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Terms of Service

The rules for using Tracehound. We have tried to write them so you can actually read them.

Effective November 11, 2026 · Tracehound

Agreement to these terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between you and Tracehound ("Tracehound", "we", "us") about your use of the Tracehound website, application and related services (the "Service"). By using the Service, including the free demo without an account, you agree to these Terms, our Acceptable Use Policy (the "AUP") and our Privacy Policy, which form part of these Terms.

If you use the Service on behalf of an organization, you agree to these Terms for that organization and confirm that you have authority to do so. In that case "you" includes the organization. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract to use the Service. You may not use the Service if we have previously closed your account for breaching these Terms or the AUP, or if you are barred from receiving services under the laws that apply to you, including sanctions laws.

What the Service does

The Service lets you enter a username, email address or phone number and checks supported public sources, at the time of your search, for accounts and public profile information associated with it. Results are streamed to you as each source responds. We do not maintain a database of people, and result data is processed in memory and not stored by us, except as described in the Privacy Policy.

Results are leads, not identity. A result means that a source reported an account under the identifier you entered. It does not establish who owns or operates that account. Usernames are shared by different people, accounts can be impersonated, and sources can be wrong, out of date or unavailable. You are responsible for verifying any result before relying on it.

Your account

The Service does not use passwords. You sign in with a one-time code sent to your email address, or with Google. Your first sign-in creates your account. You agree to provide an email address that you control and to keep your account information accurate.

Because sign-in codes are sent to your inbox, access to your email account controls access to your Tracehound account. You are responsible for keeping your email account (and your Google account, if you use it to sign in) secure, for not sharing sign-in codes, and for all activity under your account. Settings lets you see and revoke signed-in devices. Tell us promptly at support@example.com if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission.

Accounts are for one person. Do not share an account, and do not create multiple accounts to obtain extra free searches, demo searches or referral bonuses.

Permitted use

Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable right to use the Service for lawful purposes such as investigations, fraud prevention, trust and safety work, brand protection, journalism, academic and security research, and reviewing your own online presence.

You are responsible for having a lawful basis for each search, for complying with all laws that apply to you (including privacy, data protection, anti-harassment and consumer protection laws), and for how you use, store and share results.

Prohibited use

The AUP sets out what you may not do, and it is part of these Terms. In summary, you must not use the Service or its results to:

  • make or support decisions covered by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (see the next section);
  • stalk, harass, threaten, intimidate, dox or locate any person, or monitor someone without a lawful reason;
  • discriminate against anyone, or target children;
  • build, enrich or sell databases or profiles of people, or resell results;
  • access the Service by automated means other than the official API, circumvent limits, or interfere with the Service or the sources it queries;
  • commit fraud, impersonate anyone, or break any law.

Not a consumer reporting agency

Tracehound is not a consumer reporting agency as defined by the US Fair Credit Reporting Act ("FCRA"), and the Service does not provide consumer reports. Results have not been collected, verified or maintained to the standards the FCRA requires.

In plain words: you may not use the Service, or any information from it, to decide whether someone gets a job, keeps a job, rents a home, gets credit or gets insurance, or for any other purpose that would make the information a consumer report under the FCRA or similar state laws. This includes screening employees, contractors, volunteers, tenants and borrowers. If you need that kind of information, use a provider that complies with the FCRA.

Results, sources and availability

Results come from third-party sources that we do not control. Sources change how they respond, block requests, go offline or publish inaccurate information. We work to keep checks accurate and report sources that give no trustworthy answer separately, but we do not warrant that results are complete, accurate, current or attributable to any particular person, and the absence of a result does not mean an account does not exist.

We may add, change or remove sources, features and search types at any time. Coverage figures we publish are approximate and change over time.

Plans, tokens and billing

  • Tokens. One search uses one token, regardless of search type or the number of results. Each plan includes a monthly number of tokens: currently 25 on Free, 500 on Pro and 2,500 on Max, as shown on our pricing page.
  • No rollover, no overage. Unused monthly tokens expire at the end of each billing period and do not carry over. When you run out, you cannot run new searches until your allowance resets or you upgrade. We do not charge overage fees.
  • Automatic refunds of tokens. Tokens for searches that fail are returned automatically. In Deep Search (Max only), each layer of up to 3 uses one token, and tokens for layers that have nothing to follow are returned.
  • Bonus tokens earned through referrals do not expire while your account exists. Tokens of any kind have no cash value and cannot be transferred or exchanged.
  • Subscriptions. Paid plans are billed monthly in advance in US dollars and renew automatically each month until cancelled. We do not offer annual plans. Payments are processed by Stripe; by subscribing you authorize us, through Stripe, to charge your payment method for each renewal. Prices exclude taxes, which are added where required.
  • Price changes. We may change prices or allowances. We will give you at least 30 days' notice by email before a change affects your subscription, and the change will apply from your next billing period. If you do not agree, you can cancel before it takes effect.

Cancellation and refunds

You can cancel a paid plan at any time from your account settings. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period: you keep your plan and remaining tokens until then, and you will not be charged again. Your account then moves to the Free plan.

