Terms of service

These terms govern your use of the ProofTell website, dashboard, API and file verification service (together, “ProofTell” or “the service”). The service is provided by Epic Grove Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company no. 17285617), registered office 128 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom (“we”, “us”).

By creating an account or using the service you agree to these terms on behalf of the business you act for (“you”), and you confirm that you have the authority to do so. If you do not agree, do not use the service. If you have signed an enterprise agreement with us, that agreement applies instead of these terms where it says so.

1. The service

ProofTell assesses the risk attached to a phone number, an email address and an IP address. For each one it returns what the check found: for a phone number, its validity, line type, carrier and country; for an email address, whether its mailbox exists and what kind of address it is; for an IP address, its location, its network and whether it belongs to Tor, a VPN provider or a datacenter. The assessment endpoint combines them into a score from 0 to 100, a verdict (allow, review or deny) and the reasons behind it.

The service is available as an API, as a dashboard and as file verification. It is described in the documentation, which forms part of these terms. Features marked as draft, beta or preview may change without notice.

A result is information, not a guarantee. It reflects what our data and the systems we query reported at the time of the check. Numbering plans change, mail servers change their answers or decline to answer, IP addresses are reassigned, and a location derived from an IP address is an estimate. A score weighs that information with a fixed, versioned set of rules. You decide what to do with a result, and you remain responsible for the decisions you take about your own customers and users.

2. Accounts, organizations and API keys

The service is for businesses and professionals. It is not directed at consumers or at anyone under 18.

When you first sign in, an organization is created for you and you become its owner. Owners and admins can invite other people and give them a role. You are responsible for who you give access to, for the roles you assign, and for everything done in your organization.

You must give accurate account information and keep it current.

API keys are secrets. You are responsible for all use made of your keys. If a key is exposed, revoke it from the dashboard and tell us. Sandbox keys return simulated results: they exist for building and testing, and their results must not be relied on for any decision.

3. Acceptable use

You may submit only data that you have the right to process. For the phone numbers, email addresses and IP addresses you submit, you are the data controller and we are your data processor (see section 5). You must not:

• submit data you have no lawful basis to process, or any special category or criminal-offence data;
• use a result as a factor in deciding a person’s eligibility for credit, insurance, employment, housing or a government benefit, or for any other purpose governed by the US Fair Credit Reporting Act or a similar law. ProofTell is not a consumer reporting agency and its results are not consumer reports;
• take decisions that have a legal or similarly significant effect on a person by automated means alone without the safeguards the law requires, or use the service to discriminate unlawfully against, locate, track or harass anyone;
• use email verification to build or clean lists for unsolicited bulk email, to verify addresses you harvested, scraped or bought without a lawful basis, or in a way that damages the standing of our verification infrastructure with mail providers;
• probe, overload or interfere with the service, or circumvent its rate limits, quotas or billing;
• resell or redistribute the service, or the data behind it, as a dataset or as a competing lookup service, without our written agreement. Using results inside your own products and operations is what the service is for;
• reverse-engineer the service, except where the law gives you that right regardless of contract.

We may rate-limit, suspend or close an account that breaches this section.

4. Prices, balance and billing

Prices. The prices are those of the public rate card on the pricing page, in US dollars and exclusive of tax. The same rate card applies to every customer.

Balance. You pay in advance by adding money to your organization’s balance, by card or, where we agree, against an invoice paid by bank transfer. Money you add is credited at face value and does not expire while your account is open. The balance can only be spent on the service: it is not a deposit, it earns no interest, and it cannot be withdrawn or transferred.

Bonus. A top-up may come with a bonus, as set out on the pricing page, and we may grant an evaluation credit at our discretion. Bonus and evaluation amounts are promotional: they are spent like the rest of the balance, have no cash value, and are never refunded.

Charges. Each signal that returns a result is charged at the rate in force at the time of the call. The documentation states, for each signal, when a run is charged. A signal that was unavailable and any call made with a sandbox key cost nothing. Every response states what the call cost. When a file is started, the cost of its unique rows is held on your balance; rows are charged against the hold as their results arrive, and what is not used is released when the file ends.

Monthly top-up. If you choose a monthly top-up, the amount you chose is charged to your card each month and added to your balance until you cancel. You can cancel at any time from the dashboard; cancelling stops future payments and leaves your balance untouched. If a payment fails, nothing is added.

When the balance runs out. When the balance cannot cover a call, the call can be refused with an error that states the amount required, and files cannot be started. We never charge below zero.

Changes to prices. We may change the rate card. An increase to a rate takes effect no sooner than 30 days after we announce it by email to the owners of your organization. A decrease, or a new signal, may take effect at once.

