Terms of Service

Last updated: 5 August 2026

Welcome to Public Insights. These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of our platform and services, including our search tools, the Canvas network builder, the AI Assistant, pay-per-report background reports, network change monitoring, and any related API access (together, the “Services”). Please read them carefully.

By creating an account, buying a subscription, credits or a one-off report (including as a guest without an account), or otherwise using our Services, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, you must not use our Services.

Some parts of these Terms apply differently depending on whether you are a business user (using the Services in the course of a trade, business, craft or profession) or a consumer (an individual using the Services wholly or mainly outside any trade, business, craft or profession). Clause 6A sets out rights that apply only to consumers. Clauses 11.3, 11.4 and 11A apply only to business users.

1. Who We Are

Public Insights is a trading name of DF W0RK5 LTD.

  • Company number: 14696593
  • Registered office: 2 Primrose Cottages, Basingstoke Road, Riseley, Reading, England, RG7 1QH
  • Email: [email protected]

2. Our Services

Public Insights collates and makes searchable information about UK individuals, businesses and properties from publicly available and licensed sources, and provides tools to explore, monitor and analyse that information. The Services include:

  • Search — searches across the data sources described in clause 7, with results shown on a map and in lists.
  • Canvas — an interactive network-building tool for exploring connections between people, companies and addresses, including the option to save networks to your account.
  • AI Assistant — an automated investigation feature that expands a network, screens it for patterns, and produces an AI-generated analytical report. Clause 7A applies to all AI-generated output.
  • One-off reports — a pay-per-report background report on a named subject, delivered as a PDF (available with or without an account).
  • Monitoring — periodic (approximately weekly) automated checks of a saved network for new filings, planning applications and similar changes, with email alerts.
  • API access — where we have expressly granted you an API key, programmatic access to specified parts of the Services.

Our Services produce two different kinds of output, and it is important to understand the difference:

  • Source records — records retrieved from the sources in clause 7, which we reproduce as received from the source; and
  • AI-generated analysis — findings, connections, pattern indicators, summaries and reports generated by automated and AI systems, which are inferential and may be wrong. Clause 7A applies.

The Services are a research aid. We are not a credit reference agency; the Services are not a regulated “Know-Your-Customer”, anti-money-laundering or vetting determination; and nothing in the Services is legal, financial or professional advice. We do not guarantee that the Services will meet every investigative or compliance need.

3. Permitted Use

You may use our Services only in accordance with applicable laws and these Terms.

  • Self-search: Any individual may use the Services to search for information about themselves.
  • Authorised use: The Services may also be used by journalists, investigators, compliance professionals, and other legitimate users, but only for purposes of transparency, due diligence, crime prevention, national security, or other lawful investigations.

Prohibited Use

You must not use the Services to:

  • Look up individuals for personal curiosity, harassment, or stalking, or to locate a person against their wishes.
  • Build marketing lists or spam databases.
  • Present our output as establishing wrongdoing by any person. Search results and AI-generated analysis identify records and possible connections; they do not establish facts about a person's conduct.
  • Make any decision producing legal or similarly significant effects for an individual — for example refusing employment, credit, a tenancy, insurance or onboarding — solely on the basis of output from the Services (see clause 7A).
  • Unlawfully discriminate against any person.
  • Resell, sublicense, scrape, bulk-extract or systematically copy the Services or the data in them, or use them to build a competing product or dataset.
  • Circumvent usage limits, credit accounting, access controls or security measures.
  • Violate any applicable data protection, privacy, defamation, or consumer law.

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts engaged in misuse.

3A. Your Responsibilities and Warranties

If you are a business user, you warrant that:

  • for each search you run and each report you commission, you have a lawful basis under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 for obtaining and using personal data about the individuals concerned;
  • your use of the Services falls within the permitted purposes in clause 3;
  • you will comply with your own obligations as a controller of any personal data you obtain through the Services, including transparency obligations to data subjects where they apply, and any obligations arising from your use of automated processing in decision-making; and
  • you will comply with any source-specific licence restrictions we notify to you (see clauses 7 and 8).

If you are a consumer, you must use the Services only to search for information about yourself or for other lawful personal purposes permitted by clause 3, and you remain responsible for your own use of anything you obtain from the Services.

In all cases: you — not we — decide what to do with output from the Services, and you are responsible for those decisions and for verifying output before acting on it.

4. Accounts

  • You must provide accurate information when registering and keep it up to date.
  • You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your login credentials and for all activity under your account.
  • You must notify us immediately of any unauthorised access to your account.

5. Eligibility & Vetting

Access to our Services may be subject to eligibility checks or vetting. You must provide accurate and complete information during registration and throughout your subscription. We reserve the right to refuse, suspend or withdraw access at our discretion, including where we consider that use of the Services presents a legal or safety risk to any person.

