Acceptable Use Policy

LeadCo is a research tool. It builds structured datasets from publicly visible business listings — the information a business has itself chosen to publish so that customers can find it. It is designed for lawful commercial research, and these are the uses it was built around:

• Market research and market sizing — how many businesses of a given kind operate in an area, and how that changes across regions.
• Competitor mapping — where competitors are, how densely they cluster, and where they are not.
• Territory analysis and planning — sizing and dividing sales or service territories on real geography rather than on guesswork.
• Business discovery and supplier sourcing — finding businesses of a particular type in a particular place.
• CRM enrichment and data quality work — checking and completing records you already hold.
• Dataset creation for analysis — building a structured, exportable base for your own study of a market.
• Prospect research — understanding a market before approaching it. This is one legitimate use among several, and it is subject to the marketing rules that apply to you.

The list below is not exhaustive — it illustrates the standard rather than defining its outer edge. If a use is unlawful, or would obviously be regarded as abusive by a reasonable person, it is prohibited whether or not it appears here.

• Anything unlawful. Any activity that breaks the law where you are, where the businesses are, or where the data is processed. This is the general rule and everything below is an example of it, not an exception to it.
• Fraud and deception. Impersonating a business or a person, building datasets to support fraud, phishing or social engineering, or misrepresenting who you are when you make contact.
• Harassment and stalking. Targeting an individual for harassment, intimidation or surveillance; compiling information about a private person; or building any dataset whose purpose is to make somebody feel watched or unsafe.
• Unlawful marketing and unsolicited contact. Sending marketing that breaks the rules that apply to you — spam and bulk unsolicited email, unlawful SMS, unlawful automated or unsolicited telephone calls — or contacting numbers registered on a preference or do-not-call service where the law requires you to screen against it. Consent, opt-out and record-keeping obligations are yours, and they apply to every list regardless of where it came from.
• Ignoring a request to stop. Continuing to contact a business or person after they have asked you not to, or failing to honour an objection or erasure request that you are obliged to honour.
• Intrusion and circumvention. Attempting to access any system, account or area you are not authorised to reach; defeating, disabling or working around authentication, access control or paywalls; credential stuffing, credential theft, or the use of stolen or leaked credentials.
• Attacking or overloading a service. Using the software to degrade, disrupt or overload any website, network or service, or in any denial-of-service activity. LeadCo is built to read at a measured pace, and reconfiguring your environment to hammer a third party is a breach of this policy.
• Malware and malicious security activity. Distributing malware or spyware, or using the software as any part of an attack, an intrusion campaign, or unauthorised security testing of somebody else’s systems.
• Illegally obtained or restricted data. Combining LeadCo output with data you obtained unlawfully, or processing special-category personal data — health, beliefs, political opinions, sexual orientation, biometrics and the rest — without the lawful basis that such data requires.
• Unlawful profiling and discrimination. Building profiles of individuals without a lawful basis, or using any dataset to discriminate against people on a protected characteristic, including in employment, housing, credit or insurance decisions.
• Reselling the software or the licence. Reselling, sublicensing, renting out or redistributing LeadCo or a licence key, sharing a key beyond its machine allowance, or offering the software to third parties as a service.
• Breaching a third party’s terms. Directing the software at any website, platform or service in a way that breaches your agreement with it. Whether a particular use is permitted is between you and that platform, and it is your responsibility to know.

The software runs on your computer, under your control, through a proxy account in your own name. We cannot see your searches and we do not hold your results — which means the obligations that attach to that data attach to you, not to us.

• You are the controller of what you collect. Where any of it is personal data — a sole trader’s name or direct line often is — the responsibilities of a controller under data protection law are yours: a lawful basis, transparency, proportionality, retention limits and the handling of individual rights requests.
• Marketing rules are yours. Consent, opt-out, preference-service screening and record-keeping vary by country and by channel, and they apply to you as the sender regardless of how the list was assembled.
• Third-party terms are yours. Your agreements with the platforms and services you direct the software at are between you and them.
• Deciding whether a use is lawful is yours. Nothing on this website is legal advice or a representation that any particular collection or use is permitted where you are. If it matters, take advice before you start.

We do not monitor your use of the software, and we could not: it runs on your machine and we have no visibility into it. This policy is enforced when something is brought to our attention — by a report, by a complaint, or by a legal request.

Where we conclude that a licence is being used in breach of this policy, we may suspend or terminate it under section 11 of the Terms. Where the breach is capable of being put right, we will say what is wrong and give a reasonable opportunity to fix it first, unless the breach is serious or repeated. A licence terminated for breach does not give rise to a refund — see the Refund Policy.

Reporting misuse. If you believe LeadCo is being used against you or against your service, write to thewebsitelabs@gmail.com with as much detail as you can give. We read every one of those.

This policy forms part of the Terms of Service and is updated alongside them.