Refunds. A charge for a result is final: the answer was delivered. Top-ups are not refundable, except where the law requires it or where these terms or the data processing agreement say otherwise. If we refund a top-up, we may remove the bonus that came with it.

Tax. You are responsible for any tax that applies to your purchase. We collect your billing address and tax ID at checkout.

Payment disputes. If a payment is disputed or reversed, we may suspend the account until it is resolved and remove the amount concerned from the balance.

5. Your data

The data processing agreement forms part of these terms and applies to every account without a signature. It governs the phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses and files you submit. In short:

• single lookups are processed and returned, and are not stored;
• assessments are stored so that you can review them, for 90 days by default, and you can set that period anywhere from zero (nothing is stored) to 365 days;
• uploaded files, their working data and their results are deleted 30 days after upload, or as soon as you delete them;
• we do not sell the data you submit, use it for our own marketing, or use it to train machine-learning models.

How we handle the data that describes you as our customer (your account, your billing, your messages to us) is set out in the privacy policy. Where your data is processed, by whom, and what we do not have, is set out on the security page.

We may compile statistics about the use of the service, such as volumes, latency and the distribution of results. They contain no personal data and do not identify you.

6. Availability, support and changes

We work to keep the service available at all times, but we do not promise uninterrupted operation, and we may suspend it for maintenance or for security reasons. Service levels apply only where we have agreed them in writing.

Some signals depend on systems we do not control, such as the mail server of the address being verified. When a signal cannot answer, the service says so rather than guess, and does not charge for it.

Support is by email at support@prooftell.com.

We may change and improve the service. Before we remove a documented API endpoint or field that is not marked as draft, beta or preview, we will give at least 60 days’ notice.

7. Intellectual property

The service, its software, its rule sets, its documentation and its branding belong to Epic Grove Ltd or its licensors. You receive a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the service under these terms.

You keep all rights to the data you submit. You may use the results we return to you for your own business purposes, subject to section 3.

IP location data includes GeoLite2 data created by MaxMind, available from https://www.maxmind.com.

If you send us suggestions about the service, we may use them without obligation to you.

We will not use your name or logo publicly without your written consent.

8. Warranties

We will provide the service with reasonable skill and care. Otherwise the service is provided as is. We do not warrant that a result is accurate, complete or current in every case, that the service will detect or prevent any particular fraud, or that it will be uninterrupted or free of error. Nothing in these terms limits a warranty that cannot be excluded by law.

9. Liability

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot be excluded or limited by law.

Subject to that, neither of us is liable to the other for loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill or data, or for any indirect or consequential loss. We are not liable for the decisions you take on the basis of a result, including a transaction, an account or a customer you accepted or declined.

Subject to the first paragraph of this section, our total liability to you for all claims arising in any 12-month period is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us for the service in that period and US $100.

10. Indemnity

You will indemnify us against claims, losses and costs arising from the data you submit, from your breach of section 3, or from your use of the service in breach of the law.

11. Suspension and termination

You can stop using the service at any time. To close your account, write to support@prooftell.com from the email address of an owner of the organization.

We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms, that is used to abuse the service, whose payments are disputed, or where the law requires it. We will give notice where that is practicable.

When an account is closed, your right to use the service ends and your data is deleted as the data processing agreement provides. An unused balance is lost when an account is closed: if you hold paid balance you have not used, write to us before closing the account so that a refund can be considered. If we close your account without a breach on your part, we will refund your unused paid balance.

Sections 7 to 10, 13 and 14 survive termination.

12. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. For a material change we will give at least 30 days’ notice by email to the owners of your organization before it takes effect. Continued use after that date is acceptance of the new terms; if you do not agree, stop using the service before then.

13. General

These terms, the data processing agreement and the documentation are the whole agreement between us about the service, and replace anything said before. Where they conflict, a signed enterprise agreement prevails over the data processing agreement, and the data processing agreement prevails over these terms on the processing of personal data.

You may not transfer your rights under these terms without our written consent, which we will not withhold unreasonably. We may transfer ours to a company in our group or to a successor of the business.

Neither of us is liable for a failure caused by events beyond our reasonable control. If part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force. A delay in enforcing a right is not a waiver of it. No one other than you and us has rights under these terms.

We send notices to the email addresses of the owners of your organization. Send yours to support@prooftell.com, or by post to our registered office.

You confirm that neither you nor the people who use your account are subject to sanctions that would make it unlawful for us to provide the service to you.

14. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them.

15. Contact

Epic Grove Ltd, company no. 17285617, 128 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom. support@prooftell.com.