6. Subscriptions, Payments & Billing

Prices and payment

Some Services require a paid subscription; others (credit packs and one-off reports) are one-time purchases. Prices are displayed at checkout in pounds sterling. The price displayed at checkout is the amount you pay. We are not registered for VAT, so no VAT is charged or shown on our prices; if we become VAT-registered we will update these Terms and our pricing display before charging VAT.

Payments are processed by our payment provider (currently Stripe). We do not hold your full card details. Subscriptions begin when your first payment succeeds.

Automatic renewal and cancellation

Subscriptions renew automatically for successive periods of the same length until cancelled. You can cancel at any time through the “Manage Subscription” billing portal in your account. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period: you keep access until then, and you are not charged again.

Price changes

We may change subscription prices. A price change will only take effect from your next renewal, and we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email before a renewal at a changed price. If you do not accept the new price, cancel before the renewal date and the change will never apply to you.

Failed payments

If a renewal payment fails, our payment provider will retry it. We may restrict access to paid features while a payment remains outstanding, and restore access when payment succeeds. If payment continues to fail, your subscription will be cancelled.

Where we have agreed invoiced payment terms with a business customer, we may charge interest on overdue sums under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 and suspend the Services until payment is made.

Refunds (business users)

For business users, subscription fees, credit packs and report fees are non-refundable except where these Terms or the law require otherwise. We do not provide refunds or credits for unused time, unused searches or credits, or unused features. If you are a consumer, clause 6A applies instead of this paragraph.

6A. If You Are a Consumer

This clause applies to you if you are a consumer: an individual using the Services wholly or mainly outside any trade, business, craft or profession. Nothing in these Terms affects your statutory rights.

Your 14-day cancellation right

  • Subscriptions and credit packs: You may cancel within 14 days of purchase without giving a reason, by emailing us or using the billing portal. Because access starts immediately, you ask us to begin supplying the service during the cancellation period; if you cancel within the 14 days, we will refund what you paid less an amount reflecting the use you have already made (for example, searches or credits used and the part of the billing period that has elapsed).
  • One-off reports: By ordering a report you ask us to prepare and deliver it immediately. If you cancel before the report has been delivered, we will refund you in full. Once the report has been delivered, the service is fully performed and the cancellation right no longer applies.

If something goes wrong

  • If we fail to deliver a report you have paid for, contact us: we will re-run it or refund you in full.
  • Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, we must perform the Services with reasonable care and skill, and any digital content we supply must be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described. If we don't meet these standards, you may be entitled to a repeat performance, a price reduction, or other statutory remedies.
  • Clause 7 and clause 7A describe limits inherent in public-records data and AI-generated analysis. They explain what the Services are; they do not take away your statutory rights.

6B. Credits and Allowances

Some features consume search credits. The credit cost of each feature is shown in the product at the point of use (for example, an electoral register search currently costs 1 credit, an AI Assistant run 10 credits, and monitoring a saved network 2 credits per month). Searches that do not use credit-consuming sources do not consume credits.

  • Monthly allowance: Your subscription includes a monthly allowance of credits (currently 20). The allowance refreshes at the start of each calendar month, not on your personal billing date.
  • Top-up packs: You can buy additional credits in packs. Top-up credits are added to your current month's balance.
  • Expiry: Credits do not roll over. Any unused credits — including unused purchased top-up credits — expire when the allowance refreshes at the start of the next calendar month.
  • No cash value: Credits have no cash value, are non-transferable, cannot be exchanged for money, and (subject to clause 6A for consumers) are not refundable.
  • On cancellation: Unused credits are forfeited when your subscription ends, subject to clause 6A if you are a consumer.
  • Failed runs: If a monitoring scan fails before completing, the month's monitoring charge is automatically re-credited. If an AI Assistant run fails before producing any report, contact support and we will restore the credits charged.

7. Data Sources & Accuracy

Our Services collate information from public and licensed sources, including: Companies House (companies, officers, persons with significant control, confirmation statements and shareholdings, insolvency and disqualified-director records, and filed documents); the UK electoral register, accessed through a licensed commercial supplier, whose data may include published telephone numbers; planning application registers; licensing registers (including houses in multiple occupation); professional registers; charity trustee records; court and tribunal records; police-published crime and incident data; Football Association participation data; the Financial Conduct Authority register; published risk, sanctions and enforcement information; and — for AI Assistant features — searches of the open web including news and regulatory sources.

Electoral register data supplied through the Services is drawn from the open (edited) register only. The open register contains only electors who have not opted out of it, so absence from our electoral results does not mean a person is not registered to vote.

