Frequently Asked Questions

CaseLink is a public case research platform for organizing missing-person, unidentified-person, source, document, map, lead, entity, timeline, relationship, and correlation data for human review.

No. CaseLink is not law enforcement and does not make official identifications, legal findings, emergency decisions, or investigative determinations.

The mission is to connect scattered public information so humans can find, preserve, compare, and review possible case connections responsibly.

No. Emergencies, official reports, and urgent tips must go to law enforcement, emergency services, medical examiners, coroners, courts, or the appropriate agency.

A research lead is a possible connection, mention, match, location, source, or timeline signal that needs human review. It is not proof.

CaseLink can help organize information and surface possible leads. Proper authorities and qualified human reviewers must decide whether anything is useful.

News articles can contain public mentions of names, agencies, cities, counties, dates, events, court activity, missing-person cases, unidentified-person cases, and related public safety information.

No. A news mention is context only. It helps users find public references but does not prove identity, involvement, guilt, location, or a case relationship.

No. News is used as supporting public-record context for search and research. The platform remains focused on cases, sources, entities, locations, timelines, leads, and correlations.

Use news mentions to locate source material, dates, agencies, locations, names, and public context. Verify important details against primary sources when possible.

CaseLink can use national geography data to connect searches to cities, counties, states, map records, cases, sources, and public news mentions.

Search can surface broad keyword matches. Users should review context carefully before treating a result as relevant.

Public pages may be available without an account, but contact forms, lead submission, saved searches, watchlists, dashboard tools, tickets, review queues, and admin tools may require login.

Logged-in contact helps preserve the available user context, reduce spam, create ticket history, and give reviewers enough information to respond safely.

A contact ticket may retain account ID, email, role, timestamp, message, IP address, user-agent, related page, and other available context needed for support, moderation, or security.

Roles may include public user, researcher, moderator, and administrator depending on how the platform is configured.

Restricted pages may contain private leads, tickets, user data, review decisions, imports, source intelligence, admin tools, or sensitive workflow information.

Yes. Accounts may be restricted or removed for abuse, spam, harassment, unsafe submissions, unauthorized access, or guideline violations.

CaseLink supports missing-person cases, unidentified-person cases, public case records, source-linked records, lead-linked records, and related research data.

No. CaseLink can surface possible comparisons and public information for review, but official identification belongs to proper authorities.

Yes. A strong case record can connect sources, documents, people, aliases, organizations, agencies, locations, vehicles, dates, events, leads, and review notes.

Yes. Public records can be incomplete, outdated, duplicated, disputed, or incorrect. Users should verify important details with primary sources.

Yes. Sensitive, private, unsafe, unverified, or reviewer-only records may be restricted depending on policy and permissions.

The case should be updated, archived, restricted, or marked according to available public information and safety considerations.

A source is a public or submitted reference that supports case information, such as an agency page, public database entry, article, PDF, court record, archive, FOIA document, or family submission.

Sources may include missing-person databases, unidentified-person databases, sheriff departments, police departments, state agencies, federal agencies, courts, public PDFs, FOIA documents, research archives, historical archives, news articles, and submissions.

Titles, URLs, publishers, publication dates, snapshots, extracted text, and metadata help reviewers understand where information came from and whether it is reliable.

Yes. Documents and document pages can be linked to cases, sources, entities, timelines, and review workflows when supported by permissions.

No. Official agency sources usually carry more weight than reposts, summaries, or unverified submissions, but all sources still need context and review.

Reviewers should check origin, date, publisher, agency authority, URL, archive status, duplicates, missing context, and whether the source supports the claim being made.

An entity can be a person, alias, organization, agency, location, address, vehicle, phone number, email, document, case number, external identifier, or other structured item.

Entity resolution is the process of deciding whether multiple mentions may refer to the same real-world person, organization, location, or identifier.

A timeline event is a dated or approximate event connected to a case, entity, source, document, lead, or location.

A relationship graph shows connections between cases, people, organizations, locations, vehicles, documents, sources, and events.

No. Correlation highlights possible patterns for review. It does not prove causation, identity, guilt, or official linkage.

A national lead is a possible cross-case or cross-source connection surfaced from broader data, geography, entities, timelines, or sources.

CaseLink can use national geography data such as states, counties, cities, coordinates, and public locations to support search, maps, and case context.

The map can show public or approved case coordinates, approximate locations, clusters, agencies, and geographic context where available.

Exact addresses may create privacy, safety, or investigative risks. Some locations should remain approximate or restricted.

Yes. Geocoding, source reports, and public records can be inaccurate. Coordinates should be reviewed before relying on them.

Hotspots are geographic clusters or areas where multiple records may deserve review.

Travel corridors are highways, routes, rivers, rail lines, or paths that may help analyze movement, jurisdiction overlap, or clustering.

A lead is information that may be relevant to a case but has not necessarily been verified.

Not always. Leads may be private, under review, accepted, rejected, duplicated, archived, or restricted.

Authorized reviewers check relevance, source quality, safety, duplication, public visibility, and whether the lead should connect to a case or workflow.

Rejected items may be retained to preserve review history and prevent people from repeatedly submitting the same unsupported connection.

Moderators or admins may update records, manage sources, review matches, review submissions, restrict unsafe content, and document decisions according to permissions.

Do not submit harassment, threats, speculation presented as fact, private data without justification, spam, knowingly false information, or material that could endanger someone.

Yes. CaseLink may use cookies and local storage for login sessions, security, preferences, Night/Day mode, notice dismissal, saved settings, and core functionality.

The notice is designed to reappear after 28 days unless browser storage is cleared.

Some submissions, tickets, security events, or moderation actions may store IP address and user-agent information for abuse prevention and audit purposes.

Yes. Sensitive information can be hidden, restricted, or kept for internal review only.

Yes. Requests may be reviewed based on safety, accuracy, legal obligations, privacy, source context, and public interest.

No. Use emergency services or the proper authority for urgent matters.

llms.txt is a plain-text guide that helps AI systems understand the public purpose of the site without exposing internal routes or restricted workflows.

robots.txt gives crawler guidance. It should not be used as security and should not advertise sensitive internal routes.

A sitemap lists public URLs that search engines can discover. It should not list admin pages, tickets, private leads, restricted documents, or internal workflows.

AI systems may read public pages if access rules allow it, but restricted records, admin tools, tickets, private leads, and internal data should remain protected.

Some APIs may expose approved public data, while internal or administrative APIs should require authorization and may be logged or rate-limited.

Night/Day mode is a user preference stored locally so the site is easier to use in different viewing conditions.

The Data Sources page explains public records, agency information, news context, approved integrations, documents, user submissions, and family submissions.

Yes, when the platform provides an upload or submission workflow. Uploaded documents may be reviewed, restricted, preserved with metadata, or removed depending on safety, relevance, legality, and source quality.

Public news articles are used as context for search, timelines, agencies, geography, entities, and source review. A news article does not prove a case connection by itself.

Update frequency depends on the source, import workflow, monitoring rules, review queue, and platform configuration. Some sources may update automatically while others require manual review.

Yes. Corrections can be requested for wrong, outdated, duplicated, unsafe, or unsupported information. Strong requests include the affected page and a reliable supporting source.

Visibility depends on submission type, account role, review status, safety, and platform permissions. Leads, tickets, documents, and sensitive notes may be restricted to authorized reviewers.

Records may be limited because the source is incomplete, the information is unverified, the record is sensitive, exact details create risk, or the platform has restricted parts for review only.