We are OSINT Central. This document explain the rules that keep our marketplace running.

We call these rules our Terms of Use. They apply to osint-central.com and all the websites and apps we own or run. (And by we, we mean OSINT Central and our affiliates, which we may also refer to as us.)

These terms explain how we expect you to behave when you’re using OSINT Central – whether you’re a registered user or unregistered site visitor on our site.

Please read these rules carefully: by using our site, you’re agreeing to follow them.

Table of Contents

Definitions

Here, we explain some of the terms we use in our Terms of Use. Any other terms in italics should be defined when they’re mentioned, in the User Agreement or Terms of Service.

An affiliate is anyone or anything that in any way manages, is managed by, or shares management with us.

A deep fake is a video or image that has been changed to replace one person with another in a deliberately misleading way, without asking the person whose face has been used.

A means of direct contact is information that would let someone get in touch with you directly (or find the information to do that) so you can bypass our site. For example, phone numbers, email and physical addresses, social media accounts, and personal websites with contact information are means of direct contact.

A researcher is an individual or agency using our site to offer their services to sponsors.

Research services refer to the work OSINT researchers do on OSINT Central.

Site services are all services, applications and products – apart from researcher services – that people can access through OSINT Central.

A sponsor is someone using our site to find OSINT research services from another user.

Content is what users post to OSINT Central themselves, like comments, profiles, feedback, images, or other information. It includes anything posted as a response to questions asked by other users or OSINT Central.

1. About licenses and third party content

1.1 We let you use our site and services

We’re happy for you to access our website and services (known as the services). You’re free to have this access (or limited license) as long as you follow these terms of use and all of our other Terms of Service as they apply to you.

We’ll do our best to make sure our services are safe and working as they should, but we can’t guarantee you’ll have access continuously. In fact, we might even stop providing certain features or the services completely, and don’t have to give notice if we do.

1.2 We can stop letting you use our services

If you violate our Terms of Use or other parts of our Terms of Service, we can take away your access to OSINT Central. Officially, this is called terminating your license, and if it happens, we’ll tell you and you must stop using our services immediately.

1.3 We keep the rights to our intellectual property

Our logos and names are our trademarks and potentially registered in certain jurisdictions. Any other product or company names, logos or similar marks and symbols you see on OSINT Central may be trademarked by our partners or other users like you.

1.4 You can use OSINT Central to share your content with the world

1.4.1 You’re responsible for what you post

When you post content on (or through) our site or give us content for posting, you agree that you’re completely responsible for that content and we’re not. You also agree to only post or give us content that:

• you have the right to post
• is legal
• doesn’t violate anyone’s rights, including intellectual property rights.

You acknowledge and agree that whoever posts content is responsible for any harm caused to anyone by that content – not OSINT Central – and that you’ll compensate and defend us, our partners, employees and representatives against any costs or legal or government action we have because of your content.

1.4.2 Other people have some rights to what you post

Whenever you post content on our site, you give us and our affiliates a permanent right (called an ‘irrevocable and non-exclusive worldwide license’) to use, edit and share that content – across the world and without paying royalties. If your name, voice and image appear in content you post, we also might use those on the site or in our day-to-day business. For example, if you’re a researcher, we might share your profile with sponsors we think could be a good match.

You also give each user and site visitor the right to access and use your content through the site. They also have the right to use, copy and share your content – as long as they do it through the site, and follow both our Terms of Service and the law.

We might show ads near your content and information, without compensating you. Depending on choices you make in your profile, we might also include your name or photo when promoting one of our features.

1.4.3 We’re open to your ideas

You can send us comments and suggestions about our services and ways to improve them. If you do, you’re agreeing your ideas are free and unsolicited, and you don’t expect or ask anything in return, unless we’ve specifically asked you for your ideas and offered something in return (we like to keep our word).

You agree we’re free to use, change and share the idea as we like, without being obligated to to give you anything for it. And if you do send us an idea, you also agree that this doesn’t affect our right to use similar or related *ideas –* including those we already have or get from others.

1.5 Third parties post on OSINT Central, too

We’re not responsible for the accuracy or reliability of any content shared by other people on our site, unless they’re officially working for us when they share or post the content. Any content represents the views of the person sharing it, not OSINT Central.

Our site might also contain links or other access to third-party websites and applications. These sites and applications are owned and run by other parties, not OSINT Central. If we use a link or application that goes to a third-party website, it doesn’t mean that we endorse it and you agree that you use it without our endorsement.

1.6 You can make a copyright complaint

We’re committed to following EU copyright and related laws and need site visitors and users to follow them as well. That means you can’t use our site to store or share anything that infringes anyone’s intellectual property rights, including their rights under EU copyright law.

If you own copyrighted work and think your rights under EU copyright law have been infringed by anything on our site, you can ask us to take it down.

2. What you’re allowed to do on OSINT Central

Our site and services were made to be used for business, not for personal or consumer use. We run our marketplace to help users find each other, build working relationships, and make and receive payments for that work.

You can also use some of our services to get information we think might be interesting and useful for our site visitors and users – like our OSINT Central blog. While we do our best to make sure that this information is timely and accurate, there might sometimes be mistakes. We don’t make any guarantees about information posted on our site, so never use it as tax or legal advice. And you should always double-check the information for yourself.