Where we display a source record, we reproduce it as we received it from the source; we do not edit the content of source records. Separately from source records, the Services also generate analysis — connections, matches, pattern indicators and reports — which is inferential. Clause 7A applies to all of it.

Our Services depend on third-party sources and APIs whose availability, coverage and accuracy are outside our control. Public records can be incomplete, out of date, wrong, or about a different person with the same name. We cannot guarantee the completeness or accuracy of the underlying data, and search results may include records relating to namesakes rather than your intended subject. You must verify critical information against the original source before relying on it.

7A. AI-Generated Analysis

The AI Assistant, one-off reports' risk indicators, monitoring summaries and similar features use automated systems, including large language models, to expand networks, match and merge identities, read filed documents, search the open web, flag patterns (such as indicators associated with suspicious corporate networks or proximity to flagged entities), and write analytical reports. This clause applies to all such output (“AI Output”).

  • AI Output is machine-generated and probabilistic. It can contain errors, including false positives in identity matching (records about different people with similar names being connected or merged), missed or incomplete records, misread documents, and incorrect inferences — and errors can appear even where the output is stated plainly and confidently.
  • Connections are possibilities, not conclusions. An indicated connection (for example via a shared name, address, postcode or company) shows adjacency in the data only. It does not confirm a relationship, and proximity to a flagged entity does not mean a person or company is high-risk or has done anything wrong.
  • AI Output may be incomplete. Runs operate within processing limits and may finish on partial data; coverage of any source is not guaranteed.
  • AI Output is a research aid, not a determination. It is an initial analytical pass that requires independent human verification against the cited sources before any decision is taken or any use is made of it. Do not republish AI Output as established fact.
  • No significant decisions on AI Output alone. You must not use AI Output (or any output of the Services) as the sole basis for a decision that produces legal or similarly significant effects for an individual — including recruitment or employment decisions, credit decisions, tenancy decisions, insurance decisions, or refusing someone as a customer. You remain the decision-maker: if you use the Services in connection with any decision-making, compliance with the rules on automated decision-making (including Article 22 UK GDPR, where it applies) is your responsibility.
  • No warranty. We give no warranty as to the completeness of coverage or the accuracy of any inference in AI Output. Nothing in this clause affects a consumer's statutory rights or our obligation to perform the Services with reasonable care and skill.
  • Monitoring is periodic and automated. Monitoring checks run approximately weekly, are automated (including AI-written change summaries), and may miss, delay or mischaracterise changes. Monitoring is not a real-time alerting service.

8. Intellectual Property

We (and our licensors) own the software, platform, design, branding and presentation of the Services, and the rights (including database rights) in our compilation, aggregation, enrichment and analysis of data, including the structure and presentation of reports and AI Output.

We do not claim ownership of the underlying public records themselves. Much of the underlying data is made available by its publishers under their own licences (for example the Open Government Licence for certain public-sector data, and Crown copyright for certain register content), and those licences — not these Terms — govern the underlying records. Some sources impose their own reuse or attribution conditions; where we notify you of source-specific restrictions, you must comply with them.

We grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use search results, reports and AI Output for your own lawful purposes (for business users, your internal business purposes) in accordance with these Terms. You may not resell or redistribute the Services or systematically extract data from them (clause 3).

You retain your rights in material you create in the Services (for example the arrangement of a saved Canvas network). You grant us a licence to host, store, process and display that material as needed to provide the Services to you.

9. Privacy & Data Protection

Our processing of personal data is explained in our Privacy Policy, which also sets out the categories of service providers (sub-processors) we use and our data retention periods.

  • Our role. For personal data contained in our source databases, in search results, and in generated reports and AI Output, DF W0RK5 LTD acts as an independent controller: we decide how that data is collected, aggregated and analysed. For material you enter and save in your account (such as saved networks and search inputs), we process it in order to provide the Services to you.
  • Your role. If you are a business user, you are a separate, independent controller of the personal data you obtain from the Services and of what you do with it, including any decisions you make.
  • Data processing terms. Where we process personal data on behalf of a business customer, our Data Processing Agreement — available on request from the email address in clause 15 — is incorporated into these Terms by reference.
  • Security. We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data we hold, appropriate to the risk.
  • Breach notification. If a personal data breach affects your data, we will notify you without undue delay where the law requires it, and will notify regulators and data subjects where the law requires.
  • Data subject requests. Individuals may contact us (clause 15) about our processing of their personal data, including access and erasure requests, and we will handle those requests as required by law. If a complaint concerns what a customer has done with data obtained from the Services, we may refer the individual to that customer (who is the controller of their own use), and we may investigate and suspend accounts under clause 3. We may disclose information to regulators where required.

10. Availability

We strive to provide continuous access but do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free Services. Maintenance, updates, or third-party outages may affect availability.

