Last updated 2 September 2026

Terms of Service

These terms govern access to and paid use of The Internet's Most Expensive Button (the “Service”). By creating a checkout or completing a purchase, you agree to these terms, the Rules, and the Privacy Policy.

1. Operator

The Service is operated by Touristas Technologies, based in Sifnos, Greece (“we”, “us”, “our”). The current operator and contact information appears in the Legal Notice.

2. What you purchase

A takeover is a paid advertising service. After Stripe confirms a valid payment, your submitted name, logo, message, button label, and destination may become the one public owner of the button. The button displays your call-to-action copy and redirects visitors to that destination until another valid buyer completes a higher-priced takeover or the placement is removed under these terms. The takeover can use the open “Until outbid” option or include a paid 24-hour, 3-day, or 7-day “Time Shield” during which competing takeovers are blocked. The same live owner state may also appear through the official iframe on third-party websites that voluntarily install it.

A “Defense Boost” is a separate paid digital participation service for the active owner's public record. After a valid payment is confirmed while the intended owner is still active, the boost amount is added to that owner's public button value and may display the backer's optional name and message. A Defense Boost does not transfer ownership, provide a destination link or traffic, reserve duration, or create equity, a security, a donation relationship, a prize, or any financial interest.

An “Until outbid” purchase does not guarantee a minimum ownership period and another person may outbid it immediately. A selected Time Shield provides only the exact takeover-protected period shown at checkout, beginning at verified activation. No purchase guarantees uninterrupted Service availability, third-party embed availability, Recorded Reach, impressions, clicks, customers, revenue, publicity, search ranking, or any other commercial result.

Verified takeover sequence numbers 1 through 100 may display a numbered “Founding 100” mark on supported public receipts and promotional assets. The sequence is assigned only when the ownership transaction commits. The mark is recognition within the Service, not equity, a security, a prize, transferable property, an endorsement, or a promise of present or future economic value.

The Service may derive a public “Daily Crown” from verified ownership intervals. Each UTC day identifies the owner with the longest control time and may archive that result with daily payment and click totals. The Daily Crown is not a separate purchase, prize, endorsement, property right, or promise of commercial value.

The Service may also derive a rolling “24H Arena” from verified takeover prices and applied Defense Boosts. Each qualifying payment remains in its ownership receipt's Arena score for exactly 24 hours from its own verified activation time. The resulting rank and rolling click count can change as events enter or leave the window. The Arena is not a separate purchase, prize, endorsement, property right, audited advertising report, or promise of commercial value.

An archived receipt may offer a prefilled reclaim checkout. If the resulting payment wins, the new receipt can permanently link to that specifically selected predecessor as a “Comeback Chain” and display cumulative verified values, clicks, control time, defenses, and reign count across that path. This is a public receipt-lineage feature, not identity verification: it does not establish that purchasers or submitted names are the same legal person, that different brands are affiliated, or that we endorse them.

Each verified takeover after the founding owner can also permanently identify the exact active ownership receipt it displaced and appear with that receipt on the public “Takeover Tape.” The matchup and takeover price document payment-backed receipt succession. They do not verify legal identity, establish affiliation, accuse a person or brand of wrongdoing, or create an endorsement, prize, property right, or promise of commercial value.

Each takeover selects one supported public competition category. The Service may publish a derived category ranking based on verified current or final button value. A category is not a separate placement or purchase, and its label or rank is not a prize, certification, endorsement, property right, regulated classification, or promise of commercial value.

3. Eligibility and authority

• You must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter a contract.
• If you buy for a company or another person, you confirm that you are authorized to act for them.
• You must own or be authorized to promote the submitted destination, brand assets, and message.
• You may not use the Service where sanctions or other applicable law prohibit the transaction.

4. Pricing, checkout, taxes, and activation

The authoritative open-takeover minimum is calculated on our server by doubling the current public value and adding 5% of that doubled amount, rounded up to a whole cent. A configured absolute increase also applies as a low-value floor, and the greater result controls. A Time Shield adds the greater of its displayed minimum premium or percentage premium to that open price. You may also voluntarily choose an exact higher amount. If that payment remains valid and wins, the full verified amount—including any Time Shield premium and voluntary amount—becomes the new public value. Paying above the selected option does not extend its stated protection period or guarantee traffic, a result, or a refund right.

The minimum can change if another takeover completes first. Checkout and payment processing are provided by Stripe under Stripe's terms. Stripe is the payment processor, not the seller of the advertising service or our Merchant of Record. Touristas Technologies is the service provider and seller responsible for its tax, invoicing, refund, and consumer-law obligations.

Ownership changes—and any Time Shield clock begins—only after our server receives and verifies Stripe's signed payment event and commits the transfer. A checkout page, authorization, receipt screen, or browser redirect alone does not transfer ownership, reserve a price, or begin protected time. The final charge and any applicable tax treatment are shown before payment.

The Defense Boost minimum and maximum are displayed before checkout. A Defense Boost is a separate advertising boost, not a takeover: it never transfers ownership or changes the destination. Applied boosts increase the live value but do not reset the owner's tenure or extend or restart a Time Shield. Each boost is fulfilled only after our server rechecks the intended owner, product, currency, exact amount, and supported value ceiling.

5. Competing payments and stale checkouts

Two buyers can occasionally open checkout at the same price. The first payment that is validly confirmed against the locked live price wins. A later payment that no longer satisfies the live minimum—or arrives after another owner's Time Shield begins—is marked for review and refund; it does not displace the protected or newer owner. At the exact shield expiry, a still-valid payment may transfer ownership. A Defense Boost and takeover can also race: a boost fulfilled first raises the live value, while a takeover fulfilled first makes the old owner's pending boost ineligible and subject to refund review. Refund processing time depends on Stripe, the card network, and the buyer's payment provider.

