Terms of Service

These Terms are an agreement between you and the independent operator of Veritas Shield. If you do not agree, do not use the service. If you use Veritas Shield for an organization, you confirm that you are authorized to accept these Terms for that organization.

“Veritas Shield,” “we,” “us,” and “our” mean the operator of veritas-shield.org and its related web app, Chrome extension, account, analysis, subscription, and email services. “You” means the person or organization using the service. “Content” includes URLs, article material, inputs, reports, images, links, feedback, and other information submitted to or produced through the service.

The Privacy Policy explains how personal information is handled and forms part of these Terms.

• You must be at least 13 years old and legally able to agree to these Terms. A higher minimum age applies if required where you live.
• You must provide accurate account information and keep your email address current.
• You are responsible for activity under your account and for protecting your password, email account, connected Google identity, and verification codes.
• You must promptly contact support if you suspect unauthorized access. Veritas may require a security check before changing sensitive account information.
• You may not sell, rent, transfer, or share an account in a way that defeats access, security, or subscription controls.

The service can retrieve or receive article material, identify major claims, connect visible sources and passages, show evidence gaps, and calculate an explainable reporting-evidence score. Standard Scan works from material the server can access. Deep Scan works from article material available in your Chrome browser after you request it.

• Results may be incomplete, delayed, unavailable, or wrong because pages change, access is limited, extraction fails, evidence is ambiguous, or automated rules have limits.
• A score describes evidence visible in the analyzed version of an article. It does not establish truth, bias, intent, publisher quality, legality, safety, or the reliability of every source.
• Veritas does not provide legal, medical, financial, investment, academic-integrity, or other professional advice.
• You are responsible for reviewing the underlying article and evidence and for independently checking information before relying on or sharing it.
• The extension does not bypass subscriptions, sign-in requirements, paywalls, robots restrictions, technical protections, or other access controls.

You retain any rights you hold in Content you submit. You grant Veritas a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide permission to receive, retrieve, copy, parse, transform, store, secure, display, and transmit that Content only as reasonably necessary to provide, maintain, protect, and improve the service and to follow your sharing instructions.

You are responsible for ensuring that you may lawfully access and submit the Content. Do not submit confidential information, personal information about another person without a lawful basis, or material that infringes intellectual-property, privacy, contractual, or other rights.

Saved reports are private by default. If you create a share link, you direct Veritas to make that report available to anyone who has the link until the link or underlying report expires. You are responsible for deciding whether the report is appropriate to share.

You must not:

• Use Veritas Shield for unlawful, fraudulent, deceptive, defamatory, harassing, or rights-infringing activity.
• Upload malware, malicious code, or content intended to compromise a device, account, network, or service.
• Probe, bypass, disable, or interfere with authentication, rate limits, compatibility checks, security controls, access restrictions, or technical protections.
• Gain unauthorized access to an account, article, publisher system, private network, or data source.
• Overload, scrape, crawl, automate, reproduce, resell, or commercially exploit the service or its reports without written permission, except where applicable law expressly permits the activity.
• Misrepresent an analysis as a determination of truth, an endorsement by Veritas, or an endorsement by a journalism organization referenced in the methodology.
• Use personal information obtained through the service for spam, surveillance, discrimination, harassment, or another purpose the person did not reasonably authorize.
• Reverse engineer or attempt to extract non-public source code, credentials, model rules, or protected system details, except to the limited extent applicable law does not allow that restriction.

We may investigate suspected abuse and may rate-limit, restrict, or suspend access when reasonably necessary to protect users, providers, third parties, or the service.

• A trial or free feature may have separate limits and may change or end with reasonable notice.
• Paid plans provide one prepaid access period and do not renew automatically. Continuing access requires a new purchase or extension.
• Payment is currently completed outside the website through Zelle. You then submit a confirmation or transaction reference for manual review. Do not submit bank credentials, account numbers, or unrelated sensitive information.
• Access begins only after the request is verified and approved. Veritas may reject a duplicate, incomplete, inaccurate, unpaid, reversed, abusive, or apparently fraudulent request.
• Promotions apply only while active and according to their displayed plan, date, value, and use limits. A promotion has no cash value.
• If a price, plan, or approval is wrong, contact support promptly. Refunds, corrections, and cancellation rights will be handled in accordance with the displayed purchase terms and applicable law; nothing in these Terms removes a non-waivable consumer right.

You agree that Veritas may send electronic messages needed to provide or protect the service, including verification codes, password and account notices, security alerts, payment or access messages, and material changes to these Terms or the Privacy Policy.

Articles, announcements, newsletters, and product updates are optional. You can change those preferences from Profile or use the unsubscribe method in the message. Unsubscribing from optional updates does not stop essential account, security, transactional, or legal notices.

Veritas Shield, its branding, software, interface, documentation, original editorial material, and analysis presentation are protected by applicable intellectual-property laws. Except for the limited right to use the service under these Terms, no Veritas right is transferred to you.

Articles, publisher names, trademarks, linked pages, browser stores, identity providers, payment networks, and other third-party services are controlled by their respective owners. Analysis, linking, or compatibility does not imply endorsement, affiliation, or ownership. Third-party terms govern your relationship with those services.

Reasonable feedback may be used without restriction or payment to improve Veritas, provided we do not publicly identify you as its source without permission.

We may add, change, limit, pause, or remove features to improve the service, respond to law or provider changes, maintain security, or manage capacity. We do not promise that every feature, publisher, browser version, or analysis method will remain available.

We may suspend or terminate access for a material or repeated violation of these Terms, security risk, non-payment, fraud, legal requirement, or conduct that threatens users or the service. When reasonable, we will provide notice and an opportunity to correct the issue.

You may stop using Veritas at any time and may request account closure through support. Provisions that by their nature should continue—including ownership, payment obligations, disclaimers, liability limits, and dispute terms—survive closure.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Veritas Shield is provided “as is” and “as available.” We disclaim implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, quiet enjoyment, and uninterrupted or error-free operation.

We do not warrant that an article can be accessed, that extracted material is complete, that a score or report is correct, that evidence is independently true, that a third-party page is safe, or that the service will meet a particular professional or legal standard.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Veritas and its operator will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive losses, or for lost profits, revenue, data, goodwill, opportunity, or decisions made using a report, arising from the service or these Terms.

Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including liability arising from fraud, willful misconduct, gross negligence where applicable, or non-waivable consumer rights.

We may update these Terms as the service or law changes. For a material change, we will provide reasonable notice through the service or by email when appropriate before the change takes effect. Continuing to use the service after the effective date means you accept the updated Terms; if you do not agree, stop using the service and request account closure.

If one provision is unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the complete general agreement for the service unless a specific written agreement says otherwise.

Applicable law governs these Terms, including any mandatory consumer protections where you live. Before starting a formal dispute, please contact support and describe the issue so there is an opportunity to resolve it informally. This request does not remove a right or deadline that cannot legally be waived.