Terms of Service

1. Loks and legal information

Loks is a classifieds service available at loks.is. The contact e-mail address for support is support@loks.is.

"We" means the operator of the service. "You" means any person who visits Loks, registers, or uses the service.

2. Language of the documents

The Icelandic version of the Terms of Service and other legal documents is the binding version. The English, Polish and Russian versions are informational translations. In case of discrepancy the Icelandic version prevails, subject to consumer rights arising from mandatory law.

3. What Loks is, and what it is not

Loks is a classifieds board. We provide the technical tools that let users publish listings and contact each other in sections such as general categories, real estate, vehicles and jobs.

We are not a party to any transaction concluded between users. We do not sell, buy, rent, hire or recruit. We do not store goods, do not handle payments between users, do not act as an escrow agent, and do not act as a real estate agency, recruitment agency or vehicle dealer.

Any contract of sale, lease, employment or other agreement is concluded solely between the interested users. Any dispute arising from it is a matter between them. We may provide factual information that helps resolve a dispute, but we do not settle it.

We do not verify the truthfulness of listings, the existence, quality, legality or ownership of what is advertised, or the identity of users, beyond the verification described in these Terms.

4. Who may use Loks

You must be at least 18 years old and have full legal capacity to open an account or publish a listing.

Accounts may be private, held by a natural person acting outside a business or profession, or business accounts, held by a legal person or a natural person acting within a business or profession. A business account requires a valid Icelandic company identification number or an equivalent foreign number.

If you sell goods or services within a business or profession, you must use a business account. Using a private account to conceal commercial activity violates these Terms and may violate consumer law.

5. Accounts

You may hold one account. You are responsible for keeping your login details confidential and for all activity carried out from your account.

You provide truthful information and keep it up to date. You may not impersonate another person, use someone else's identity documents, or transfer your account to another person.

You may close your account at any time in the settings. Closing it removes your listings from public view. Data retention after closure is described in the Privacy Policy.

6. Verification

Verification with an Icelandic electronic ID is planned but not yet available. Today we confirm accounts by e-mail address.

Once verification becomes available, it will confirm that the account is linked to a verified identity. It will not be a guarantee of a person's honesty, solvency or reliability, and it will not guarantee that a specific listing is genuine. You must still exercise your own judgment.

Once verification becomes available, we may require it as a condition for publishing more than a set number of active listings, for using certain features, or for restoring an account after suspension. Applicable limits will be published on the service and may change with notice.

7. Business and private accounts

An account is either a private individual's account or a business account. A business account confirmed by support carries a small "Business" label on listings and on the profile. A private account may carry a "Private individual" label. This information comes from the account data, not from the content of the listing.

If the seller is a private individual, the agreement between users is not a consumer contract between a trader and a consumer, and the provisions on consumer rights against a trader, including the statutory right of withdrawal from a distance contract, do not apply to it. The rules applicable to sales between private individuals apply instead.

If we determine that someone is conducting commercial activity from a private account, we may require the account type to be changed and may restrict publishing in the meantime.

Confirmation of a business account is free of charge. It is always carried out by a person, never by an automated system. You submit the application on the account page.

In the application you provide your kennitala or an equivalent number, the company name, a description of what the company sells or does, a link to a website or social media profile, and the planned number of listings per month. Only support sees this. The kennitala is not stored in readable form but as a one-way hash, and we check it ourselves without querying an external register.

The same kennitala may belong to only one account.

Confirmation does not act retroactively. Listings already published do not receive the label; it appears on listings posted after confirmation.

If the application is rejected, the account continues to work, but without the label and without higher limits. You may reapply. If two applications are rejected within seven days, the next one may be submitted after a week.

You may request that a business account be changed to a private individual's account. The change is carried out by support. At that point the confirmation lapses and the label is removed from all of the account's listings.

Support may withdraw the confirmation if the information provided is not true, if the account is not used for professional purposes, or if the Terms are violated. The label is then removed from all of the account's listings.

