Acceptable Use Policy

Visibility Group Limited · Version 1.0

1. Who this applies to

Everyone who uses Acclaimedly: members, people writing recommendations, people sending messages through a contact form, agencies acting for clients, and anyone using our API.

2. Your account

1. One person, one account. You may hold one personal account, which may manage a personal profile and the business profiles you are entitled to represent. You may not open a second account, including after we have closed one. Enforced by the site: identity verification and duplicate checks.
2. Be the person you say you are. You may not use a name, photograph, credential, award or brand that is not yours, or suggest you speak for a business you do not represent. Checked by a person: claims and credentials are checked before they show. Acted on when reported: for anything else.
3. 18 or over. You must be at least 18 years old. Enforced by the site: an age confirmation at sign-up, backed by the identity check.
4. Keep your account to yourself. Do not share your sign-in, or sell, transfer or rent an account or profile. Agencies act through agency seats, not through a client's own account. Checked by a person.

3. Recommendations

1. Only people and businesses you have genuinely dealt with, as a customer, client, colleague, employer or employee. You confirm this every time you write one. Enforced by the site: the confirmation. Acted on when reported: the truth of it.
2. Not yourself, and not your own business or employer. Enforced by the site: where we can tell from the accounts involved. Acted on when reported: otherwise.
3. Nothing in exchange. No payment, discount, gift, free service or recommendation back, whether given or promised. This includes recommendations asked for as a condition of a deal. Acted on when reported.
4. No recommendation rings. Groups of accounts recommending each other to inflate scores. Checked by a person: detected from the pattern of recommendations, then confirmed by a person.
5. What you write must be your own honest opinion and true as to fact. You are responsible for it (Terms section 7). We do not check the facts in a recommendation before it is published.
6. A recommendation is a recommendation. Acclaimedly does not publish negative reviews. A recommendation that is in substance a complaint or attack on the person it names will be removed. Checked by a person.

4. Contact messages

The Messaging Policy sets out the limits, which the site enforces, and the warning, pause and stop sequence for misuse, which a person decides. In short: no selling, marketing, recruiting, fundraising or link building; no bulk messages; nothing abusive, threatening or deceptive.

5. Content that is never allowed

Anywhere on Acclaimedly: profiles, recommendations, images, products, offers, messages and links. All Acted on when reported: , plus. Checked by a person: of every uploaded image before it is shown.

1. Content that is unlawful where it is published or where you are, or that encourages or helps someone break the law.
2. Content that defames someone, or discloses private information about them, including their address, phone number, health, finances or family, without a lawful reason.
3. Content that infringes someone's copyright, trade mark or other rights. See section 8 for how rights-holders tell us.
4. Threats, harassment, stalking, or content that attacks people for their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age or similar characteristic.
5. Sexual content of any kind; and any content that sexualises, endangers or exploits a child, which we report to the authorities.
6. Content promoting terrorism or violent extremism, or glorifying violence.
7. Impersonation of a person, a business, a regulator or Acclaimedly.
8. Unlicensed regulated services, where a licence is required for what you offer and you do not hold it. Examples are legal, financial, medical, migration and building work. Acted on when reported: and, where you claim a licence,. Checked by a person: of the proof.
9. Links to malware, phishing, gambling, adult content or sites flagged as unsafe. Enforced by the site: links are checked when saved and re-checked weekly.
10. Misleading offers: prices, discounts or claims you cannot honour. Acted on when reported.

6. Using the service fairly

1. No scraping, crawling or bulk copying of profiles beyond what our published API and robots.txt allow. No automated sign-ups or messages. Enforced by the site: rate limits.
2. No attempt to probe, break or get round our security, rate limits, rankings method or moderation. Enforced by the site: and. Checked by a person.
3. No harvesting of members' details to contact them outside Acclaimedly for marketing. Acted on when reported.
4. No use of Acclaimedly content to build a competing directory or ranking. Acted on when reported.
5. No reverse engineering of the scoring method beyond what we publish. You are welcome to read how rankings work.

Security researchers acting in good faith should write to [security@acclaimedly.com TBC] before testing.

7. What happens if you break this policy

We act in proportion to what happened. Each decision is made by a person, and the person affected is told which rule, what we did and how to ask for it to be looked at again (see the Notice and Takedown Procedure).

Paid plans are not refunded when an account is closed for a serious breach, unless the law where you live requires it.

We may tell the police or another authority where we believe someone's life or safety is at risk, or where the law requires it.

8. Reporting a breach

Every recommendation, message, image and profile has a Report link. Rights-holders, people who say they have been defamed, and authorities should use the routes in the Notice and Takedown Procedure. A person at Acclaimedly reads every report. The person reported is never told who reported them, unless the law requires it.