Mountain Bike United Acceptable Use Policy

Maintaining a Safe, Respectful, and Healthy Community for Mountain Bikers

Effective Date: August 10, 2026

Introduction and Scope

Being part of the Mountain Bike United community is a commitment to respect other Mountain Bike United users and maintain a safe environment for all mountain biking enthusiasts. This Acceptable Use Policy (‘Policy’) applies to Mountain Bike United’s platform, including the related mobile applications, products, websites, technology, software, and services (collectively, ‘Services’). As part of your use of Mountain Bike United’s Services under Mountain Bike United’s Terms of Service, you agree to follow this Acceptable Use Policy and the Mountain Bike United Community Standards. As used in this Policy, the words ‘Mountain Bike United,’ ‘us,’ ‘our,’ or ‘we’ means H&I Adventures Ltd, Mountain Bike United, located at No1 Bunchrew, Bunchrew, Inverness, IV3 8TA, Scotland.

This Policy plays a critical role in maintaining a healthy Mountain Bike United community. Each policy section below includes examples of content and behaviours that are prohibited; these examples are not exhaustive and will be updated as needed to keep the community safe and healthy. Where appropriate, we may make exceptions to these policies based on educational, documentary, scientific, artistic, or other public interest considerations.

You must comply with these standards in spirit as well as to the letter. Mountain Bike United will determine, in its discretion, whether any user content or your use of our Services breaches these acceptable use standards.

Dangerous, Violent, or Graphic Content

We do not allow dangerous, violent, or graphic content on Mountain Bike United. Dangerous content is content that can likely cause serious harm or injury. Violent content is content that depicts, glorifies, justifies, facilitates, or promotes violence. Graphic content is content that elicits reactions of shock, disgust, or distress. This includes images or videos of cyclists crashing or otherwise being injured.

Examples of prohibited content include:

• • instructions for building or selling dangerous items
  • instructions for misusing inherently dangerous items
  • dangerous activities and challenges which pose significant risk to health when performed or are safe to be performed only by qualified individuals – this includes mountain bike challenges or activities which we feel, in our absolute discretion, to be irresponsible
  • imagery of violent acts
  • threats of violence against a person or a group of people
  • content advocating, inciting, normalising, or glorifying violence
  • instructions for committing violent activities
  • content showing abuse of animals or any graphic imagery of animals intended for shock or disgust
  • terrorist or radical extremist content such as content praising acts of terrorism, sharing manifestos, images or logos associated with terrorist organisations, recruiting or fundraising for terrorist organisations, or sharing content produced by terrorist organisations
  • content promoting human trafficking and migrant smuggling
  • content showing dead bodies or dismembered or mutilated body parts of humans or animals
  • gratuitous sharing of imagery of bodily fluids like blood and vomit shared with the intent to shock or disgust

  Additionally, content which encourages, promotes, or provides instructions for suicide, self-harm, serious violence against a person, or dangerous challenges highly likely to result in serious injury , whether biking related or otherwise, is prohibited.

  False or Misleading Information

  We do not allow content that is fraudulent or contains false, deceptive, or misleading statements, claims, or representations. User content must be accurate where it states facts, only contain opinions that are genuinely held, and must comply with the law applicable in any country from which it is posted and to which the website is targeted .

  Examples of prohibited content include: false or misleading content about health or medical information; false or misleading content about civic processes; false or misleading information about events, activities, routes, challenges or topics that can incite violence or create serious safety risks (for example, misleading information related to cycling routes or challenges); conspiracy theories (such as denying well-documented violent events); manipulated media designed to deceive or defraud someone by altering a reasonable person’s understanding of real world events with potential to cause significant harm to individuals or groups; the targeted sharing of misleading content with the intent of undermining faith in public institutions of another country; and content likely to deceive any person.

  Harassment and Bullying

  We do not allow content that intimidates or causes someone to fear for their safety. You may not use our Services to bully, insult, intimidate, or humiliate any person .

  Examples of prohibited content include: personal attacks targeting someone with insults, profanity, offensive language, or any other malicious acts; sharing or threatening to share non-consensual explicit or intimate imagery; threatening others or wishing harm or death on them; mocking or belittling someone; coordinated targeting of another Mountain Bike United community or account through actions like mass commenting, spamming, and harassment (brigading); creating accounts dedicated to harassment, or repeated unwanted contact; misuse of our reporting mechanisms to harass someone; doxxing, or encouraging others to harass, dox, or brigade; bullying content; and content that is likely to harass, upset, embarrass, alarm, or annoy any other person.

