sealed, unless you paid first, in which case it is sent when you seal. Your saved opening link becomes available at the recorded opening instant. Opening emails are processed hourly, and we send approximately three reminder notes over the paid letter's year. Spam filters, full inboxes and provider delays can affect arrival. Keep your private key email; contact support if delivery fails.

You can request a full change-of-mind refund before your letter is delivered. Paid solo letters offer a refund request from the private letter page using your key until the opening instant; contact us for an eligible request after that point. For a pair, contact refunds@lovefutureyou.com: one payment covers two people, so a person handles the request. Ordinary refunds cancel the affected letters; the expired-invitation draft exception is described above. The Refunds page explains the process and the remedies that remain available if the service goes wrong. If you paid first and have not sealed, refund from your private waiting link, or wait for the automatic refund described above.

Using it properly

You must be at least 18 to buy a letter. You are responsible for what you write. Do not use this service to store or transmit anything unlawful. If we are given credible evidence that a specific letter is being used that way, we will delete it and refund you.

Do not attempt to interfere with delivery, other people’s letters, or the service itself. One person, one letter, is the whole idea.

What we promise, and what we do not

We will make a genuine, careful effort to deliver your letter on its opening day. Delivery jobs are designed to avoid duplicate sends and not to release letters before their date. We cannot promise that email itself will behave. Spam filters, dead mailboxes and providers we do not control sit between us and you. Keep your link, and you do not need our email to work.

Nothing here limits rights you have that cannot be limited. If you are in Australia, our services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law, including that they are provided with due care and skill. Where we are permitted to limit our liability, it is limited to resupplying the service or refunding what you paid.

Deletion

Daily cleanup clears the encrypted letter, its stored delivery address and the address's lookup hash after 30 days from recorded delivery, not from when you first read it. Failed deliveries need follow-up. Payment, security and other operational records are separate; this does not erase every record or every backup. Save your letter after opening if you want to keep it.

Ask us at privacy@lovefutureyou.com to delete a letter sooner. The Privacy page distinguishes letter-content cleanup from other records and provider retention. Existing letters keep the terms agreed when they were sealed.

Changes and law

If we change these terms, the terms you agreed to when you sealed your letter are the ones that apply to it. These terms are governed by the law of the place named below, and nothing in that choice takes away consumer protections available where you live.

This service is operated by Love Future You (ABN 15 196 987 632), Queensland, Australia. Payments are processed by Polar Software Inc., which is the merchant of record and the seller shown on your statement.