Terms & policies

Terms of service

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") govern your use of Vadorna (the "Service"), currently operated as a non-commercial project by a private individual based in Austria (full operator details are listed in the Impressum). In these Terms, "Vadorna", "we", "us" and "our" refer to the current operator and to any successor entity that takes over the Service in accordance with the Assignment & successor entities section, including any commercial entity (such as a GmbH, OG, AG, SAS, SARL, or comparable form under EU law) that may be formed in the future to operate the Service or its commercial features. By accessing or using the Service you accept these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not accept, do not use the Service.

What the Service is

Vadorna is an online reference archive for luxury bags objects — bags, sunglasses, dresses, jewelry, shoes and accessories — together with community discussion, photo uploads, user profiles and direct messaging.

The Service may, over time, add commercial features such as affiliate links to third-party retailers, sponsored content clearly labeled as such, and direct selling or escrow features (a marketplace). We reserve the right to introduce, change or remove such features and will update these Terms accordingly.

Eligibility

You must be at least 14 years old - the minimum age for valid consent to information-society services in Austria (§ 4(4) DSG implementing Art. 8 GDPR) - or older if your jurisdiction sets a higher age. You must be legally able to enter into binding agreements. You are responsible for all activity under your account.

Accounts & conduct

Account creation

Accounts are not yet available: at the current read-only launch the archive is browsable without signing up, and account creation is shown for information only. When accounts go live, you may create one account per person; you must provide a working email and a chosen handle, and we may verify your email before activating contribution features.

Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Impersonate any person or entity, or misrepresent your affiliation.
• Upload images you do not own or do not have permission to upload (including brand catalogue images, reseller-platform screenshots, watermarked stock photography, or images scraped from social media).
• Submit, request, or facilitate counterfeit goods, replicas marketed as authentic, or counterfeit-identification assistance.
• Harass, threaten, defame, stalk, dox or sexually harass any other user.
• Post hate speech, content sexualising minors, or content that violates applicable law.
• Interfere with the Service, attempt to bypass moderation, scrape data, or reverse-engineer protected components.
• Use the Service for unlawful purposes or in violation of any applicable export, sanctions or consumer-protection law.

Enforcement, suspension and termination

We exercise this right primarily to enforce these Terms, protect the community, comply with law, or preserve the integrity of the archive. Where we act against your content or account, you receive a statement of reasons and may appeal — see Content moderation & appeals. Termination does not relieve you of obligations accrued before termination. Sections of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination (intellectual property licences for content already published, limitation of liability, governing law, dispute resolution) survive.

Self-deletion

You may delete your account at any time from Profile → Settings. Upon deletion:

• Your photos are deleted automatically — removed from public view immediately and purged from our storage and backups within 30 days.
• Your comments and forum posts are kept for the integrity of the discussions they belong to, but are reattributed to a “deleted user” — your handle, profile link and any personal attribution are removed.
• Factual archive entries you added or edited (the data sheet for a bag, etc.) are retained in anonymised form, without your handle or attribution — necessary for the integrity of a community reference work.
• Your profile and private messages are removed within 30 days.
• We may retain limited records (account-creation logs, moderation history, and photos already removed for policy violations) for the period required by applicable law or to defend legal claims.

User content

Ownership and licence to Vadorna

You retain ownership of, and all intellectual property rights in, the content you submit (entries, comments, photos, messages — together "Your Content").

This licence ends when you remove Your Content from the Service, except: (i) for sublicences already granted to other users acting in good-faith reliance, (ii) where reasonable archival or backup copies remain for a limited period, and (iii) where retention is required by law. The licence survives a transfer of the Service to a successor entity.

Licence to other users (text only)

Text entries (facts, descriptions, structured archive data) you submit are published under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). This means anyone may reuse and adapt the textual archive data with attribution and under the same licence, which mirrors the licence of the upstream sources we ourselves rely on (Wikipedia, Wikidata).

Photos are not placed under CC BY-SA. They remain under your copyright with only the Vadorna licence described above.

Moderation

Vadorna reserves the right to review, edit, refuse or remove any content for any reason, at any time, without notice. We do not pre-screen every submission. Public display of content does not constitute endorsement.

