Terms of Service
Last updated: September 2026
1. Acceptance
By using Retrace (the "Service") you agree to these Terms. If you do not
agree with them, please do not use the Service.
2. What the Service is
Retrace is a verification and provenance tool for images, GIFs and short
videos. It looks for the submitted image in openly published sources and returns
a report describing what was found and where. The Service is an aid to your own
judgement; it is not an identification service, a background-check service, or a
source of legal evidence.
3. Accounts
You may use the Service without an account, with reduced limits and with
reports tied to the browser you used. If you create an account, you are
responsible for keeping your credentials safe and for what is done under your
account. Give us an address that works — it is how we reach you about your
account.
4. Fair use and limits
Checks consume real computing resources, so the number available to you in a
given period is limited, and those limits may change. We may slow down, queue or
refuse requests to keep the Service available to everyone.
5. What you must not do
You agree not to use the Service:
- to stalk, harass, threaten, intimidate or "dox" anyone, or to build a
profile or dossier on a person;
- to identify, locate or monitor a private individual, or to attempt to search
for people by their faces;
- to take, or to support, any decision about a person's employment, credit,
housing, insurance, immigration status or safety;
- to break any applicable law, or to infringe the rights of anyone else;
- to work around usage limits, access controls or any other technical
restriction, or to access the Service by automated means beyond ordinary use of
a browser without our written permission;
- to disrupt the Service or to interfere with other people's use of it;
- to redistribute or resell reports in bulk, or to present them as anything
other than what they are.
Accounts used in these ways are suspended.
6. Reports are hypotheses, not verdicts
A report describes what was found in public sources at the moment of the
check. Public sources are incomplete and sometimes wrong, so a report may be
incomplete or wrong too, and the absence of a finding proves nothing. Claims are
labelled with the evidence they rest on precisely so you can weigh them. You
remain responsible for anything you publish or decide on the basis of a report,
and you agree to verify a finding through the links given before relying on it.
7. Content that belongs to others
The Service's own code, design and text belong to Archivarix. Material
appearing in a report — thumbnails, page titles, quoted fragments — belongs to
the sources they come from and is shown for identification and verification, in
the amount needed for that purpose, always alongside a link to the original. All
trademarks belong to their owners.
8. Material you submit
What you submit stays yours. You give us permission to process it for the
purpose of performing your check and to keep it for the periods set out in the
Privacy Policy. By submitting a file you confirm that you
may lawfully do so, and that submitting it does not breach anyone else's rights.
9. If a report concerns you
If you are depicted in an image that has been checked, you may ask us to take
the report down and to delete the material behind it. Write to us through the
contact page below, describing the report well enough for us to find it.
10. Rights holders and takedown
If you hold rights in material shown by the Service and believe it is used
unlawfully, send us a request that identifies the work, points to the material
on the Service precisely enough to locate it, gives your contact details, and
states that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised and that you are
entitled to act for the rights holder. We review valid requests and act on them
promptly.
11. Availability and changes
We develop the Service continuously and may add, change or withdraw features.
We do not promise uninterrupted availability, and maintenance or failures may
make the Service unavailable without notice.
12. No warranties
The Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any
kind, whether express, implied or statutory, including any implied warranty of
merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement. We do not
warrant that results are accurate, complete or current.
13. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Archivarix and the people who operate
the Service are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential
loss, nor for lost profits, data or goodwill, arising from your use of or
inability to use the Service. Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that
cannot lawfully be excluded, and consumers keep their statutory rights.
14. Indemnity
You agree to hold Archivarix harmless from claims, damages and reasonable
costs arising out of your use of the Service, your breach of these Terms, or
your infringement of anyone else's rights.
15. Suspension and termination
We may suspend or close access at any time for a breach of these Terms or
where the law requires it. You may stop using the Service whenever you wish and
ask for your account to be deleted. Provisions that by their nature should
survive termination — liability, indemnity, intellectual property — do so.
16. Governing law and disputes
Let us try to settle any dispute by talking first: write to us and we will
answer. If that fails, the dispute goes to the competent courts at the place
where Archivarix has its principal place of business, without prejudice to any
right a consumer has to bring proceedings in their own country of residence.
17. Changes to these Terms
We may revise these Terms; the current version always appears on this page
with the date it was last changed. Continuing to use the Service after a change
means you accept the revised Terms.
18. Severability and contact
If any provision here turns out to be unenforceable, the rest stays in force.
For questions about these Terms, takedown requests, or anything else, use our
contact page.
See also Privacy Policy and About.