Terms of Use

1. Acceptance

By accessing or using CaseLink, you agree to use the platform responsibly, lawfully, and only for legitimate public-record research, preservation, review, reporting, moderation, or administrative purposes.

2. Research platform only

CaseLink organizes information and surfaces research candidates. It does not make official identifications, missing-person determinations, criminal accusations, legal conclusions, cause-of-death findings, emergency decisions, or law-enforcement findings.

3. No emergency use

Do not use CaseLink for emergency response. If there is immediate danger, an active crime, a missing person emergency, or urgent safety information, contact emergency services or the proper authority directly.

4. Accounts and permissions

Users are responsible for their accounts, submissions, messages, tickets, saved searches, watchlists, uploads, and use of research tools. Do not share accounts, bypass access controls, scrape restricted areas, or impersonate officials or other users.

5. Public data and source context

CaseLink may reference public sources including agency pages, public databases, news articles, court records, PDFs, FOIA documents, archives, and public submissions. Users must preserve source context and must not present unsupported information as verified fact.

6. Acceptable use

You may use CaseLink to search public records, preserve sources, submit leads, review relationships, compare cases, map public information, submit corrections, contact support, and support human-led research workflows.

You may not use CaseLink to harass, stalk, threaten, dox, exploit families, interfere with investigations, publish unsupported accusations, expose sensitive private data, spam, attack the platform, or misuse APIs.

7. User submissions

Users are responsible for content they submit, including leads, contact tickets, public submissions, family submissions, documents, source links, notes, and corrections. CaseLink may edit, restrict, hide, archive, reject, or remove content that is unsafe, inaccurate, unlawful, duplicative, abusive, or unsupported.

8. Matches, correlations, maps, and news mentions

Match scores, entity links, timelines, relationship graphs, map clusters, national leads, source matches, and news mentions are research signals only. They must be reviewed by humans and verified through proper channels.

9. APIs and automated access

API access, imports, source monitoring, and automated workflows may be logged, rate-limited, restricted, or disabled to protect system stability, privacy, source rights, and case safety.

10. Privacy and cookies

Use of CaseLink is also governed by the Privacy Policy. CaseLink may use cookies and local storage for authentication, security, preferences, and core functionality.

11. No warranty

CaseLink is provided as an information organization and research tool. Records may be incomplete, outdated, duplicated, disputed, or incorrect. Use the platform at your own risk and verify important information with primary sources and official records.

12. Enforcement and changes

CaseLink may restrict access, remove content, suspend accounts, update rules, and modify these terms as the platform evolves. Continued use after updates means you accept the updated terms.