  Hateful Content and Discrimination

  We do not allow hateful content on Mountain Bike United. Hateful content is content that attacks, demeans, discriminates, or promotes harmful stereotypes about a group of people based on their race, ethnicity, age, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, serious disease, disability, body type, or immigration status. User content must not be obscene, offensive, hateful, or inflammatory, and must not be defamatory of any person.

  Examples of prohibited content include: hate symbols and images; dehumanising a group based on their protected category; directing profanity and hateful slurs at members of a protected category; praising, justifying, glorifying, or inciting violence against a group based on protected categories; encouraging or advocating violence against a protected group; claiming a group is inherently inferior (intellectually, morally, physically, etc.) than another group based on protected categories; implicit and explicit threats against a group associated with any protected category; negative generalisations or harmful stereotypes associated with protected categories; content which incites hatred against people of a particular race (including colour, nationality, and ethnic or national origins), religion (including lack of religion), sex or sexual orientation, who have a physical or mental disability, or who have the characteristic of gender reassignment; and content that includes or promotes discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, nationality, religion or belief, disability, age, or sexual orientation.

  Personal Information and Privacy

  Mountain Bike United respects users’ privacy and aims to keep its communities safe from harm. We will remove personal information or personal images shared by others without consent. Personal information covers: contact information such as physical address, email, social media handles, or phone number; government-issued identifications such as drivers license, social security numbers, resident registration or identity cards, passport details, or taxpayer IDs; financial information such as bank accounts, credit card numbers, and associated log-in information; and highly personal and restricted records like medical records. Personal images are images of an individual where they are identifiable based on their image itself or a combination of image and apparent metadata. User content must not infringe any copyright, database right, or trade mark of any other person, or breach any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of confidence.

  Please report the sharing of intimate or sexual images without consent as harassment. Examples of prohibited violations include: sharing other people’s personal information without their consent; posting media that you do not have permission to share; doxxing; and intimate image abuse.

  Restricted Goods and Services

  We do not allow content on Mountain Bike United that facilitates the trade, marketing, manufacturing, or use of restricted goods. Restricted goods refer to products that are governed by laws that restrict the manufacturing, purchase, sale, or ownership of the goods in order to ensure user safety.

  Restricted goods include: alcohol and tobacco products (including nicotine and vaping products); firearms, explosives, and other weapons; regulated health and medical devices; endangered animals; and illegal drugs, prescription and over-the-counter drugs, unapproved supplements.

  Examples of prohibited content include: facilitating sale, purchase, exchange, or donation of restricted goods; instructions for manufacturing a restricted good; instructions on circumventing regulated access measures; glorifying or glamourising use of restricted goods; and any use of our Services in connection with drugs or psychoactive substance offences, or firearms, knives, and other weapons offences.

  Sexual Content and Exploitation

  We do not allow sexually explicit or exploitative content on our platform, whether in connection with children or adults. Sexual content refers to material that contains textual descriptions or visual depictions of nudity or sexual activities. User content must not be pornographic, and you must not use our Services in any way that involves pornography or sexual exploitation of adults or children.

  Examples of prohibited content include: nudity or any sexually explicit content; sharing imagery that is private or sexual in nature obtained or published without consent; sexual abuse; sexual exploitation of people by coercing them to perform sexual acts for commerce; use of intimate, naked, or sexual photos or videos to blackmail someone to pay money or do something against their will; gratuitous sharing of sexual imagery of others; sexual solicitation or any sexually obscene content; sexualization of children through comments, poses, cropping, or other means; promoting, glorifying, or normalizing sexual exploitation of children; contact with a child for sexual exploitation and any sexual solicitation (grooming); and jokes, memes, or any content normalizing children in sexual acts; unsolicited sexual images, including manufactured intimate images or ‘deepfakes’ intending the recipient to be caused alarm, distress, or humiliation; sexually explicit deepfakes; and video content that has been or would be likely to be given an R18 certificate by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), or video content not suitable for BBFC classification.

