Frequently Asked Questions

The NearlyFreeSpeech.NET FAQ (*)

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Q. What do I do if my membership was frozen due to sharing or a fraudulent transfer?

Memberships are held by individuals and have that individual's name on them. Our policies strictly forbid both sharing memberships and transferring your membership to another person. (It is, however, quick, easy and allowable to transfer an account from one membership to another or to share an account between multiple memberships when appropriate.)

If you share or transfer control of your membership, we will eventually detect that, and the membership will be suspended. Murphy's law guarantees that this will happen at the time that is most inconvenient and problematic for you. If you're reading this entry, that time is probably now.

If you are the named member, you can restore access to a membership suspended for this reason by contacting support@nearlyfreespeech.net from the email address that was on the membership prior to any fraudulent transfers, and completing all of the following steps:

  1. Confirm that you are the person named on the membership.
  2. Provide a legible, currently-valid government-issued photo ID matching the name on the membership.
  3. Read and understand our Terms & Conditions of Service and confirm to us that you have done so.
  4. Confirm that you understand that your membership is in your individual name and may not be shared or transferred.
  5. Confirm that if you wish to transfer an account or any of its contents to another person, you (and they) will follow all of our policies in doing so.

If you do not have access to that email address, or if that email address does not belong to you (for example because someone else created a membership in your name despite the bold print warning not to do that), you must additionally complete the verification steps for a lost email address.

If you are not the named member, and someone else gave you control over their membership and it was subsequently frozen as a result, you will not be able to complete this process. Only the named member can do so. Your only recourse is to find them and obtain their assistance. This is true even if they quit, got fired, moved away, were voted out of office, broke up the band, divorced, went to jail, graduated, made a vow that forbids use of technology, whatever.

Please do not contact us asking for exceptions or special treatment. This situation only occurs as a direct result of violating our Terms & Conditions of Service (and the bold-print warnings presented at signup), and any problems that result are entirely self-inflicted.

Please also be aware that as of September 2017, if you have violated our policies around memberships and if that violation causes any problems or extra work for us we may assess a $50.00 fee to cover the time we spend dealing with the resulting mess.