If you use Loks within a business, you are subject to a seller's obligations under applicable consumer law, including information obligations, liability for the goods, and consumer rights. The company name in the listing must be the name under which the company operates.

8. Your listings

By publishing a listing you confirm that the item, property, vehicle, service or position exists and is available on the stated terms; that you have the right to offer it and that it is free of third-party rights that would prevent the transaction; that the description, price, photos and specifications are true and not misleading; that you own the photos or have the right to use them and that they show the actual item; that the listing complies with applicable law, including consumer law, advertising law, employment law, tenancy law and data protection law; and that you have placed it in the correct category and section.

You may not publish the same item in several listings at the same time in order to increase visibility, nor republish an unchanged listing to return it to the top of the results. Refreshing visibility is available as a paid service.

You bear sole responsibility for the content of your listings and for the legality of what you offer.

You grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to store, reproduce, adapt for display, translate and publicly make available the content of your listing for the purpose of operating and promoting the service. The licence expires when the listing is deleted, except for backup copies and cases where the law requires retention.

9. Prohibited content

You may not offer or publish on Loks:

• items whose possession, sale or transfer is prohibited or restricted under Icelandic law, including firearms and ammunition outside the permit system, explosives and fireworks outside the permitted period and permits, narcotic and psychotropic substances, and prescription medicines;
• medicines, including over-the-counter medicines, food supplements, veterinary medicines and medical devices whose sale in Iceland is reserved for pharmacies or licensed sellers; this also applies in the "Health & beauty" section;
• alcoholic beverages whose retail sale in Iceland is reserved to the state monopoly, and tobacco and nicotine products where their sale is restricted;
• counterfeit goods, goods infringing trademarks or copyright, and unlicensed copies of software, films, music or books;
• items originating from theft or from an illegal source;
• live animals where their sale or transfer is restricted, protected species and products derived from them;
• tissues, organs and bodily fluids;
• personal data of third parties, contact databases, and services consisting of supplying such data;
• sexual services and pornographic content;
• content that is discriminatory, incites hatred or violence, or harasses or threatens anyone;
• job listings that discriminate on grounds prohibited by Icelandic labour law, that require a fee from the candidate, or that conceal the employer's identity in order to mislead;
• financial products, investment offers, loans and offers related to cryptocurrencies where the offeror does not hold the required authorisation;
• listings whose real purpose is to obtain a prepayment without delivering anything, to collect personal data, or to direct users to another service;
• content that is otherwise unlawful.

We may add to this list. In that case, listings affected by the change will be removed and the user notified.

Job listings may not state a phone number in the title or description. Contact takes place through Loks. A listing containing a phone number may be removed.

10. Messages

Loks provides a messaging tool. Use it only in connection with a listing and for a purpose related to it.

You may not use messages to send unsolicited commercial communications, distribute malware or phishing links, harass another user, or move a transaction outside the service in order to circumvent these Terms.

You may block another user. We may review the content of messages when necessary to investigate a report, fulfil a legal obligation, or protect user safety. We do not read messages for advertising purposes.

11. Documents and links

The operator's registration details, address, registration numbers, VAT status and contact details for authorities are available in the Legal information document. The document is accessible without logging in. We do not repeat this information throughout the Terms.

Information about the entities handling payments is found at the end of the Legal information document.

12. Reviews

A buyer who has exchanged messages with a seller in connection with a listing may leave one review of that seller. Reviews are linked to the account and remain visible after the listing expires.

A review must relate to an actual interaction, be factual, and must not contain third parties' personal data, insults, or content prohibited under these Terms. We may remove a review that violates these requirements, and reviews exchanged with each other in order to manipulate ratings. We do not remove a review merely because it is unfavourable.

It is prohibited to manipulate the review system, including reviewing oneself, exchanging a review for a review, paying for reviews, and threatening a negative review in order to gain an advantage. This may result in the review being removed and, if repeated, in the account being suspended.

