Membership and Terms of Use Agreement

These Membership and Terms of Use ("Terms") apply to everyone who registers with and uses the MarinersLobby platform. By accepting these Terms on the registration screen, or by continuing to use the platform, you confirm that you have read, understood and accepted the conditions below. If you do not accept them, please do not register or use the platform.

1. Parties and Subject#

1.1 One party to these Terms is MarinersLobby ("we"), the operator of the MarinersLobby platform offered at marinerslobby.com and related applications. The other party is the person or organisation that registers with the platform as an individual or corporate member ("Member", "you").

1.2 The operator can be reached at [email protected].

1.3 These Terms set out the scope of the services offered on the platform, the conditions of membership and the rights and obligations of the parties. The Privacy Policy, the Personal Data Processing Notice and the Community Guidelines form an integral part of these Terms.

2. Definitions#

• Platform: the MarinersLobby website, its mobile interfaces and all services offered through them.
• Individual Member: a natural person working at sea or ashore, looking for work or studying in the maritime field, who opens an account in their own name.
• Corporate Member: a shipowner, ship manager, crewing agency, port, shipyard or similar maritime organisation that opens a company account on the platform, together with the authorised persons who use that account on its behalf.
• Verified Company: a Corporate Member verified through a code sent to an email address on the company's own domain, its tax number and website, or through a review by our team, and shown with the "Verified" mark on its profile.
• Content: any profile information, job posting, application, message, question, answer, comment, image or document that Members upload or write on the platform.
• Forum: the archived and searchable question-and-answer area where Members ask and answer professional questions.

3. Membership Conditions and Account Security#

3.1 You must be at least 18 years old to become an Individual Member. You confirm this during registration; if the statement turns out to be untrue, your account may be closed.

3.2 The information you give at registration must be accurate, up to date and your own. You may not open an account on behalf of someone else, under a false identity, or by impersonating another person or organisation. Each person may use only one individual account.

3.3 The person who opens a corporate account confirms that they are authorised to accept these Terms on behalf of the organisation they represent. The organisation is responsible for the actions of all of its staff who act through the account.

3.4 Membership is completed when you verify your email address with the code we send to it. You are responsible for keeping your password and the devices that can access your account secure. If you notice that your account is being used without your permission, change your password immediately, sign out of all sessions and let us know.

3.5 A Corporate Member's "Verified" mark only shows that the organisation's domain, tax number and website are consistent with each other. It is not a guarantee of the organisation's financial standing, of the accuracy of its postings or of its reliability as an employer. No identity or document verification is carried out for Individual Members; the accuracy of profile information is the Member's own declaration.

4. Scope of the Service#

4.1 The platform is a professional network that brings together people working in the maritime sector, students and organisations. The main services are:

• A profile and CV page showing your sea service, certificates and work preferences
• Publishing, searching, saving and applying to sea, shore and internship job postings
• A match indicator produced by comparing your profile with the requirements of a posting, saved searches and notifications about matching jobs
• Application-based messaging, interview appointments and application status notifications
• The Forum (question-and-answer archive), chat rooms and guide articles
• A student area open to students whose school email address has been verified
• Company pages, fleet information and company verification

4.2 MarinersLobby is a job posting and communication platform. It does not make hiring decisions, conclude employment contracts or place seafarers. Any employment relationship, contract or payment arising between an Individual Member and a Corporate Member is solely between those parties.

4.3 The match indicator is only an automatic comparison of the information declared in your profile with the requirements written in the posting, and is provided for information. The platform does not take any decision about you automatically; it is the employer who reviews applications and decides.

5. Rights and Obligations of Individual Members#

5.1 You are responsible for the accuracy of your rank, sea service, certificates, medical certificate dates and similar information in your profile, CV and applications. Giving false or misleading certificate information is a serious breach of these Terms and of the applicable law.

5.2 For your medical certificates you only declare their expiry date on the platform; no certificate, diagnosis or health information is uploaded or stored. You are responsible for the accuracy of the date and for the certificate actually being valid.

5.3 Your "open to work" status, availability date, salary expectation and medical certificate dates are shown only to Verified Companies and to organisations you have applied to. You can change or remove this information at any time.

5.4 When you apply to a posting, your profile, CV and application details are shared with the relevant Corporate Member. The organisation's use of that information is subject to the obligations in clause 6.3.

5.5 If you suspect that an employer or a posting is not genuine, that you are being asked for a fee, or that the platform is being misused, you can report the content through the platform.

