Public legitimacy
How this site decides what to publish
Our editorial policy, evidence standards and safeguards — written so that buyers, suppliers and people who may have been impersonated can hold us to them.
How ratings are calculated
There is no fraud score, guilt score or star rating. A case file carries one review stage, chosen by a human moderator from the evidence:
- Community report — submitted, not yet reviewed
- Evidence under review — moderators are examining documents
- Evidence reviewed — documents checked; claims remain attributed allegations
- Disputed — the subject or another party contests the account
- Resolved — the parties report the matter resolved
- 'Independently corroborated' is added only when a specific fact is verified against an independent source
Editorial policy
Buyer reports whose authors request publication go live automatically, clearly labeled as unreviewed. Reviewed case files and rankings still need a human approval.
- Publication requires six recorded checks: evidence reviewed, identity confirmed, provenance & rights, right of reply offered, impersonation guard, legal review
- The database itself refuses to publish a real record without them
- Retractions and corrections are logged and reversible
Evidence standards
We separate what is alleged from what is shown.
- Allegation: what a reporter says happened, always attributed
- Proof: documents such as receipts, carrier records and chats, reviewed privately
- Established fact: verified against an independent source
- Similar names never link records; only exact normalized identifiers do
Impersonation guard
Identity impersonation is common. A legitimate company named by a seller is never treated as the subject without proof of linkage, and legal entities are never auto-merged with aliases.
Conflicts of interest & donations
Voluntary donations pay for hosting and tools. They never affect ranking, visibility, review priority, case outcomes, appeals or moderation. We do not sell placement, promote suppliers or accept payment to remove files.
Appeals & corrections
Subjects, impersonated organizations and reporters can reply, request corrections, request takedown or appeal. Each decision can be appealed once to a different moderator, and every change appears in the case's audit trail.
Data deletion requests
You can ask to access, correct or delete your data, or withdraw public attribution, through the contact and appeal forms. Private evidence is deleted after review periods; audit records are kept for accountability.
Source attribution
Every allegation names its source type and date. External community lists are analysed privately and shown only as clearly labelled, preliminary aggregates — never as named entries.
Search-engine indexing
Case files and checker results are excluded from search-engine indexing, and unreviewed claims are never used as search snippets or page titles.
1. Intake
Reports are submitted privately by signed-in users, protected by a human check and rate limits. Evidence goes to private storage. If the reporter asks, the written account is published at once as an unreviewed buyer report; reviewed case files still need editorial checks.
2. Normalization & matching
Identifiers are normalized (phones to E.164, lowercase emails and domains, cleaned handles) and compared using keyed hashes. Only exact normalized matches link records; similar names are shown as unconfirmed candidates only.
3. Human review
Moderators assess evidence, redact personal data (addresses, private phones, financial details, victims' identities) and separate corroborated facts from allegations.
4. Review stages
Case files carry one stage: Community report, Evidence under review, Evidence reviewed, Disputed or Resolved. 'Independently corroborated' is added only after manual verification of a specific fact.
5. Impersonation safeguards
When a seller appears to use a real company's identity, we flag the possible impersonation and never link the legitimate entity without proof. Legal entities are never auto-merged with aliases.
6. Right of reply
Where contact is possible, subjects are notified and may publish a reply. Replies appear on the case file.
7. AI assistance
AI may suggest OCR fields, translations, alias candidates, PII redactions and completeness checks. It can only flag for human review — never publish, accuse, score or link entities. Uploaded content is treated as untrusted.
8. Statistics
Insights count only reviewed, published reports, aggregated by country, with groups under five reports withheld. They describe reports, not prevalence.