Data policy

The graph describes legal entities and their establishments: registration and status, legal form, addresses, industry classification, size, identifiers, officers, shareholders and group structure, filed financial statements, filings, certifications and dated events. Business contact details are an optional layer, shown only where the law of the person’s jurisdiction allows it.

The data is compiled from official registers and public business information across 245 countries. Notices required by open data licences are on the data licences page.

The data we hold is subject to the licences under which it was obtained. We enforce them at the moment data is shown, exported or delivered, so a customer contract can never grant a right a licence does not allow.

Where a licence requires attribution, the notice appears on the data licences page and in the manifest of bulk deliveries.

• Official register facts come first and are never overwritten by less authoritative information.
• Where values disagree, the more authoritative and more recent value is shown.
• Estimates, such as revenue ranges for companies that do not file accounts, are labelled as estimates.

Official registers publish changes on their own schedule, and we reflect them as they become available. Service availability is reported on the status page.

A verification level states exactly what we checked. It is about the company’s identity, not its creditworthiness or conduct.

Paying for verification pays for the work involved. It does not buy a level: a check that fails stays failed, and levels expire when evidence goes out of date.

• Anyone can report an error with Suggest an edit on a company profile, or through the contact form.
• Companies that have claimed their profile can edit company-supplied facts directly. Edits are reviewed before publication.
• Register facts are corrected at the register. We show the register's value until it changes there, and note the dispute on the profile when evidence supports it.
• We acknowledge correction reports within two business days and decide within ten, or tell you why we need longer.

Corrections to data about you as a person are handled as privacy requests with legal deadlines; use the privacy centre.

• People can ask for their personal data to be removed or for its sale and sharing to stop, in the privacy centre.
• When we remove personal data we add a suppression entry, a keyed hash rather than the data itself, so the same data is not added again from a register or partner feed.
• Suppressions are applied everywhere the data appears: public pages, search, the workspace, the API, exports and bulk deltas, which carry a suppress operation customers must apply.
• Sole traders and one-person companies can ask for their listing to be hidden where no law requires it to be public.
• We act on court orders and valid legal requests, and publish the category of removal where the law allows.

• No home addresses of individuals, and no government ID numbers of individuals.
• Birth dates reduced to month and year, or year only, and only where the register publishes them.
• No special-category data and no inferences about ethnicity, religion or health from names or photos.
• Business contact details only where lawful in the person's jurisdiction, never on public pages, and never for people who opted out.

Customers use the data under the terms of service and the acceptable use policy: for business purposes, within their licence, applying the opt-outs and suppressions we send, and never for decisions about an individual’s eligibility for credit, employment, insurance or housing.