6. Rights and Obligations of Corporate Members#

6.1 A Corporate Member may only publish postings for positions that are real, current and held by the Corporate Member itself (or by an employer that has authorised it in writing). If an organisation posts on behalf of another employer, it must state this clearly in the posting.

6.2 Postings must comply with the applicable employment, maritime and anti-discrimination laws. Except where required by law, flag state rules or the ship's manning requirements, no discriminatory conditions may be set on grounds of sex, religion, language, race, ethnic origin, political opinion, disability or similar grounds.

6.3 A Corporate Member may use the personal data it accesses through applications and profiles only for the relevant recruitment process, and is itself the data controller for that data under Turkish Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698 (KVKK). It may not sell, transfer or bulk-download candidates' data or use it for unsolicited marketing, and must retain or destroy it in accordance with the law once the recruitment process has ended.

6.4 All communication with candidates through interview appointments, application statuses and messages must be professional and honest. Repeatedly changing an application status or appointment in a way that misleads or harasses the candidate is prohibited.

6.5 The Corporate Member is responsible for keeping its company information (name, tax number, website, address, fleet information) accurate and up to date.

7. No Fees Charged to Candidates#

7.1 For any job found through the platform, no fee, deposit or payment may be requested from a candidate, directly or indirectly, under any name such as recruitment, file, processing, training, visa, medical check or guarantee. This rule is consistent with the international rules prohibiting fees for the recruitment and placement of seafarers (Maritime Labour Convention, 2006, Regulation 1.4).

7.2 A Corporate Member that breaches this rule will have its postings removed immediately and its account may be closed permanently. Such cases may be reported to the competent authorities.

7.3 MarinersLobby does not charge Individual Members any fee for finding work. If someone asks you for a fee on behalf of MarinersLobby, do not pay and let us know.

8. Content, Forum and Communication Rules#

8.1 You are responsible for all Content you upload or write on the platform. Content must comply with the law, the Community Guidelines and these Terms.

8.2 Technical, legal, medical or operational information shared in the Forum and in chat rooms is the personal opinion of Members and does not replace professional advice. Decisions on board and in operations must be taken in line with the company's safety management system, flag and class rules and the applicable regulations.

8.3 When you answer a question, you accept that your answer will remain in the archive together with the question and will appear in other Members' searches.

8.4 You may not share other people's personal data (identity, passport, seaman's book, phone number, address, health information, photographs, etc.) without their permission.

9. Prohibited Uses#

The following are prohibited on the platform:

• Publishing fake, misleading or non-existent job postings; contacting people for fraudulent purposes
• Impersonating another person, organisation or MarinersLobby
• Sharing Content that is insulting, threatening, harassing, hateful, discriminatory, obscene or violent
• Sending unsolicited bulk messages, advertising or spam
• Collecting, copying or bulk-downloading data from the platform using automated tools (bots, scrapers, crawlers)
• Trying to get around rate limits, access restrictions, security measures or content filters
• Sharing malware, malicious links or phishing content
• Trying to access other people's accounts without permission
• Sharing Content that infringes intellectual property rights
• Using the platform for any purpose contrary to the applicable law

10. Moderation, Reports and Sanctions#

10.1 Content on the platform passes through automatic filters. Content containing clearly prohibited expressions is not published; suspicious Content is sent for review.

10.2 Members can report postings, profiles, companies, Forum content, messages and chat rooms. Reports are reviewed by our moderation team.

10.3 In case of a breach of these Terms, the Community Guidelines or the law, one or more of the following measures may be applied depending on the seriousness of the breach: a warning, removal of Content, restriction of messaging and posting for a period, suspension of the account, or permanent closure of the account. For Corporate Members, these measures also include taking postings offline and hiding the company page.

10.4 Measures are recorded together with their reasons. If you believe a measure taken against you is wrong, you can appeal at [email protected]; your appeal will be reviewed and, if it is found justified, the measure will be lifted.

10.5 Decisions and requests from competent authorities concerning unlawful Content are carried out in accordance with the applicable law.

11. Intellectual Property and User Content#

11.1 The platform's software, design, logo, brand and the content prepared by MarinersLobby (including guide articles) belong to or are licensed to MarinersLobby. They may not be copied, reproduced or used for commercial purposes without written permission.