13. Moderation, reports and enforcement

Anyone may report a listing, review, message or user through the reporting feature on the service or by e-mail to support@loks.is.

We review reports and may, depending on the seriousness of the violation and whether it is repeated, require content to be corrected, hide or remove content, restrict access to features, suspend or close an account, or refuse to provide the service in the future.

When we remove content or restrict an account, we inform the user of the decision and its main reason, unless doing so would hinder an investigation into unlawful activity or the law prohibits us from doing so.

If you believe a decision is wrong, you may challenge it by writing to support@loks.is. You may submit an appeal within 6 months of the notification. It will be reviewed again by a person, not an automated system. We usually respond within 14 days.

We may use automated tools that help detect and prioritise content that is potentially unlawful or in breach of these Terms. Automated tools support human assessment; a decision to remove content or suspend an account is subject to human review on request.

We do not carry out general monitoring of what users publish and send.

14. Reporting unlawful content and reasons for decisions

You may report any listing, message and review using the report button, and public content even without an account. A report should include an indication of the content, the reason, and, if you want a reply, an e-mail address.

We confirm receipt of the report and inform you of the outcome once it has been reviewed. When we restrict content or an account, we state: what the decision concerns, the legal or contractual basis, whether automated tools were used, and how to appeal.

We may temporarily suspend the ability to publish or report if someone repeatedly publishes obviously unlawful content or repeatedly submits obviously unfounded reports. Before suspending, we give a warning, state the reason, and indicate how to appeal, unless the law or user safety requires immediate action.

15. Ranking, rotation and the effect of paid promotion

We order search results and listing lists according to the following main parameters, in order of importance:

1. relevance to your query, chosen category and filters;

2. the date of publication or of the listing's last bump, with newer listings ranked higher;

3. paid promotion, if the listing has it;

4. to a small extent, relevance to what you have previously searched for and viewed on Loks.

On the home page, slots for promoted listings operate on rotation: on successive visits and refreshes we show different listings from the same group so that each paid listing gets its share of views. The order within the rotation varies, and we do not guarantee a specific number of views or a specific position.

Paid promotion gives a better result than a free listing, but it never changes whether a listing matches your query. It only affects placement within already matched results and presence in the designated home page slots. Every such listing is marked with the word "Sponsored". We do not sell results that we do not mark as such, and we do not hide free listings because they lack promotion.

We do not use pricing that is automatically set for a specific individual. The price of a paid service is the same for all users of a given account type and follows the price list in effect at the time of purchase.

16. Paid services

Publishing and browsing ordinary listings is free, unless we clearly show a fee for a specific section or product before purchase. We offer optional paid services: promotion of individual listings, job listings billed per contact, and paid "Looking for work" listings.

Prices are stated in Icelandic krónur in the price list and before you confirm a purchase. The price list does not need to be visible in the footer for this link to work. Stated amounts are final amounts. The operator is not registered for Icelandic VAT (VSK), so the document for our services does not show that tax. If this changes, the price will show the tax separately, and this will be indicated before purchase.

We issue a document for every purchase. You can find the document on your account page, and if you provide an e-mail address in your billing details, we also send it there.

We may change prices for the future. A change does not apply to a service already begun or to a period already paid for.

The detailed rules for paid services, automatic renewal, withdrawal, billing and complaints are described in the Terms of paid services.

17. Refunds, withdrawal and complaints regarding paid services

This section concerns what you purchase from Loks. It does not concern transactions between users; Loks is not a party to those.

Promotion increases the visibility of a listing but does not guarantee a sale, a response, or the achievement of any other specific result. The absence of such a result is not grounds for a refund.

The fee for an unused period is not refundable if the listing stops being visible for reasons attributable to the user or independent of us, for example when the item has been sold, the listing has been deleted, or it has expired.