Except for the automatic token refunds described above, or where the law requires otherwise, payments are not refundable, including for partial months and unused tokens. If you believe you were charged in error, contact us at support@example.com and we will look into it.

Free plan, demo and referrals

Without an account, the demo allows 3 searches per day; the first 8 matches are shown in full and the rest are listed by site name only. The free plan and the demo are provided as they are, and we may change or limit them.

Each account has a referral link. When a person signs up through it and verifies their email address, both accounts receive 10 bonus tokens, for up to 25 rewarded referrals per account. Referrals to yourself, to accounts you control, or obtained through spam or misleading promotion do not qualify, and we may remove bonus tokens obtained that way.

API

The Pro and Max plans include access to our HTTP API (the "API"), described in the API reference. The API is part of the Service, so these Terms, the AUP and the Privacy Policy apply to everything you do with it, as they do to the app.

  • Keys are confidential. API keys are credentials for your account. Keep them secret, use them only on systems you control, and do not share them outside your organization. You are responsible for all use made with your keys until you revoke them. Revoke a key promptly in settings if you believe it has been exposed. You may have up to 5 active keys.
  • Searches and rate limits. Searches made through the API use your plan's allowance as described above. The API is rate limited, currently to 30 search requests a minute per key on Pro and 60 on Max. You must not try to get around rate limits or allowances, for example by spreading requests across accounts.
  • No resale. You may use the API for your own work and inside your own products, but you may not resell, sublicense, rent or otherwise give third parties access to the API or to your keys, and you may not use the API or its output to build a product or service that competes with Tracehound, such as an identifier lookup or people search service, or a database of results.
  • Suspension. We may suspend or revoke keys, or limit API access, if we reasonably believe they are used in breach of these Terms or the AUP, have been compromised, or put the Service, the people searched for or the sources we query at risk.
  • Same disclaimers. Results returned through the API are leads, not identity, and are provided on the same terms as results in the app, including the sections on results and availability, disclaimers and limitation of liability. We may change the API, and will give reasonable notice before a change that breaks existing integrations.

Suspension and termination

You can delete your account at any time in settings. Deleting your account cancels any subscription and permanently removes your account data as described in the Privacy Policy.

We may suspend or close your account, or restrict access to the Service, if we reasonably believe you have breached these Terms or the AUP, if your use creates risk or legal exposure for us, other users, the people you search for or the sources we query, or if we are required to by law. Where it is appropriate and lawful, we will tell you why. If we close an account for abuse, we will not refund fees already paid. If we close an account for any other reason, we will refund any prepaid fees for the unused part of the billing period.

We may stop offering the Service. If we do, we will give at least 30 days' notice to paying customers.

Opt-outs and the people you search for

Anyone may block searches for identifiers they use through our opt-out process. Searches for opted-out identifiers return no results. You agree not to attempt to circumvent an opt-out, for example by searching variations of a blocked identifier to reach the same person, or by using other accounts.

Intellectual property

The Service, including its software, design, text and the Tracehound name and logo, belongs to us or our licensors and is protected by law. These Terms do not give you any rights in it beyond the right to use the Service as described.

Information in results belongs to its respective owners and sources. Names and trademarks of third-party sites are used only to identify them; their use does not imply endorsement. Some source definitions come from the WhatsMyName project by Micah Hoffman and contributors (github.com/WebBreacher/WhatsMyName), used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license.

If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them without obligation to you. You may export results you are entitled to see for your own permitted use, but you may not resell them or use them to build a competing dataset.

Third-party services

The Service links to and queries third-party websites, and relies on third parties such as Stripe for payments and Google for optional sign-in. Your use of third-party services is governed by their own terms. We are not responsible for their content, availability or practices. Opening a link from a result takes you to a site we do not control.

Disclaimers

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Service and all results are provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy and uninterrupted or error-free operation. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain disclaimers, so some of these may not apply to you.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Tracehound and its officers, employees and suppliers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill or reputation, arising out of or related to the Service or these Terms, even if we were advised of the possibility.

Our total liability for all claims arising out of or related to the Service or these Terms is limited to the greater of (a) the amounts you paid us for the Service in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim and (b) US$100.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, such as liability for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

Indemnity

You will defend, indemnify and hold harmless Tracehound and its officers and employees from any claims, damages, losses and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your use of the Service or results in breach of these Terms, the AUP or the law, including any claim by a person you searched for.

Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. The courts located in the State of Delaware, United States have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or related to these Terms or the Service, and you and we consent to that jurisdiction.

Before starting formal proceedings, please contact us at support@example.com so we can try to resolve the issue informally. If you are a consumer living in a country that gives you the right to bring claims in your local courts or under your local law, nothing in this section takes that right away.

Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms. If a change is material, we will tell you by email or in the Service at least 30 days before it takes effect, unless the change is required by law or addresses misuse, in which case it may take effect sooner. The effective date at the top shows when the Terms last changed. If you continue to use the Service after a change takes effect, you accept the updated Terms; if you do not agree, stop using the Service and delete your account.

General

These Terms, together with the AUP and Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service. If any part is found unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them to a successor in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets. Neither party is liable for delays caused by events beyond its reasonable control.

Contact

Questions about these Terms: support@example.com, or use our contact form.