11.2 You keep the rights to the Content you share. By sharing Content on the platform, you grant MarinersLobby a worldwide, free and non-exclusive right to use it to the extent needed for the platform to work (displaying, storing, reproducing, using it in search results and notifications, and formatting it technically). This right ends when you delete the Content or your account is deleted, subject to cases where the law requires retention and to reasonable technical periods for content already shared with other Members.

11.3 You confirm that you hold the necessary rights to the Content you share and that it does not infringe the rights of third parties.

12. Personal Data#

12.1 Your personal data is processed in accordance with Turkish Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698 (KVKK) and related legislation, for the purposes and periods explained in the Personal Data Processing Notice and the Privacy Policy.

12.2 You can download a copy of your personal data from the settings screen, correct your profile information and request the deletion of your account. For your other rights under Article 11 of the KVKK, you can contact [email protected].

13. Notifications and Electronic Communication#

13.1 Required emails about your account (verification codes, password resets, security and account status notices) and notices about changes to these Terms are sent to your registered email address.

13.2 You can choose how often you receive email notifications about applications, messages, the Forum and postings in the settings screen, or stop them with one click using the link in each email.

13.3 No commercial electronic messages (advertising, campaigns, promotions) are sent to you without your explicit consent.

14. Fees#

The platform's current services are free of charge. If paid services are introduced in the future, their scope and price will be clearly announced in advance, and a paid service will only start if you separately agree to it. The conditions of free services will not be made chargeable retroactively without your consent.

15. Limitation of Liability#

15.1 MarinersLobby does not guarantee the accuracy, timeliness or lawfulness of the postings, profiles, applications, messages and Forum content published by Members. Responsibility for such Content lies with the Member who published it.

15.2 MarinersLobby is not a party to, and is not liable for, employment relationships, employment contracts, wages and payments, hiring decisions established between Members, or any disputes arising from them.

15.3 The platform is provided "as is". We take reasonable care to keep the service uninterrupted and free of errors; however, interruptions may occur due to maintenance, updates, technical faults or third-party infrastructure problems.

15.4 The limitations of liability in this clause do not apply in cases of intent or gross negligence by MarinersLobby, to damage to life and health, or to the extent that mandatory rules of law (in particular Turkish Consumer Protection Law No. 6502) do not permit them.

16. Changes to the Service, Interruptions and Force Majeure#

16.1 MarinersLobby may improve or change the platform's features or remove some of them. Changes that significantly affect Members will be announced a reasonable time in advance.

16.2 Neither party is liable for failing to fulfil its obligations because of events beyond its control (force majeure), such as natural disasters, war, epidemics, fire, cyber attacks, infrastructure or power outages and decisions of competent authorities.

17. End of Membership and Account Deletion#

17.1 You can request the deletion of your account at any time from the settings screen. After the request, your account is closed immediately, your sessions are ended and your profile is hidden. The account is kept in a recoverable state for 180 days from the date of the request; if you sign in again within that period, your deletion request is cancelled. When the period ends, your account and your personal content are permanently deleted.

17.2 When a corporate account is deleted, the company page, postings and fleet information are deleted as well.

17.3 Records that must be kept under the applicable law (for example, traffic records under Turkish Law No. 5651) or because they may be needed as evidence in legal disputes are kept for the relevant periods and destroyed at the end of those periods.

17.4 MarinersLobby may end a membership with notice, or immediately where the nature of the breach requires it, in case of a serious or repeated breach of these Terms.

18. Changes to These Terms#

18.1 MarinersLobby may update these Terms because of changes in the law, new services or security needs. The current version and its effective date are published on this page.

18.2 Changes that significantly affect your rights or obligations will be notified to your registered email address and on the platform before they take effect. If you do not accept a change, you can delete your account; continuing to use the platform after the change means you accept the new version. Where a change requires your explicit consent, it will be requested separately on the platform.

19. Evidence, Governing Law and Disputes#

19.1 In disputes arising from these Terms, MarinersLobby's electronic records, system records and audit logs may be used as evidence under Turkish Code of Civil Procedure No. 6100. Members who are consumers keep the right to prove otherwise.

19.2 These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Türkiye.

19.3 Members who are consumers may apply, within the monetary limits in force, to the Consumer Arbitration Committees and Consumer Courts at their place of residence or where the transaction took place.

20. Contact and Entry into Force#

20.1 You can send your questions, notices and objections about these Terms to [email protected].

20.2 These Terms consist of 20 clauses and enter into force when the Member accepts them electronically. The version you accepted is recorded together with the date of acceptance.

In case of any inconsistency between the Turkish and English versions of these Terms, the Turkish version prevails.