At the user's express request, the promotion service begins immediately. If you are a consumer, the right of withdrawal lapses once the service has been fully performed, if performance began with your prior express consent and after you acknowledged the loss of that right. Until full performance, you may withdraw from the contract within 14 days of concluding it, and we settle the amount due in proportion to the performance rendered up to the moment of withdrawal. This settlement follows directly from consumer rights legislation and concerns only the unperformed part of the service; it is not a voluntary refund for an unused period.

For business accounts we do not apply voluntary refunds after a service has been activated, except in the case of an erroneous payment, non-performance of the service by Loks, or a justified complaint.

Additional benefits granted free of charge, namely extra days of validity and an extra bump when a listing in the "Home page" package does not reach 300 views, are not a separate paid service and do not exclude the right of withdrawal. On withdrawal before full performance of the service, we settle only the paid part of the promotion; free days and bumps end together with the promotion and neither increase nor decrease the refund amount. This does not limit rights that cannot be excluded under mandatory law.

We refund money when:

• a paid service did not start, or lasted for less than the purchased period, for reasons attributable to us, in which case you choose between a refund for the unused part and an extension by the same period;
• we charged you twice or the wrong amount;
• we removed a listing without a justified reason.

We do not refund money merely because promotion did not lead to a sale, a message, a reservation, employment, or any other result expected by the user.

If a listing is removed because of a violation of these Terms or of the law, the fee for the promotion is not refunded, since the service was performed until removal. If the removal happened by mistake, we restore the listing and extend the promotion by the period of unavailability, and where restoration is not possible, we refund the unused part of the fee.

A statement of withdrawal may be sent through the simple withdrawal form or to support@loks.is. To speed up handling of the case, please provide, if available, the payment confirmation number and the number or link of the listing that the purchase concerns. The absence of this information does not invalidate an unambiguous statement, if the contract can be identified in another way.

You may submit a payment complaint within 30 days of the charge; we handle it within 14 days. Approved refunds are returned using the same payment method, where possible, without undue delay and no later than required by law.

18. Availability of the service

We aim to keep Loks continuously available, but we do not guarantee this. We may suspend the service during maintenance work and will give notice of this where possible.

We may change, add and remove features. If a change materially restricts a paid service you have already purchased, we refund the money or extend the service in accordance with these Terms.

If force majeure, a failure of a supplier's infrastructure, a natural disaster, an act of a public authority, a strike, an armed conflict, or another event beyond our control disables a paid service for more than 24 hours, we extend its period by the length of the interruption.

19. Liability

We provide a platform for publishing listings. We are not liable for the content of listings, for users' conduct, or for the performance or non-performance of an agreement concluded between users.

We are liable for damage caused by our intentional act or negligence, and to the extent liability cannot be excluded towards a consumer.

In all other respects, our liability towards a business account is limited to the amount of fees paid to Loks by that account in the 12 months preceding the event, or, if no fees were paid, to 20,000 ISK. We are not liable for lost profits, loss of data on your side, or the consequences of agreements you concluded with another user.

If a third party brings a claim against us arising from content you published, or from an agreement you concluded with another user, you will cover our reasonable defence costs and any awarded amounts to the extent corresponding to your act or omission. This does not apply to the extent the damage results from our own act.

No provision of these Terms limits the rights you have as a consumer under mandatory provisions of the law of your country of residence.

20. Intellectual property

The name Loks, the logo, the interface, the software, the layout of the service and its texts belong to us or to our licensors. You may not copy, automatically download, reproduce or create derivative works from them, or systematically extract the contents of the database, manually or automatically, without our prior written consent.

Automated access for the purpose of building a competing database, obtaining contact data, or republishing our content is prohibited.

21. Changes to the Terms

We may change these Terms. We publish the amended version on the service and, if the change is material, notify registered users by e-mail or on the service before it takes effect, to the extent required by law.

If you do not accept the amended Terms, you may close your account before they take effect. Continued use of the service after that date constitutes acceptance.

Every legal document has a version number and an effective date, and we make previous versions available on the service. Editorial changes are announced by increasing the version number.

