Acceptable Use Policy

This Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”) forms part of the Terms of Service. It applies to every user of Pharos. If you are unsure whether a use is allowed, ask us at legal@pharos.example before you run it.

1. Permitted purposes

Every investigation must have a declared purpose. Permitted purposes are:

• security assessment of infrastructure you own or are authorised to assess
• due diligence on organisations
• fraud investigation
• journalism
• legal proceedings
• another legitimate purpose, described in the free-text field

The purpose must be specific and truthful. Vague or copy-pasted purposes trigger review.

2. Prohibited uses

You must not use the Service to:

1. stalk, harass, intimidate, threaten or dox anyone, or to locate a person’s home or whereabouts
2. search for, or process data about, anyone known or likely to be under 18
3. obtain or use the contents of breached credentials — the Service only offers existence checks for your own domains
4. access content behind logins, bypass access controls, rate limits or technical restrictions of the Service or of any source
5. attack, exploit or disrupt systems — the Service collects public information and does not perform intrusive testing
6. make decisions about individuals’ eligibility for employment, credit, insurance or housing
7. discriminate against people based on special categories of data (Art. 9 GDPR)
8. monitor a private individual over time without a fresh purpose declaration
9. resell, sublicense or provide the Service or its results as a “look up anyone” service
10. break any applicable law, including data-protection, computer-misuse and anti-stalking laws

3. Person searches (coming later)

Person searches (usernames, emails, phone numbers, named individuals) are not available at launch. When introduced, they will require:

• L2 business verification and a named responsible person
• multi-factor authentication for all users
• a signed AUP addendum
• a declared legal basis for each investigation (usually legitimate interests, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR) and your own documented balancing test

People who opted out are blocked or redacted as a “restricted target”, without further explanation.

4. Monitoring and enforcement

4.1 We monitor for abuse signals, such as many unrelated individuals searched in a short time, the same person searched by different customers, high-risk patterns, vague purposes, and chargebacks.

4.2 Signals can lead to automatic review or a pause. Depending on severity we may restrict, suspend or terminate the account. Every change is logged with its reason.

4.3 Where the law requires it, we may report unlawful use to the competent authorities.

5. Reporting abuse

Report suspected misuse to abuse@pharos.example. If you believe you were searched through Pharos, see Privacy requests.