  Suicide, Self-Harm, and Eating Disorders

  We do not allow content on Mountain Bike United that shows, promotes, facilitates, or encourages suicide, self-harm, or eating disorders. If you or someone you know is in danger, please get help. A list of organisations that can offer support is available through www.befrienders.org.

  Suicide content refers to text or media depicting suicide or suicidal ideation or attempts. Self-harm content refers to text or media related to someone harming themselves on purpose. Eating disorders cover eating and exercise behaviours that seriously affect the ability of a person to get the nutrients the body needs, thereby affecting their health significantly.

  Examples of prohibited content include:

  • • depicting suicide or self-harm
    • showing or linking to sites or communities that feature or promote suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders
    • sharing plans for carrying out suicide, self-harm, or engaging in eating disorders
    • providing instructions for harming oneself
    • glorifying suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders
    • encouraging suicidal ideation and planning
    • minimising or mocking people for experiences related to suicide, self-harm, or eating disorders
    • content which encourages, promotes, or provides instructions for suicide or self-harm
    • content which encourages, promotes, or provides instructions for eating disorders or behaviours associated with eating disorders
    • communications that intend to encourage serious self-harm
    • content which encourages a person to ingest, inject, inhale, or in any other way self-administer a physically harmful substance or a substance in such a quantity as to be physically harmful

  Spam, Inauthentic Behaviour, and Platform Abuse

  We do not allow content or behaviours that are inauthentic or cause disruption within our communities or to Mountain Bike United systems. Examples of prohibited content and behaviours include:

  Inauthentic content and behaviours: manipulating data used for leaderboards; posting activities that do not reflect authentic activities completed by you; directing users outside of the platform to participate in financial schemes, sexual exploitation, or to otherwise encourage inauthentic interactions; impersonation of a person, company, or brand; misrepresenting oneself to deceive others; and giving the impression that user content emanates from Mountain Bike United if this is not the case.

  Excessive automated, bulk, spammy, or burdensome activity: using any automated system, including robots, spiders, or offline readers, to access the Services in a manner that sends more requests to Mountain Bike United than a human can reasonably produce in the same period of time by using a conventional web browser; creating accounts in bulk; using extensions or other means to bypass limits on automated interactions such as kudos or comments; taking any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure; transmitting or procuring the sending of any unsolicited or unauthorised advertising or promotional material or any other form of similar solicitation (spam).

  Inflammatory or disruptive behaviour: posting, commenting, or otherwise creating content in an unsolicited or repetitive manner to get attention, gain more followers, advertise, or promote a business; significantly or repeatedly disrupting the experience of other Mountain Bike United users; posting content that is unrelated to the purpose of a club in that club; repeatedly requesting followers, club joins, or engagement to rapidly amplify the reach of your content; posting the same pieces of content in multiple places; posting objectionable content in public surfaces such as segments or routes on Mountain Bike United; coordinating a social media campaign on Mountain Bike United or other platforms to request a new product feature or product change, or to attempt to get Mountain Bike United to revisit a decision; evading an enforcement action, for example by creating a new account after being suspended; knowingly transmitting any data, sending or uploading any material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time-bombs, keystroke loggers, spyware, adware, or any other harmful programs or similar computer code designed to adversely affect the operation of any computer software or hardware.

  Malicious or harmful content: content that is harmful to or interferes with Mountain Bike United’s or any third party’s networks, equipment, applications, services, or websites (such as viruses, worms, Trojan horses); content that is intended to or likely to deceive, mislead, or defraud others through phishing or social engineering techniques.

  Hidden advertising (where a content creator has been paid or otherwise has an incentive to endorse a product but does not clearly identify the content as advertising) is not allowed on our Services. Fake reviews are not allowed on our Services. Fake reviews include reviews that conceal that the reviewer has been incentivised in some way to post the review, or where the review contains information that is false or misleading.

  Platform Security, Unauthorised Access, and Intellectual Property

  We work hard to keep Mountain Bike United safe for everyone. We do not allow unauthorised access or unauthorised use of Mountain Bike United. We also prohibit any harmful or malicious activity against our websites, related mobile applications, and Services.

  You may not use our Services in any way that breaches any local, national, or international law or regulation, or in any way that is unlawful or fraudulent or has any unlawful or fraudulent purpose or effect.

