Docs · Concepts
Rights and acceptable use
A plain-language guide. The binding versions are the Terms of Service and the Acceptable Use Policy.
What you are responsible for
You need the right to collect and use what each source contains. Before adding one, check the site's terms and any licence for its data, and think about copyright, database rights and privacy law where you are. When you create a source you confirm this (the rights checkbox, or rights: true in the API). Keeping evidence for your own records does not give you a right to republish it.
Verified sources do the homework
Every source in the catalog shows what our review found, dated, so you can decide quickly:
| Licence basis | Public-domain government data, an open-data licence, the site's own terms, or a licensed feed. |
|---|---|
| Commercial use | Allowed, restricted or prohibited, as far as the terms say. |
| Redistribution | Whether you may republish what you collect. |
| Attribution | Whether credit is required, and the exact text when it is. |
| Terms snapshot | A hashed copy of the terms as reviewed, and when they are due for review again. |
When you monitor a Verified source, each run records the usage rights in force when it ran, so you can show what applied at the time.
How SourceFinch behaves on other people's sites
- It identifies itself as
SourceFinch, with a link to our crawler page and a contact address. - It honours robots.txt on every page it fetches. Nobody can switch that off.
- It fetches only public HTTPS addresses, never private or internal networks.
- It never signs in, and never works around paywalls, CAPTCHAs or bot challenges.
- It checks no more often than your plan's schedule allows, with small per-run budgets.
- Platforms whose terms prohibit automated access are blocked for everyone.
What it is not for
- Profiling or tracking individual people, or collecting personal data you have no lawful basis for.
- Content behind a login, a paywall or a bot challenge.
- Load that would burden a site, or attempts to evade a site's blocking.
If you run a site
You can opt out with robots.txt (user agent SourceFinch) or by emailing hello@sourcefinch.com. See our crawler page.