Photo policy

What you may upload

• Photos you took, of objects you own or can document directly.
• Photos for which you have an unambiguous licence to upload to Vadorna (uncommon — most stock and brand sources do not allow this).

What you may not upload

• Brand-published catalogue images, lookbook photography, press images.
• Reseller-platform listing photos (Vestiaire, Fashionphile, The RealReal, 1stDibs, eBay, Catawiki, etc.).
• Photos from editorial publications (Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, magazine websites).
• Watermarked stock photos.
• Photos depicting identifiable people without their consent, where the person rather than the object is the subject.

One narrow exception: a photo of a single dated print-magazine page may be attached as a source citation (to evidence a fact), where it is shown only in the entry's source list for moderator review and never used as the product image. This is a limited quotation for reference, not republication of the editorial photography.

How Vadorna uses your photos

• To display them on the entry to which you uploaded them, including thumbnails and resized previews.
• To generate social-share previews when the entry is linked on a third-party platform.
• For internal archive backups, search indexing and moderation review.
• To illustrate Vadorna itself in promotional material about the Service (rare and with care — your handle is credited when feasible).
• Not for: sale or rental of your photos to third parties; training of generative or other AI models on your photos without your separate, prior opt-in consent; licensing your photos to advertisers; or any repurposing of your photos outside the archive context described above. This restriction protects the photos themselves and any personal data they contain. It does not prevent us from deriving and using aggregate, anonymised statistics (for example, which colours, materials, models or brands are most photographed, owned or wanted) - such aggregate statistics contain no personal data and identify no individual, and are governed by the Privacy section.

EXIF metadata

• We read EXIF (capture date, device, ISO etc.) as a trust signal. EXIF facts may be displayed on the entry.
• We strip GPS coordinates by default before storage. You may opt in to keep them.

Deletion on request

If you find a photo of yours uploaded by someone else

Send a notice to copyright@vadorna.com with the URL and proof of ownership. We comply with valid DMCA / EU Article 17 takedown notices and counter-notices.

Commerce, affiliate & marketplace

Vadorna is primarily a reference archive. Commerce features, where introduced, are clearly labelled.

Affiliate links

We may add links to third-party retailers and resale platforms ("Affiliate Links"). When we earn a commission from a purchase made via such a link, the link is marked. You are not required to use Affiliate Links. Your transaction is with the third-party retailer, not with Vadorna; their terms apply.

No marketplace

Vadorna is a reference archive. It currently has no marketplace, and we do not sell, broker, escrow or authenticate goods. We have made no decision to build one and may never. If we ever did introduce a direct buying/selling feature, it would run under separate marketplace terms (escrow, payment processing, dispute resolution, consumer-protection compliance), would be announced in advance, and your consent would be re-obtained for that part. For now, the only commercial element is the clearly-labelled affiliate links above.

No buying or selling in user-to-user areas

Until and unless a marketplace feature is launched, comments, direct messages and profile pages must not be used to offer, solicit, broker, negotiate or arrange purchases. We may remove such content. Persistent violations may lead to account suspension.

Assignment & successor entities

Vadorna is currently operated by an individual / pre-corporate operator and is designed to be transferable to a corporate vehicle as it grows. We need your advance consent so that the move can happen smoothly, without breaking your account or requiring you to re-accept basic terms.

Right to assign and transfer

Multiple operators for different features

Different features of the Service may be operated by different legal entities at different times. For example, the public reference archive may continue to be operated by one entity while a marketplace, affiliate programme, or premium feature is operated by a separate entity formed specifically for commerce. Where this happens, we will clearly identify which entity is responsible for which feature in the relevant terms, in the entity's imprint / impressum, and in the user-facing UI where required by law.

Continuity of your account and content

After an assignment or transfer:

• Your account, your contributions and the licences you have granted continue in favour of the successor entity on the same terms.
• Your contractual relationship for the use of the Service shifts to the successor entity for everything occurring from the effective date of the transfer onwards.
• The successor entity assumes the obligations and benefits of these Terms.

Notice and your right to terminate

We will notify active users of any material assignment or change of operator (i) by email and (ii) by posting a notice on the homepage and on this page for at least 30 days before the change becomes effective. The notice will identify the successor entity, its registered address and its legal form.

