Acceptable use

Before you rely on this

Proofwire is currently operated by a private individual in Italy; VAT registration is in progress and the company details will appear here once it completes. Until then we cannot issue VAT invoices, and these documents have not yet been reviewed by a lawyer. If you are evaluating us as a supplier under a procurement process, tell us and we will say plainly where we stand rather than let you find out at contract stage.

Checking whether contact details you already hold are real and reachable: cleaning a list before you send to it, screening a signup form, deciding whether a number is worth dialling, scoring an address at checkout.

The common thread is that you have a relationship with the data, or a lawful basis for holding it, before you check it.

Discovering contact details you do not have. This service confirms whether a value you already hold is real. It is not a way to enumerate valid numbers on a range or valid mailboxes on a domain, and using it that way is a breach whether or not the rate limits happen to allow it.

Validating a list you have no right to hold. A purchased or scraped list does not become lawful by being verified. Cleaning it makes it more effective, not more legitimate.

Sending to people who have not agreed to hear from you. A valid verdict says a mailbox exists. It says nothing about consent, and we are not the ones who will be asked about that.

Calling numbers on a Do Not Call registry. We report the listing precisely so you can avoid it. Using that field to find people to call, rather than to exclude them, inverts the purpose.

Surveillance or profiling of a specific individual. Checking whether somebody's phone is switched on, repeatedly, is not list hygiene.

Reselling the raw results as a data product. Our upstream agreements do not permit it, so neither can we.

Do not attempt to bypass rate limits by rotating accounts or keys, and do not create multiple accounts to collect trial credits repeatedly. The trial exists so you can evaluate the product; each free signup spends real money with our carrier and mailbox vendors, and abusing it takes that from other people evaluating in good faith.

If your legitimate volume needs a higher limit, ask. It is a faster route than working around it, and the answer is usually yes.

We will contact you first where the situation allows it, because most breaches are a misunderstanding or a runaway script rather than intent. Where it does not allow it — an enumeration attack in progress, for instance — we will suspend the keys and then contact you.

Suspension for abuse does not void your credit balance. If we end the relationship for this reason we will refund unused credits, because keeping them would make suspending somebody profitable, and that is not an incentive we want to have.

If you believe this service is being used against you or someone else, write to abuse@proofwire.app. That mailbox is read by a person, and a report about a specific account will get a specific answer.

Privacy questions and data requests: privacy@proofwire.app
Everything else: support@proofwire.app

A person reads both. We aim to answer data requests within 30 days, which is the statutory limit, and in practice much sooner.