Terms of Service

These terms govern use of the Technology in AA (TIAA) Forum at https://discourse.tiaa-forum.org. Your use of the forum implies you agree to these terms.

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Important Terms

These terms include a number of important provisions that affect your rights and responsibilities, such as the disclaimers in Disclaimers, limits on TIAA’s liability to you in Limits on Liability, your agreement to cover TIAA for damages caused by your misuse of the forum in Responsibility for Your Use, and an agreement to arbitrate disputes in Disputes.


Conditions for Use of the Forum

Your permission to use the forum is subject to the following conditions:

  • You must be at least thirteen years old.

  • You may no longer use the forum if TIAA contacts you directly to say that you may not.

  • You must use the forum in accordance with Acceptable Use and Content Standards.


Acceptable Use

  • You may not break the law using the forum.

  • You may not use or try to use another’s account on the forum without their specific permission.

  • You may not buy, sell, or otherwise trade in user names or other unique identifiers on the forum.

  • You may not send advertisements, chain letters, or other solicitations through the forum, or use the forum to gather addresses or other personal data for commercial mailing lists or databases.

  • You may not automate access to the forum, or monitor the forum, such as with a web crawler, browser plug-in or add-on, or other computer program that is not a web browser.

  • You may not use the forum to send e-mail to distribution lists, newsgroups, or group mail aliases.

  • You may not falsely imply that you’re affiliated with or endorsed by TIAA.

  • You may not hyperlink to images or other non-hypertext content on the forum on other webpages.

  • You may not remove any marks showing proprietary ownership from materials you download from the forum.

  • You may not disable, avoid, or circumvent any security or access restrictions of the forum.

  • You may not strain infrastructure of the forum with an unreasonable volume of requests, or requests designed to impose an unreasonable load on information systems underlying the forum.

  • You may not impersonate others through the forum.

  • You may not encourage or help anyone in violation of these terms.


Content Standards

  • You may not submit content to the forum that is off-topic, unprofessional, or otherwise disruptive to civilized discourse of the TIAA-Forum and related topics.

  • You may not submit content to the forum that is illegal, offensive, or otherwise harmful to others. This includes content that is harassing, inappropriate, or abusive.

  • You may not submit content to the forum that violates the law, infringes anyone’s intellectual property rights, violates anyone’s privacy, or breaches agreements you have with others.

  • You may not submit content to the forum containing malicious computer code, such as computer viruses or spyware.

  • You may not submit content to the forum as a mere placeholder, to hold a particular address, user name, or other unique identifier.

  • You may not use the forum to disclose information that you don’t have the right to disclose, like others’ confidential or personal information.


Enforcement

TIAA may investigate and prosecute violations of these terms to the fullest legal extent. TIAA may notify and cooperate with law enforcement authorities in prosecuting violations of the law and these terms.

TIAA reserves the right to change, redact, and delete content on the forum for any reason. If you believe someone has submitted content to the forum in violation of the law or these terms, flag the post for moderator attention if you have an account or e-mail us immediately.


Moderation

TIAA moderates the forum in accordance with our moderation policy. TIAA may restrict, suspend, or close your account on the forum according to its moderation policy.


Your Account

You must create and log into an account to use some features of the forum.

To create an account, you must provide some information about yourself. If you create an account, you agree to provide, at a minimum, a valid e-mail address, and to keep that address up-to-date. You may close your account at any time by e-mailing info@tiaa-forum.org.

You agree to be responsible for all action taken using your account, whether authorized by you or not, until you either close your account or notify TIAA that your account has been compromised. You agree to notify TIAA immediately if you suspect your account has been compromised. You agree to select a secure password for your account, and keep it secret.


Your Content

Nothing in these terms gives TIAA any ownership rights in intellectual property that you share with the forum, such as your account information, posts, or other content you submit to the forum. Nothing in these terms gives you any ownership rights in TIAA’s intellectual property, either.

Between you and TIAA, you remain solely responsible for content you submit to the forum. You agree not to wrongly imply that content you submit to the forum is sponsored or approved by TIAA. These terms do not obligate TIAA to store, maintain, or provide copies of content you submit.

Content you submit to the forum belongs to you, and you decide what permission to give others for it. But at a minimum, you license TIAA to provide content that you submit to the forum to other users of the forum, and to change it, according to these terms. That special license allows TIAA to copy, publish, and analyze content you submit to the forum.

