Age confirmation, email controls and clearer subscription terms

A platform that holds money and writes contracts has an obligation that most apps do not: it has to be exact about its own rules. Who is allowed to use it, what you agree to when you pay, how often it writes to you, and how to leave. If you are a founder hiring a freelancer in another country, or a freelancer taking work from a client you have never met, those rules are part of what you are relying on.

This release makes four of them explicit. Afren is for adults, and we now ask you to confirm it. You decide how much non-essential email you receive. Subscription terms sit next to the button that starts one. And two new pages set out our copyright process and how we approach security. The theme is the same throughout: say the rule plainly, put it where the decision happens, and leave the decision with you.

Confirming you are 18 or over

Contracts on Afren are binding agreements, and a binding agreement needs parties who are able to make one. Afren is for people aged 18 or over, and you confirm that when you create an account, whether you sign up with email or with a social sign-in.

Accounts that existed before this change are asked to confirm the next time they sign in. This is the one request in that flow that cannot be postponed. When we ask you to review updated Terms or a revised Privacy Policy, you can choose to review later. The age confirmation offers only two choices: confirm, or sign out. We made that distinction on purpose. A confirmation you can defer indefinitely is not a confirmation, and an age requirement that depends on people remembering to tick a box later does not protect anyone.

The confirmation is recorded against the version of the policy you were shown, so we can always say what you agreed to and when.

One-click unsubscribe that works without signing in

Every non-essential email, such as birthday greetings and product news, carries two ways to stop it. The first is an unsubscribe link in the footer. It works without signing in and finishes in one step, because the link carries your address and a signature that proves it came from us. The second is invisible until you need it: a standard List-Unsubscribe header, defined in RFC 8058, which lets your mail app show its own Unsubscribe button next to the sender's name.

RFC 8058 specifies that the one-click request is a POST, not a plain link visit. That detail matters. Mail systems and security scanners often open every link in a message to check it. If unsubscribing were triggered by merely opening a link, those scanners would unsubscribe people who never asked. Requiring a deliberate POST keeps the action intentional.

Some behaviours worth knowing:

• Your opt-out is stored against your email address, not your account. It covers people who never signed up, and it survives deleting your account and signing up again.
• You can switch these emails on or off at any time in Settings, under Account.
• Account, security, payment and contract emails always reach you. Verification codes, password resets, invitations, payment receipts and contract notices are what you need to run your work, so they are not optional.
• Non-essential email also carries the sender's postal address in its footer, as commercial email rules expect.

Renewal terms beside the button

Price, billing interval, automatic renewal and how to cancel now appear next to every subscribe and upgrade button: on the pricing page, in the paywall that appears when an action needs a plan, and in Billing. The wording is the same in each place, and it says that the subscription renews automatically every month until you cancel, that you can cancel from Billing, and that you keep your plan until the end of the period you have already paid for. One-time build credits say the opposite, in so many words: a build credit is not a subscription and never renews.

The reasoning is that consent should be informed at the moment it is given. Terms that live only in a long document, read once at sign-up, are not the terms you are thinking about when a button asks for your card. Showing them beside the button costs us some visual tidiness and costs you nothing.

When our Terms or Privacy Policy change, you are asked to read and accept the new version the next time you use Afren. Before you upload an ID, we also show how it will be used, so you can decide with the facts in front of you.

Apps built with Afren inherit the same habits

The apps the builder generates now follow the same defaults. They load fonts and scripts from the app itself rather than from outside hosts, because every external request tells that host the visitor's address. Sign-up forms include an adult confirmation, subscribe buttons show their renewal terms beside them, and marketing email includes a working unsubscribe link. These are defaults, chosen so that an app built quickly does not collect avoidable legal exposure on day one, and the owner of an app can change them. Design previews inside Afren also load their fonts and styles from Afren itself, so fewer outside parties see your visitors.

Copyright and security pages

The copyright policy explains how a rights holder reports content that infringes their rights, including on sites published through Afren, how a counter-notice works, and what happens to repeat infringers. The security page describes how we protect your data and how to report a concern, so you can assess Afren before you rely on it.

What this means for you

You know who Afren is for, what a subscription will cost you and when it renews, and you can silence everything non-essential in one step. The rules are written down where you make the decision, not behind it.