Terms of Use
Effective 2 September 2026 Applies to: factbox.app, this website
Short, because the thing is small. You read history on your phone. Two stories are free; the rest are behind a subscription you can stop at any time. We try to get the history right and to credit the artwork properly. That is most of the relationship.
Not reviewed by a lawyer. These terms are written to describe the actual offer honestly. They have not been through legal review.
The short version
- Factbox is a website. There is nothing to install, and you can sign in with Google, an email and password, or a phone number.
- Two stories are free to read. The rest need a subscription.
- Payment goes through Stripe. The price, the billing period and any free trial are shown at checkout before you pay — those are the terms that apply.
- Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel, and you can cancel at any time.
- Read it, quote it, screenshot a card and send it to a friend. Do not republish the catalogue.
- We are careful, but we are not a textbook and we do not warrant that every sentence is right.
- Nothing here removes a right your local consumer law gives you.
01 · Who you are agreeing with
Factbox is published by Iris Monet Labs LLC, a limited liability company registered in California, United States. In these terms "we" and "us" mean that company, and "you" means the person reading the site.
By using factbox.app you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use it — that is the whole enforcement mechanism, and it is the right one.
02 · What Factbox is
A history reader for a phone. It is a collection of history stories, told across short cards, each card set on a painting or a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. A story runs about a minute and a half to two and a half minutes, and can carry a quiet ambient sound bed, which is off unless you turn it on.
It is general-interest reading. It is not a textbook, not a qualification, not academic advice, and not a substitute for reading the sources themselves.
03 · What it costs
Two stories are free and need no payment or subscription. The rest of the stories are behind a subscription to this website.
The price, the billing period, and any free trial are the ones shown on the checkout page for the plan you pick, immediately before you pay. More than one plan is offered, they differ in billing period and price, and they change from time to time. Deliberately, this page does not restate them: a number written here would eventually contradict the number you were actually charged, and the number you were actually charged is the one that governs.
Payment is taken by Stripe on a page Stripe hosts. We never see or hold your card details — see the Privacy Policy.
If the plan you choose includes a free trial, you are not charged until the trial ends, and cancelling before it ends means you are not charged at all. After that, a subscription renews automatically at the end of each billing period, at the current price for that plan, until you cancel it.
If we change the price of a plan, the change takes effect from a renewal, never part-way through a period you have already paid for.
04 · Cancelling
You can cancel at any time, for any reason, without explaining yourself, from the billing portal. It asks for the email you paid with and sends you a sign-in link. You may also email hello@factbox.app and we will cancel it and confirm.
Cancelling stops the next charge. It does not refund a period already paid for, except where your local law says otherwise or where we agree otherwise.
Where a plan is sold with a money-back guarantee, the guarantee is shown on the plan screen before you pay, and it stands: write to hello@factbox.app within the period it names and we refund that charge. No plan carries one unless the plan screen says so, and like the price and the trial, what that screen said when you paid is what applies.
One honest mechanical note. If you bought before accounts existed, your access is a value stored in your own browser, so cancelling stops the billing but does not automatically re-lock that browser — nothing there is checking. With an account it is checked against your subscription. We would rather tell you that than have you assume a lock that is not there.
05 · Access, and the restore link
Signing in gives you a real account, held by Google Firebase, and it is what lets a subscription follow you between devices. Before accounts existed, signing up meant this browser remembers your email address and your preferences; nothing is registered with us, and logging in on a second phone therefore cannot bring your access with it. Access lives in the browser you bought it in. To carry it to another phone or another browser, you use the restore link the site shows you after you subscribe.
That link is a bearer token: whoever holds it has access. Keep it to yourself. Publishing it, or handing it around so that people who have not subscribed can read the season, is a breach of these terms, and it is the one thing here we would actually mind.
Clearing your browser's site data erases anything kept only there — so if you bought before accounts existed, save the restore link somewhere before you do that. With an account, your reading progress and your saved stories are kept against that account and come back when you sign in again. Without one, they are only in the browser, and clearing it loses them.
06 · Getting the history right
The stories are written by hand and checked before they ship. Where a card rests on a specific document, a named authority or a disputed reading, the card says so. Not every card carries a citation, and we do not claim that every one does. Where historians genuinely do not know, the card says that rather than picking a confident answer.
That is a standard we hold ourselves to, not a guarantee we can give. The site is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind. History is argued about, sources conflict, and we will occasionally be wrong. If you find an error, write to hello@factbox.app with the story and the card; corrections go in as soon as we have checked them. A correction is a gift, not a complaint.
07 · What you may and may not do
Read it, quote it, tell people about it, screenshot a card and send it to a friend. All fine, and the point.
What we ask you not to do: republish the card text wholesale as your own; scrape the catalogue in bulk; share your restore link so that others read the season without subscribing; or use our text to build a competing product. Ordinary quoting with attribution is welcome. Lifting the catalogue is not.
08 · Who owns what
The card text, the sequencing, the design and the site itself are ours. The history is nobody's — facts belong to everyone.
The artwork is not ours. Every plate comes from Wikimedia Commons: most are public domain, and the rest are used under Creative Commons licences that require the photographer and the licence to be named and linked. They are named and linked on the card and again on the artwork credits page. Files are reproduced at reduced size and are not cropped, recoloured or otherwise adapted.
If you believe something here infringes your rights, write to us with the detail and we will take it down while we look into it.
09 · Availability
We will keep the site up and keep adding to the season, but we do not promise uninterrupted service, and a static site on shared hosting can go down. We may change or remove particular stories. If we ever discontinue Factbox we will say so on this page rather than letting it quietly rot.
10 · Liability
To the fullest extent the law allows, Iris Monet Labs LLC is not liable for indirect or consequential loss arising from your use of Factbox. The site stores nothing about you and makes no decisions on your behalf, so the realistic exposure is close to nil — but the sentence has to be in the document.
Nothing in these terms limits liability for anything that cannot lawfully be limited, and nothing here removes a consumer right your local law gives you — including, where it applies to you, a statutory right to cancel a distance purchase within a set period.
11 · Ending it
You can stop using Factbox whenever you like; if you are subscribed, cancel as described in §04. We may end your access if you republish the catalogue or hand your restore link around, and in that case we will refund the unused part of the period you had paid for.
12 · Changes to these terms
If we change anything substantive we will update this page and change the effective date at the top. We will not backdate a change or edit one in quietly.
13 · Law
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. If a court finds any part unenforceable, the rest still stands.
14 · Contact
Iris Monet Labs LLC — hello@factbox.app. Questions about these terms, a correction to a card, a cancellation or a rights complaint all go to the same address, and a person reads it.
Factbox · Terms of Use · Effective 2 September 2026. Not reviewed by a lawyer.