If you do not wish to continue using the Service under the successor entity, you may terminate your account at any time before the change takes effect (or after, with normal account deletion). Your photo deletion rights and DSGVO data-subject rights are unaffected by the transfer.

Change of data controller

An assignment that involves the transfer of personal data to a successor controller (DSGVO Art. 4(7)) is treated as a change of data controller under the DSGVO section. The successor controller is bound by the same privacy commitments described in these Terms unless they give you adequate notice and an opportunity to object before processing changes.

Limits

This Assignment section does not authorise transfer of your personal data to a jurisdiction without adequate data-protection guarantees as defined by GDPR / DSGVO and applicable Schrems-II case law. It does not waive any non-waivable consumer-protection right.

Your assignment

You may not assign or transfer your account, contributions or rights under these Terms to anyone else.

Accuracy of information

This means specifically

• Year of manufacture, designer attribution, materials, dimensions, serial-number ranges, and any other factual claim on Vadorna may be wrong.
• If you make a purchase, sale, insurance, valuation, customs, legal or any other decision in reliance on Vadorna information, that decision and its consequences are yours.
• Always cross-verify against independent sources — the brand, a published reference book, an auction catalogue, a qualified expert — before relying on any non-trivial fact for a real-world consequence.

How we try to be useful anyway

• We attribute sources where possible — Wikipedia, brand archives, museum catalogues, auction records — so you can verify yourself.
• Moderators and the community correct entries continually.
• Discussion threads under each entry let you see what's disputed.

None of that turns Vadorna into a reliable single source. It remains a reference, not a record of truth.

Host immunity & user-generated content

Vadorna is an information-society service that hosts content uploaded by its users (entries, photos, comments, messages, profile information — together "User Content"). Most of what you read on Vadorna was written or uploaded by another user, not by us.

We are not the author of User Content

We do not pre-screen, edit or endorse User Content before it appears on the Service. Publication of User Content does not constitute adoption of that content by Vadorna, its operators or its successors. Opinions expressed in comments are those of the individual contributor, not of Vadorna.

Conditional liability protection (EU e-Commerce Directive 2000/31/EC Art. 14 / Digital Services Act Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 Art. 6)

How to notify us of unlawful content

If you become aware of User Content that you believe is unlawful — copyright infringement, defamation, threats, harassment, doxxing, illegal goods, counterfeit-related, or otherwise prohibited — please notify us at notice@vadorna.com (general enquiries: contact@vadorna.com) with:

• The URL of the content.
• Your name and contact details (anonymous notices have lower priority).
• A clear explanation of why the content is unlawful and the legal basis.
• For copyright claims: a statement of good-faith belief and a statement under penalty of perjury that you are the rights-holder or authorised agent.

We respond to valid notices within a reasonable time, typically within 72 hours. Repeat infringers are banned.

Counter-notices

If your content was removed and you believe the removal was wrong, you may submit a counter-notice with the same address. We then restore the content unless the original notifier files legal proceedings within 14 days.

No general monitoring obligation

Under EU law (e-Commerce Directive Art. 15, DSA Art. 8) we have no general obligation to monitor User Content for unlawful activity. We do conduct proportionate moderation as described in our community guidelines, but absence of moderator review is not endorsement of content.

Trusted flaggers

Under DSA Art. 22 we give priority to notifications from designated trusted flaggers (qualified entities certified by Member State Digital Services Coordinators).

Content moderation & appeals

We curate the archive actively: we may remove, hide, edit, refuse to publish, downrank or restrict any content, and we may suspend or terminate any account, where we consider it necessary to enforce these Terms, protect the community, comply with the law or preserve the integrity of the archive. The detailed grounds are set out in Accounts & conduct and the Photo policy.

This broad discretion is, however, exercised within the limits the EU Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, "DSA") places on hosting services and online platforms. In particular:

Statement of reasons (DSA Art. 17)

We do not remove content "without any reason": even where our Terms permit action at our discretion, you will be told why.