11. Disclaimers & Liability

Disclaimers

Except as expressly set out in these Terms, the Services are provided “as is” and “as available”, and all implied terms, conditions and warranties — including any implied terms of satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement — are excluded to the fullest extent permitted by law. This paragraph does not affect a consumer's statutory rights (see clause 6A), which apply in full.

What we never exclude

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for:

  • death or personal injury caused by our negligence;
  • fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; or
  • any other liability which cannot be excluded or limited by law, including (for consumers) liability under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

Business users — cap and excluded losses

Subject to “What we never exclude”: if you are a business user, our total aggregate liability to you arising out of or in connection with the Services in any circumstances is limited to the fees you paid to us in the 12 months immediately before the event giving rise to the claim; and we are not liable to you for any indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of revenue, loss of business or business interruption, loss of goodwill, or loss or corruption of data.

Consumers

If you are a consumer: we are responsible for foreseeable loss or damage caused by our breach of these Terms or our failure to use reasonable care and skill. We are not responsible for unforeseeable loss, or for business losses if you use the Services for business purposes despite contracting as a consumer.

Your decisions

Output of the Services is information, not advice, and clause 7A applies to AI Output. To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for decisions you take, or actions you or others take, in reliance on output that these Terms told you to verify first.

11A. Indemnity (Business Users)

If you are a business user, you will indemnify DF W0RK5 LTD against liabilities, costs and losses (including reasonable legal costs and regulatory fines and penalties) arising from any third-party claim — including a claim by a data subject or action by a regulator — to the extent it arises from: (a) your use of the Services in breach of these Terms; (b) breach of your warranties in clause 3A; or (c) your processing or use of data obtained from the Services.

We will notify you promptly of any such claim, allow you reasonable conduct of the defence where appropriate, and take reasonable steps to mitigate. This clause does not apply to consumers.

12. Suspension, Termination & Your Data

We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these Terms or misuse the Services, if required by law, or if we reasonably consider your use creates a legal or safety risk. Where practicable we will tell you why.

You may stop using the Services at any time, and may cancel your subscription as described in clause 6. You may also ask us to close your account by contacting us (clause 15).

When your subscription or account ends:

  • your access to paid features ends (at the end of the billing period for a cancelled subscription);
  • unused credits are forfeited (clause 6B), subject to clause 6A for consumers;
  • any active network monitoring will be disabled within 30 days of your subscription ending;
  • you can download your generated reports (PDF) and export Canvas images while you still have access, and you may ask us for a copy of your saved data (saved networks, search history, reports) within 30 days of closure;
  • after closure we will delete or anonymise personal data associated with your account within the periods set out in the Privacy Policy, except where we are required or permitted to retain it (for example billing and accounting records, and records needed to establish or defend legal claims).

Clauses which by their nature should survive termination (including 3A, 7, 7A, 8, 9, 11, 11A, 14 and 16) survive.

13. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If a change is material, we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email before it takes effect. If you do not accept a material change, you may cancel before it takes effect; if you are a consumer and a material change is to your disadvantage, you may cancel and we will refund any fees you have prepaid for a period after your cancellation takes effect. Continued use of the Services after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.

14. Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Any disputes will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales. If you are a consumer, this clause does not take away any right you have to rely on mandatory consumer protections.

15. Contact Us

Questions about these Terms should be sent to:

  • 📧 [email protected]
  • 📮 DF W0RK5 LTD, 2 Primrose Cottages, Basingstoke Road, Riseley, Reading, England, RG7 1QH

16. General

  • Force majeure. We are not in breach of these Terms, and are not liable, for delay or failure to perform caused by events outside our reasonable control (including failure of third-party data sources, networks, or hosting providers). If such an event continues for more than 60 days, either party may cancel affected Services.
  • Entire agreement. These Terms (with the documents they incorporate) are the entire agreement between us regarding the Services, and each party agrees it has not relied on any statement not set out in them. Nothing in this clause limits liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation. For consumers, this clause does not exclude our responsibility for what we tell you before you buy.
  • Severability. If any provision of these Terms is found invalid or unenforceable, the remainder continues in force.
  • Waiver. A failure or delay in enforcing any provision is not a waiver of it.
  • Third-party rights. No one other than you and DF W0RK5 LTD has any right to enforce these Terms under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.
  • Assignment and subcontracting. We may assign or transfer our rights and obligations under these Terms to a successor or group company, and may subcontract our obligations (subcontracting does not relieve us of responsibility). You may not assign or transfer your rights without our written consent.
  • Notices. We will send notices to the email address on your account (or, for guest report purchases, the email you gave at checkout); you should send notices to the email address in clause 15. An emailed notice is treated as received the next business day.