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, videos, audio, subtitles, transcripts, 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 Shield 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.

Separate research tools may retrieve related public reporting, preserve a social post you supply, inspect an uploaded PDF, organize public evidence into a claim packet, or rank recent story clusters for a monitoring profile. These tools answer different questions and never alter the article's reporting-evidence score.

• 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 Shield 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.
• Document extraction and OCR can misread layouts, scans, handwriting, formulas, or tables. You must confirm important passages against the original page.
• A claim-check verdict applies only to the stated claim, retained evidence, and retrieval time. It is not a label for a person, account, publisher, complete post, complete document, or future event.
• Story ranking describes configured relevance, available impact signals, reporting-source country breadth, distinct-publisher breadth, recency, and evidence readiness. Source-country breadth does not prove that an event crosses borders, and distinct domains do not prove editorial independence or separate ownership. It is not a truth ranking or a recommendation to believe, support, or act on a story.

Video analysis and AI assistance

Video Intelligence examines available captions or recognized speech, selected frames, visible text and referenced sources. Sampling may miss brief text, speech recognition may mishear words, and a short clip may omit important context. A source-trail measure describes captured references; it is not an overall truth, authenticity or creator rating. Speech rhythm and visual style are not proof of honesty or deception.

AI processing is required for new video analyses and is disclosed before submission. It can assess bounded spelling candidates from recognized speech and on-screen text and assist eligible evidence research. Original wording is retained; interpreted wording is labelled and may be wrong. A finding about an interpreted name does not prove that the speaker said that name. You can inspect the original and restore it for a new revision. Sending audio to a managed transcription provider remains a separate choice.

Other research features retain their displayed AI choices. AI may decompose a claim, suggest searches, rank semantic matches or explain stored citations. A citation resolving to a saved passage does not establish that an AI interpretation is correct. AI findings remain subject to human review and do not determine article scores or deterministic video evidence dimensions.

A separate video Outside-evidence support score reflects current, retained claim-check outcomes and can change when research finishes. It covers conclusively checked claims only, with coverage and preliminary findings disclosed. It is not a whole-video accuracy or authenticity judgment. Source Trails, captured-evidence dimensions and previously shared snapshots retain their original meaning.

Viewing an earlier saved result does not start a new AI analysis. Starting a new analysis or an explicitly disclosed reanalysis authorizes the processing described for that request. Cancellation cannot recall data already transmitted to a provider. Processing times vary with the input, available captions, queue and provider availability.

You retain any rights you hold in Content you submit. You grant Veritas Shield 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.

A public-looking video link is not a guarantee that the platform permits automated retrieval. Veritas does not bypass sign-in controls, paywalls, DRM or private-content restrictions. If you upload a permitted copy after link retrieval fails, the original link is retained as your supplied context; Veritas has not thereby verified that the file matches that link.

Saved reports are private by default. If you create a share link, you direct Veritas Shield 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.

A video share link exposes the report's captured text, findings and saved evidence checks, not your uploaded footage or frame images. You may revoke the link, and access ends when the saved video expires or is deleted. Recipients may copy the shared text before access ends; consider privacy and your rights to that content before creating a link.

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 Shield, 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 Shield 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 Shield 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 Shield right is transferred to you.

Articles, videos, recordings, 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 Shield, 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 Shield 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 or video 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 Shield 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.