Methodology

How each company record is made, how severe we rate it, how sure we are of it, and how to tell us when it is wrong.

How a row is made

Each company has one record, a row in the Privacy Master workbook, grouped by the kind of business it is (its tab). A row holds the company's terms of service and privacy notice links, what the terms say about arbitration, data sharing and fees, its contacts, and a headline: the one finding a busy reader should know.

The headline comes from primary sources: the company's own terms, privacy notice, breach letters and securities filings; orders and releases from regulators; court dockets and opinions; and state breach portals. News reporting is used to find a primary source, not in place of one.

Each sentence in a headline that states a fact is recorded as a separate claim, and each claim is checked against its sources. Every source records its legal tier, its date and, where we quote it, the exact words, never more than 14 at a time.

Research drafts, including drafts prepared with an AI research assistant, enter only through an automatic validator and then a person's review, one change at a time. Every accepted change is kept in the row's change record, which the company page shows, and counted on the status page.

A row is published as checked only when a person has confirmed it against a primary source. Until then it is shown with a band saying it is not independently verified.

The severity rubric

Severity runs from 1 to 5. It is set by the documented size of what happened, not by how alarming it sounds. Amounts count whether the order was decided or settled, because the amount is a fact of the order. People counts come from the company's own notice or a regulator's filing, never from a complaint, a press estimate or a total across many companies.

Severity 4 and 5 rows need a primary source on file. A row that lacks one is held back as "blocked, needs a source" until it has one.

The five legal tiers

A regulator's order and a lawsuit's complaint are not the same kind of fact. Every source carries one of five tiers, and the strongest tier among a row's sources is shown beside its headline. The shape of the mark tells the tiers apart as well as its colour.

Adjudicated

A court or agency decided the matter after hearing both sides: a judgment, a judge's decision, an arbitration award or a litigated order. Only this tier supports "the court found" or "the agency found".

Settled with findings

A settlement whose text includes findings of fact the company agreed to without admitting them. We say "the order found" and that the company neither admitted nor denied it.

Settled

A settlement, consent order or decree with no findings. The amount and the required changes are facts; the conduct is what the settlement "resolves allegations" about, never what anyone "found".

Procedural

A step in a case, such as a court letting a claim go forward or certifying a class. At that stage the court assumes the claims are true, so it establishes nothing about what happened.

Alleged

A complaint, an announced investigation or a demand letter. We name the court, the case and its status, and say so plainly: these are claims, not findings.

A row whose sources have no tier recorded yet shows "Unassigned" and lists the kinds of source it has. We never infer a tier from the kind of source.

What "unverified" means

A row is unverified when no person has yet confirmed it against a primary source. The status page counts how many rows are in each state.

An unverified row carries the band Not independently verified. Its severity shows without colour, with hatched rungs, in lists as well as on its own page, so an unchecked row never looks as settled as a checked one.

Unverified does not mean false. The research behind the row exists and is shown with its sources; it means a person has not yet checked it. A row that says Nothing confirmed means our search found no order, judgment or breach notice naming the company. That is a statement about what we found, not a clean bill of health and not an accusation.

How to report an error

If something on a page is wrong, out of date or unfair, email corrections@termsunconditional.com. The subject line starts as "Correction: the page address"; replace "the page address" with the address of the page.

Say what is wrong and, if you can, where the right answer is written down: an order, a filing, a notice or the company's current terms. We check every report against the source. A correction changes the row, is kept in its change record with the date, and shows on the status page. Companies may write in the same way.

The follow-through kit's clock

The optional follow-through kit counts the days a company has to answer a privacy request. It does not hold a number of its own: for the state you live in and the right you used, it reads the statute row on file and takes the first day count written in that row's requirement, and an extension only when the same sentence says the time can be extended. The clock is counted from the day you sent your letter, which may be earlier than the day the company received it. A row with no day count gives no clock, and the kit says so.

Each state's law covers only some companies: those over its thresholds and not exempt. The kit quotes the threshold and the exemptions before you pay, but whether a given company is covered is not something this site decides. The kit's letters are templates, not legal advice. The District of Columbia has no comprehensive privacy statute on file, so a DC resident gets the follow-up letter only.