Internal complaint & appeal (DSA Art. 20)

If you believe a moderation decision was wrong, you may contest it free of charge for at least six months after we notify you, by replying to the statement of reasons or writing to appeals@vadorna.com (placeholder). Complaints are reviewed by a person — not solely by automated means — and we reverse the decision without delay where it was unjustified. This does not limit your right to go to court or, where available, an out-of-court dispute-settlement body (DSA Art. 21).

Notice & action (DSA Art. 16)

Anyone may notify us of content they consider illegal via the channel in Host immunity. Valid notices are acted on promptly, and both the notifier and the affected user are informed of the outcome.

Comments: automatic screening, links & strikes

Comments pass an automatic screen before they appear. Prohibited language (slurs, harassment, illegal-goods solicitation) is auto-removed and may add a strike to your account; accumulated strikes lead to temporary or permanent suspension. Comments containing links are held for moderator review, since links are only permitted to verify a fact (e.g. Wikipedia, a brand archive, an auction house or museum) or to point to a Vadorna page. Rate limits apply (e.g. a minimum interval between posts and a cap on messages) to prevent spam. Moderators may also archive a comment — hiding it from the public thread while keeping it on record, e.g. once a correction it raised has been applied.

Proportionality & no arbitrary bans

Account suspension or termination is reserved for serious or repeated violations, fraud, illegal activity, or where continued access would harm the community or the archive. We apply the mildest effective measure where reasonable (e.g. removing a single item before restricting an account). Statutory and consumer-protection rights, and your DSGVO data-subject rights, are unaffected by any moderation decision.

Disclaimers & liability

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranty of any kind, express or implied. Without limiting the foregoing, we disclaim warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

The archive is community-maintained. It is sometimes incomplete, sometimes inaccurate, and always evolving. Do not rely on the Service alone for any purchase, sale, valuation, insurance or legal decision. Independently verify before acting.

Where statutory consumer-protection law prohibits limitation of certain warranties or liabilities — including the EU Directive on Consumer Rights and equivalent national law — those statutory rights apply notwithstanding these Terms.

Trademarks

All brand names, model names, logos and trade dress referenced on Vadorna are the property of their respective owners. We use them descriptively (nominative fair use) to identify the objects we document. References to brands do not imply affiliation, endorsement or sponsorship by those brands.

Privacy

Short version: we collect the minimum we need to run the Service. We do not sell personal data. You can delete your account.

This section is a summary for convenience. Our full, canonical privacy notice — and the document that governs in case of any difference — is the Privacy Policy.

What we collect

• Account data: email, chosen handle, password hash, optional bio.
• Content data: your entries, comments, photos, messages.
• Technical logs: IP address, browser user-agent, referrer, request timing — for fraud and abuse prevention, retained 30 days.
• Analytics: aggregate, anonymised usage data (page views, searches, and - for registered users - I have / I want / wishlist patterns and outbound resale clicks) via a privacy-respecting, cookie-less tool. No cross-site tracking, no third-party cookies. We rely on this analysis on the basis of our legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR) and you may object at any time (Art. 21 GDPR); see DSGVO / GDPR. The member-activity part (I have / I want / wishlist patterns, resale clicks) applies only once accounts launch — it is not active in the current read-only phase, where only basic server logs are processed.

How we use it

• To operate, maintain and improve the Service.
• To moderate content and enforce these Terms.
• To send essential service emails (verification, security, account changes) and — only with your separate opt-in — community digest emails.
• To respond to lawful requests.

What we do not do

• We do not sell or rent your personal data to anyone.
• We do not share your personal data with ad networks, and we do not license it to advertisers.
• We do not use third-party trackers or behavioural advertising cookies.
• We do not train generative or other AI models on Your Content (including your photos, comments and messages) without your separate, prior opt-in consent.
• We do not repurpose your personal data outside the archive context for which it was provided without first informing you and, where the law requires it, obtaining your consent.

