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ReclaimConsent
Methodology

How we verify sources

Every record says where it came from and how far it has been checked. Nothing in the index is presented as confirmed when it is not.

The five statuses

Each document carries one. The badge on a record is the shortest honest description of its provenance.

Verified sourceCollected directly from the company’s own published source, and re-checked since. The capture date and document hash on the record describe that collection.
Company-submittedProvided by the business itself through a claimed profile. The company vouches for it; we record who submitted it and when.
Community-submittedSent in by a member of the public and matched to a source we could reach. Useful, and marked so you know it did not come from the company.
Pending verificationIn the index, not yet confirmed against a live source. Treat it as a lead rather than a record until the badge changes.
Historical copyA version that is no longer current. Kept because what a document used to say matters when you signed it back then.

What a capture records

When a document is collected, four things are written down with it: where it was fetched from, the date and time of the fetch, a SHA-256 hash of exactly what came back, and the legal entity named inside the document. The hash is the part that makes the rest checkable — the same text always produces the same hash, so a stored record can be compared against the original without trusting us about it. Every document page shows its hash and will copy it for you.

Why the legal entity matters

The name on the sign is rarely the name on the contract. A franchise location usually operates under its own company, and it is that company the waiver names. Two branches of the same brand can be run by different operators, using different documents, in states whose law treats them differently. Records are filed by entity for that reason, and a company profile lists the entities behind its locations.

Re-checking and versions

Documents are re-fetched on a schedule, and the last checked date on every record says when that last happened. If the text has changed, the previous version is not overwritten — it is kept, marked historical, and the change between the two is recorded so you can see what moved. A version history sits on every document and on every company profile.

What verification is not

A verified badge means we are confident this is the document the company published, on the date we captured it. It is not a statement that the document is fair, lawful, or enforceable, and it is not an endorsement of the business. It also cannot tell you which version you personally signed — if that matters, compare the effective dates on the version history against the day you signed.

Corrections

Records get things wrong: a document moves, an entity changes hands, a capture catches a page mid-update. Anyone can report a problem with a record, and businesses can claim their profile and correct it directly.

What verification currently covers
Every published record was captured from the Common Crawl archive of a page the business published, then fetched once from that page and compared against the archived copy. A verified badge means those two agreed. What is not yet running is a repeating re-check: the last checked date on a record is the date of that one comparison, not of a standing schedule.