22. Termination

You may stop using Loks and close your account at any time.

We may terminate the agreement with 30 days' notice without stating a reason, or with immediate effect if you have seriously or repeatedly violated these Terms, if your use of the service is unlawful, or if continued provision of the service would expose us or other users to harm.

Termination does not affect the right to a refund under these Terms and the Terms of paid services.

23. Fee for posting a "Looking for work" listing

Posting a listing in the "Looking for work" section costs whatever the price list shows at the time of payment. The fee is paid once per listing. The listing is saved as a draft and is not visible to anyone until payment is confirmed; without completed payment the listing simply does not appear. Refunds are governed by the Terms of paid services. At most three visible listings may be held in this section at the same time.

24. CV on Loks

You can prepare a CV on Loks. It is private: on the site it is visible only to the person who created it. When applying for a job, a copy of the CV is sent to the person who posted the job listing, and that copy does not change afterwards. A "Looking for work" listing never shows the CV file, full name, photo, kennitala number, address or e-mail. A printout of the CV carries the Loks.is label. You can change or delete your CV, but the copy attached to an application remains with the recipient of the application. Details are described in the Privacy Policy.

25. Retention of content after a listing is deleted

When you delete a listing, it immediately stops being visible on Loks and disappears from your list, and the photos are removed from public view. We retain the listing's content, conversations about it, and reports concerning it for a further 7 months, solely for Loks support purposes, so that a complaint, appeal or dispute can be dealt with. After that time the record is permanently destroyed or stripped of personal data. A listing subject to an open report is retained until the case is closed. A buyer may leave a review for up to 30 days after the listing is deleted.

26. Listing number and handling of reports

Every listing published on Loks receives its own identification number. We assign the number once, it stays with the listing for its entire existence, and it is visible on the listing's page.

We handle reports and matters concerning promoted listings with priority.

27. Complaints, appeals, disputes and authorities

A complaint concerning our paid service, a moderation decision, or the operation of the service is submitted to support@loks.is or via the form on the service. We confirm receipt and respond no later than within 14 days. If a matter requires longer examination, we inform you before that deadline of the expected time for a response.

If you disagree with the outcome, you may use an out-of-court route:

• in Iceland: kærunefnd vöru- og þjónustukaupa and Neytendastofa, Borgartún 21, 105 Reykjavík;
• as a consumer from another state of the European Economic Area: the competent national consumer protection authority;
• in data protection matters: Persónuvernd in Iceland or the supervisory authority of your country of residence, in Poland the President of the Personal Data Protection Office (Prezes Urzędu Ochrony Danych Osobowych).

Using these routes does not deprive you of the right to bring a claim before a court.

28. Points of contact

Contact for users: support@loks.is and the form on the service. A person responds; we do not use purely automated handling of reports.

Contact for authorities and courts: support@loks.is with the subject "Authority". The languages of contact are Icelandic and English.

29. Minors

Loks is not intended for persons under 18 years of age. If we learn that an account belongs to a minor, we close it and remove that person's listings from public view.

30. Additional rules for business accounts

We precede any restriction, suspension or closure of a business account with notice stating the reason, unless a legal provision or a clear risk to users requires immediate action; in that case we state the reason promptly afterwards.

The main ranking parameters and the effect of promotions are described in these Terms. We do not favour our own listings or listings from affiliated entities.

We provide statistics on views and saved listings to you on your account page and do not sell them to other users.

We do not prohibit you from offering the same goods or services on other services or on other terms.

31. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by Icelandic law. The agreement for using Loks is concluded with the company identified in the Legal information. Disputes will be heard by the District Court of Reykjavík (Héraðsdómur Reykjavíkur), unless mandatory law grants the consumer the right to another court.

If you are a consumer, the choice of Icelandic law does not deprive you of the protection afforded by mandatory provisions of the law of your country of habitual residence and does not prevent you from bringing proceedings in that country, where the law allows it.

Before initiating proceedings, please contact us at support@loks.is.