3. What you’re not allowed to do on OSINT Central

3.1 Posting unacceptable content

You can’t offer, share, support or try to find anything that:

• is illegal or defamatory, including requesting research on persons in a way that violates the GDPR, or publishing personal information on individuals in a way that is not authorized by the individual (so-called doxing)
• is violent, discriminatory or harassing, either generally or towards a specific person or group (or encourages others to be), including anyone who is part of a legally protected group
• is sexually explicit or related to sex work or escort services
• is in any way related to child exploitation
• would infringe on any intellectual property rights, including copyrights
• would violate our Terms of Service, another website’s **terms of service, or any similar contract
• would go against professional or academic standards or policies
• involves purchasing or requesting a fake review or is connected in any way to making or sharing misleading content (like ‘deep fakes’ or ‘fake news’) which is intended to deceive others.

3.2 Acting in a misleading or fraudulent way

You can’t misrepresent yourself, your experience, skills or professional qualifications, or that of others. This includes:

• lying about your experience, skills or professional qualifications
• passing off any part of someone else’s profile or identity as your own
• using a profile picture that isn’t you, misrepresents your identity or is someone else
• impersonating or falsely attributing statements to any person or entity, including an OSINT Central representative or forum leader
• falsely claiming or implying you’re connected to a person or organization (including OSINT Central) – for example, you can’t say you work for a particular company when you don’t, and agencies can’t use a researcher’s **profile if they’ve stopped working together.

Similarly, you must always be honest about who’s doing the work. That means you can’t:

• allow someone else to use your account, which misleads other users or
• falsely claim one researcher will do a job when another will actually do it – including submitting a proposal on behalf of a researcher who can’t or won’t do the work.

We’re particularly invested in avoiding fraud and misrepresentations when it comes to payments. This means:

Researchers can’t fraudulently charge a sponsor in any way, including by:

• reporting time you haven’t actually worked
• reporting time worked by someone else and claiming you did the work
• demanding bribes or other payments without the intention of or without actually providing services in exchange for the payment.

Sponsors can’t engage in fraud related to payments, including by:

• posting jobs with payment terms that are objectively unreasonable or disproportionate to the scope of services requested
• demanding services without the intention of or without actually providing payment in exchange for the services.

3.3 Treating others unfairly

You can’t use OSINT Central to:

• express an unlawful preference in a job post or proposal
• unlawfully discriminate against someone
• incite or encourage violence
• post personal identifying information or other sensitive, private data about another person
• spam other users with proposals or invites. This includes posting the same job several times at once and contacting people you connected with on OSINT Central outside of OSINT Central without their permission
• make or demand bribes or payments for anything other than the work
• ask for or demand free work – you can’t ask researchers to submit work for little or no payment as part of a proposal bid or competition
• request a fee in order to submit a proposal.

3.4 Abusing our feedback system

That means you can’t:

• withhold payment or work until you’ve been given positive feedback
• swap payment (or anything of value) for feedback, including with third parties
• coerce another user by threatening negative feedback
• use the system to share unrelated views (like about politics or religion)
• offer or accept fake services to improve your feedback or rating score, which is called feedback building

3.5 Other uses that aren’t allowed

• You can’t copy, share or give away your account. You can have multiple accounts but you can’t sell, trade or give your account to anyone else without our permission.
• You can’t go around us. In particular, you can’t talk to another user or ask for or share a way to get in touch - a means of direct contact outside of OSINT Central before you’ve agreed to a research contract. This means you can’t add your contact details to a job post, your profile, communications or other content.
• You can’t promote other organizations – including advertising any other websites, products or services. You also can’t use our site to recruit researchers or sponsors to join another agency, website or company, unless you pay us a fee to do so. For more information, take a look at Section 7 of our User Agreement.
• You can’t interfere with our technology or tamper with our site or services. That means you can’t:
  • bypass any security features we’ve put in place to restrict how you use the site – you’re not allowed to try and get around restrictions on copying content
  • interfere with or compromise our systems, server security, or transmissions
  • use a robot, spider, scraper, or similar mechanisms on our site without written permission
  • copy, distribute, or otherwise use any information you found on OSINT Central, if whether directly or through third parties (like search engines), without our consent (no scraping allowed)
  • collect or use identifiable information, including account names
  • overwhelm the site with an unreasonable or large amount of information
  • introduce any malware or any other code or viruses that could harm us, our customers, or our services
  • access our services through any technology other than our interface
  • frame or link to the services without our written permission
  • use our services to build a similar service, identify or poach our users or publish any performance or benchmark analysis relating to the site
  • reverse engineer, decipher, modify, or take source code from our site that is not open source without our written permission.

4. Enforcing our terms of use

4.1 We enforce these rules

We have the right to look into any potential violations of these terms of use, and might decide to pause, change or take away any content on our site when we do.

We can’t guarantee that we’ll take action against every potential violation, but just because we don’t take action against one breach doesn’t waive our right to take action against any future breaches, whether they’re related to the first breach or not.

If we do suspect rule-breaking, we can stop you using our site at any time. If we disable or close your account, you won’t be able to use any of our services, but these things will stay in place:

• our rights to use and share your feedback
• our users’ and visitors' rights to share your content (1.4.2)
• your agreement to all the rules laid out in section 3 on this page.

4.2 Tell us if you see someone breaking these rules

If you believe anyone is breaking any of our terms of use, please let our customer service team know or report it.

If we follow up on the breach, you agree to help with our investigation and take reasonable steps to help us fix the problem.