6. Immediate performance and EU withdrawal rights

By checking the acknowledgement before checkout, you expressly request that the advertising service begin immediately after verified payment, before any statutory withdrawal period has expired. If you are an EU/EEA consumer and withdraw after performance has begun, you may be required to pay a proportionate amount for the service already provided. Where the service has been fully performed after your prior express request and acknowledgement, your withdrawal right may end to the extent permitted by law.

Nothing in these terms removes a mandatory consumer right that cannot legally be waived. To exercise a statutory right, use the contact route in the Legal Notice and include the checkout or order identifier.

7. Refunds

Except for a stale-checkout or active-Time-Shield conflict, an owner-change conflict before a Defense Boost applies, a refund we voluntarily approve, a refund required through Stripe or a payment network, or a mandatory legal right, payments are generally final because public placement or digital boost performance begins immediately. A later eligible outbid after any selected protection ends, short boost visibility, receiving fewer clicks than hoped, dislike of recorded counts, or lack of commercial results does not by itself create a refund entitlement.

8. Submitted content

You remain responsible for your content and destination. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to store, resize, reproduce, display, distribute through the official live Button iframe, and archive the submitted name, category, logo, message, button label, destination, and related public metadata as needed to operate, moderate, document, and promote the Service.

If you submit a backer name or message with a Defense Boost, you grant the same limited license for the defense wall and owner receipt. We may hide or remove that attribution without removing the verified payment record or reducing the button value.

If you create a personalized challenge page, you remain responsible for the public-facing name you enter and grant us the same limited license to place it in the challenge URL, page, social preview, and public Most Wanted ranking with an aggregate submission count. Challenge content must follow the Rules and may be hidden, removed, or disabled after a valid complaint or moderation review.

Each verified takeover may receive a permanent public ownership-receipt URL containing its initial takeover price, current or final button value, Defense Boosts, dates, status, Recorded Reach, click-to-reach rate, click count, exact displaced and successor receipts, Comeback Chain lineage and totals, all-time, category, and rolling Arena ranks, submitted content, and a sponsored link to its destination. Verified ownership and activity may also appear in the Takeover Tape, category boards, the rolling 24H Arena, and closed Daily Crown scorecards. A receipt, matchup, ranking, or scorecard can remain visible and indexable after ownership ends, but permanence is an operating intention—not a guarantee that any page, link, or Service will exist forever. We may remove, relabel, or disable archived content for legal, safety, technical, or moderation reasons.

You warrant that the content is accurate, lawful, not misleading, and does not violate intellectual-property, privacy, publicity, advertising, consumer-protection, or other rights.

9. Prohibited content and moderation

Prohibited uses include malware, phishing, impersonation, fraud, hate or harassment, illegal goods or services, explicit sexual content, exploitation, counterfeit goods, unlicensed regulated activity, deceptive redirects, link shorteners that hide the destination, and infringement of third-party rights. The full operational restrictions are in the Rules.

We may refuse, pause, edit, hide, or remove a placement when reasonably necessary for safety, legal compliance, platform integrity, a rights complaint, payment risk, or reputational risk. Where removal results from your breach, a refund is not guaranteed except where mandatory law requires one.

10. Click counts and third-party sites

Click counts are first-party operational measurements with short-window deduplication. Bots, privacy tools, network conditions, abuse controls, and technical errors can affect them. Counts are informational estimates, not audited advertising reports.

Recorded Reach is a separate first-party operational measurement of accepted human-browser heartbeats on the main Button page and official live iframe. It uses known-bot filtering and thirty-minute visitor-and-surface deduplication. It is not raw page views, lifetime unique people, proof that every pixel was visible or read, or an audited impression standard. The public click-to-reach rate divides tracked clicks by Recorded Reach and can differ materially from third-party analytics.

The official live Button iframe may be embedded by unaffiliated third parties. We do not promise any number, identity, quality, availability, duration, audience, or editorial context of those voluntary installs. A publisher can remove an iframe at any time. An embedding page is not our endorsement of that publisher, and the iframe does not create a contract, partnership, agency, or affiliate relationship between the owner, publisher, or us.

For ordinary destination URLs, we may add missing UTM attribution values to outbound button clicks while preserving existing buyer-supplied UTM values. Signed or tokenized URLs can be left unchanged. This attribution does not guarantee that any analytics provider will record, classify, or reconcile a visit in a particular way.

The button leads to a third-party destination controlled by its owner. We do not endorse, verify, or accept responsibility for that destination, its claims, security, availability, products, or privacy practices.

11. Availability and changes

The Service is provided on an “as available” basis. We may update the design, increment, rules, abuse controls, processors, or functionality. We may suspend the Service for maintenance, security, legal, payment-provider, or infrastructure reasons. Material term changes apply prospectively unless a change is required by law or necessary to address abuse or security.

12. Liability

To the maximum extent allowed by law, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost profits, lost opportunities, loss of goodwill, or third-party conduct. For claims connected to a specific purchase, our aggregate contractual liability is limited to the amount paid for that purchase. These limits do not apply where liability cannot legally be excluded or limited, including liability for fraud, intent, gross negligence, or injury where applicable law provides otherwise.

13. Governing law

These terms are governed by Greek law. Mandatory protections of a consumer's country of residence continue to apply where they cannot be displaced. For business users, courts with jurisdiction at our place of establishment in Greece have exclusive jurisdiction to the extent permitted by law.

14. General

If a provision is unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain effective. Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. These terms, the Rules, Privacy Policy, and checkout information form the agreement for the Service.

Important: This operational policy is designed for the current product and EU-facing launch, but it is not a substitute for advice from a Greek lawyer or accountant.