When content you submit is removed from the forum, whether by you or by TIAA, TIAA’s special license ends when the last copy disappears from TIAA’s backups, caches, and other systems. Other licenses you apply to content you submit, such as Creative Commons licenses, may continue after your content is removed. Those licenses may give others, or TIAA itself, the right to share your content through the forum again.

Others who receive content you submit to the forum may violate the terms on which you license your content. You agree that TIAA will not be liable to you for those violations or their consequences.


Your Responsibility

You agree to indemnify TIAA from legal claims by others related to your breach of these terms, or breach of these terms by others using your account on the forum. Both you and TIAA agree to notify the other side of any legal claims for which you might have to indemnify TIAA as soon as possible. If TIAA fails to notify you of a legal claim promptly, you won’t have to indemnify TIAA for damages that you could have defended against or mitigated with prompt notice. You agree to allow TIAA to control investigation, defense, and settlement of legal claims for which you would have to indemnify TIAA, and to cooperate with those efforts. TIAA agrees not to agree to any settlement that admits fault for you or imposes obligations on you without your prior agreement.


Disclaimers

You accept all risk of using the forum and content on the forum. As far as the law allows, TIAA and its suppliers provide the forum as is, without any warranty whatsoever.

The forum may hyperlink to and integrate forums and services run by others. TIAA does not make any warranty about services run by others, or content they may provide. Use of services run by others may be governed by other terms between you and the one running service.


Limits on Liability

Neither TIAA nor its suppliers will be liable to you for breach-of-contract damages their personnel could not have reasonably foreseen when you agreed to these terms.

As far as the law allows, the total liability to you for claims of any kind that are related to the forum or content on the forum will be limited to $50.


Feedback

TIAA welcomes your feedback and suggestions for the forum. See the Contact section below for ways to get in touch with us.

You agree that TIAA will be free to act on feedback and suggestions you provide, and that TIAA won’t have to notify you that your feedback was used, get your permission to use it, or pay you. You agree not to submit feedback or suggestions that you believe might be confidential or proprietary, to you or others.


Termination

Either you or TIAA may end the agreement written out in these terms at any time. When our agreement ends, your permission to use the forum also ends.

The following provisions continue after our agreement ends: Your Content, Feedback, Your Responsibility, Disclaimers, Limits on Liability, and General Terms.


Disputes

Colorado law will govern any dispute related to these terms or your use of the forum.

You and TIAA agree to seek injunctions related to these terms only in state or federal court in Denver, Colorado. Neither you nor TIAA will object to jurisdiction, forum, or venue in those courts.

Other than to seek an injunction or for claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, you and TIAA will resolve any dispute by binding American Arbitration Association arbitration. Arbitration will follow the AAA’s Commercial Arbitration Rules and Supplementary Procedures for Consumer Related Disputes. Arbitration will happen in Denver, Colorado. You will settle any dispute as an individual, and not as part of a class action or other representative proceeding, whether as the plaintiff or a class member. No arbitrator will consolidate any dispute with any other arbitration without TIAA’s permission.

Any arbitration award will include costs of the arbitration, reasonable attorneys’ fees, and reasonable costs for witnesses. You and TIAA may enter arbitration awards in any court with jurisdiction.


General Terms

If a provision of these terms is unenforceable as written, but could be changed to make it enforceable, that provision should be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable. Otherwise, that provision should be removed.

You may not assign your agreement with TIAA. TIAA may assign your agreement to any affiliate of TIAA, any other company that obtains control of TIAA, or any other company that buys assets of TIAA related to the forum. Any attempted assignment against these terms has no legal effect.

Neither the exercise of any right under this Agreement, nor waiver of any breach of this Agreement, waives any other breach of this Agreement.

These terms are all the terms of agreement between you and TIAA about use of the forum. These terms entirely replace any other agreements about your use of the forum, written or not.


Contact

You may notify TIAA under these terms, and send questions to TIAA, at info@tiaa-forum.org.

TIAA may notify you under these terms using the e-mail address you provide for your account on the forum, or by posting a message to the homepage of the forum or your account page.


Changes

TIAA last updated these terms on December 9, 2024, and may update these terms again. TIAA will post all updates to the forum. For updates that contain substantial changes, TIAA will announce updates with special messages or alerts on the forum. You must agree to the new terms in order to keep using the forum.