  Examples of Unauthorised Access or Use

  • Accessing any content on the Services through any technology or means other than those provided or authorised by the Services
  • Collecting or harvesting any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual, including account names and information about users of the Services, from the Services
  • Distributing or disclosing any part of the Services in any medium, including by any automated or non-automated scraping
  • Using the Services in a manner for which they are not intended
  • Submitting to the Services any personally identifiable information except as necessary for the establishment and operation of your account
  • Executing any form of network monitoring or running a network analyser or packet sniffer or other technology to intercept, decode, mine, or display any packets used to communicate between the Service’s servers or any data not intended for you
  • Accessing the Services to monitor its availability, performance, or functionality
  • Permitting any third party to access the Services unless approved by Mountain Bike United
  • Copying, framing, or mirroring any part of the Services
  • Using, copying, modifying, creating a derivative work of, reverse engineering, decompiling, or otherwise attempting to extract the source code of the software underlying the Services or any part thereof, unless expressly permitted or required by law
  • Bypassing measures we may use to prevent or restrict access to the Services, including features that prevent or restrict use or copying of any content
  • Removing any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary rights notices contained in or on the Services

  Examples of Harmful or Malicious Activity

  • Attempting to disrupt, degrade, impair, or violate the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the Services or the computers, services, accounts, or networks of any other party including denial of service attacks
  • Any activity that typically precedes attempts to breach security such as scanning, probing, or other testing or vulnerability assessment activity
  • Engaging in or permitting any network or hosting activity that results in a deny list or other blockage of Mountain Bike United internet protocol space

  Intellectual Property Protection

  We expect everyone using Mountain Bike United to abide by all the relevant laws applicable to them. Do not post content that infringes, dilutes, misappropriates, or otherwise violates any intellectual property, including copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, or other proprietary information — including unauthorised use of domain names.

  User content must not infringe any copyright, database right, or trade mark of any other person, and must not advocate, promote, incite any party to commit, or assist any unlawful or criminal act such as copyright infringement or computer misuse.

  Illegal Content and Activities

  Do not post content that is illegal or promotes illegal activities. You may not use our Services in any way that involves terrorism; hate offences; controlling or coercive behaviour; human trafficking; unlawful immigration; fraud and financial offences; proceeds of crime offences; foreign interference offences; animal cruelty; defamation; being in contempt of court; or containing illegal content or promoting any illegal content or activity.

  Reporting, Enforcement, and Appeals

  You can report content you believe violates the law or Mountain Bike United’s Community Standards, this Acceptable Use Policy, or any other part of Mountain Bike United’s Terms of Service by following the instructions provided in our support channels. When processing user reports, we provide information to users specifying why their report may or may not have violated our policies. We may warn or suspend an account that is found to be making repeated, unfounded complaints that have already been responded to and adequately addressed by Mountain Bike United (manifestly unfounded complaints).

  When content is reported to us, we review the content against our Terms of Service, Community Standards, or this Acceptable Use Policy, and take appropriate enforcement actions. We do this to protect our community from abuse and unwanted content and behaviour. We take a number of factors into account when reviewing a piece of content or account for violation such as context, intent, the potential for harm, whether the account is a repeat offender, and if our reporting mechanisms are being used to harass others.

  Depending on the nature of the violation, we take a range of actions including, but not limited to, removing content, revoking or limiting access to features, sending a warning, enacting a temporary account suspension, and for more serious offences, permanently suspending accounts from our Services. We may use automated detection to surface content for review or to block content. In all cases, a human reviews the appeals.

  When we remove content, suspend an account, restrict access to features, or take any other action against a piece of content or an account, we notify the account owner using the email address on file. Similarly, when someone reports a potential violation to us and we do not have sufficient information to take action on the report, we contact them using the email address on file. These notices offer an opportunity for users to appeal enforcement decisions or share more context for a re-review.

  If you would like to appeal an enforcement decision, you can do so by following the steps outlined in the email you received. You can appeal up to six months after the date of the decision. When submitting an appeal, share the reason for the appeal, including any context or background information that could help us understand the case better. Once an appeal is received, a human will review the original decision against our policies and guidelines to determine whether the determination of a violation and/or the enforcement action taken were warranted. Such decisions typically include granting the appeal, requesting more information, or denying the appeal. We will communicate our decision as a response to the appeals email.