What we reserve the right to do

So you know exactly where you stand, we expressly reserve the right - now or in the future, including after any transfer of the Service to a successor entity such as a GmbH - to:

• Derive, use, publish and share aggregate, anonymised trend and usage statistics (for example, which colours, materials, models or brands are most owned, wanted or searched). These statistics contain no personal data, identify no individual member, and therefore fall outside the scope of the GDPR (Recital 26 GDPR). Our legal basis for the underlying internal analysis of your activity is our legitimate interest in operating, securing and improving the Service (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR); you may object at any time (Art. 21 GDPR) via your settings or privacy@vadorna.com. Any analysis relying on non-essential cookies or cross-site tracking is switched on only with your prior consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR).
• Add affiliate links to third-party retailers and resale platforms, and earn a commission on purchases made through them, as described in the Commerce section.
• Introduce commerce and marketplace features in the future under separate, clearly labelled terms, as described in the Commerce section.
• Assign or transfer the Service, these Terms and the licences you have granted to a successor entity, as described in the Assignment & successor entities section.

None of these reserved rights permits the sale of your personal data, the training of AI on Your Content without your consent, or the licensing of your personal data to advertisers. Those prohibitions continue to apply to us and to any successor entity.

Sharing with processors

We rely on technical service providers (hosting, email delivery, error monitoring). These providers act as data processors under DSGVO Art. 28, bound by contract to use your data only to provide the service to us. A current list is maintained at vadorna.com/processors.

Your rights

Under DSGVO / GDPR you have the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict, object to processing, and to data portability. See the DSGVO section for the procedure.

DSGVO / GDPR

Vadorna is operated from the European Union and complies with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, in German DSGVO).

Legal bases (DSGVO Art. 6)

• Art. 6(1)(b) performance of contract — providing the account-based features you signed up for.
• Art. 6(1)(a) consent — for digest emails, any cookie-based or cross-site tracking, AI-training on Your Content, and optional photo retention beyond defaults.
• Art. 6(1)(f) legitimate interest — fraud and abuse prevention, basic security logging, moderation, and the internal analysis of usage to produce aggregate, anonymised trend statistics; you may object at any time under Art. 21.

Aggregate, anonymised trend reports that we may produce or share contain no personal data and therefore fall outside the scope of the DSGVO (Recital 26). We will never sell your personal data, license it to advertisers, or train AI on Your Content without your separate consent.

Data controller

The current data controller is the private individual operating Vadorna, whose name and address are published in the Impressum (the Service is not yet operated by a company).

The data controller may change as a result of an assignment or transfer of the Service to a successor entity (e.g. a future GmbH or comparable legal entity). Where the controller changes, we will publish the updated controller details on this page and notify active users by email at least 30 days before the change takes effect.

Different controllers may be designated for different features of the Service — for example, one controller for the public archive and a separate controller for marketplace transactions — provided each controller is clearly identified at the point where personal data is collected for that feature.

Data Protection Officer

DPO contact: dpo@vadorna.com (placeholder).

Exercising your rights

Write to privacy@vadorna.com. We respond within 30 days. Most rights are also exercisable directly from your profile (data export, account deletion).

Complaints

You may lodge a complaint with a data-protection supervisory authority — either in your country of residence or with the authority competent for Vadorna: the Österreichische Datenschutzbehörde, Barichgasse 40-42, 1030 Wien (dsb.gv.at).

International transfers

Where our processors are outside the EU/EEA, transfers occur under Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) and, where applicable, additional safeguards under Schrems II case law.

Cookies

We use exactly one essential cookie — the login session cookie (HttpOnly, Secure, SameSite=Lax). No third-party cookies. No advertising cookies. Our analytics tool is configured cookie-less and aggregates only. (At the current read-only launch the Service sets no cookies at all, including no session cookie, because sign-in is not yet active.)

EU ePrivacy Directive: essential cookies do not require consent. We do not set any non-essential cookies.

Authentication disclaimer

This bears repeating because people skip it:

Governing law & disputes

Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of Austria, excluding its conflict-of-laws rules. The UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

Consumer protection

If you are a consumer resident in the EU, mandatory consumer-protection laws of your country of residence apply where they grant rights that cannot be derogated from by contract.

Disputes

Disputes shall be resolved by the ordinary courts at the seat of the operator, except where consumer-protection law assigns jurisdiction to the consumer's place of residence. The EU Online Dispute Resolution platform is available at ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr.

Changes

We may update these Terms when the Service changes. For material changes, we will notify active users by email and post a notice on the homepage for at least 14 days. Continued use of the Service after the change-effective date constitutes acceptance. If you do not accept the change, you may delete your account.