Compliance Policy

1. Purpose

This Compliance Policy describes how socials.download intends to handle the legal and accountability dimensions of evidence-preservation work: the operator-attestation gate planned to precede each Pro / Studio capture, the audit trails meant to document chain of custody, the procedure for responding to lawful process and takedown requests, and the commitments we aim to publish about timelines and reporting. Most of the forensic regime below is part of the planned paid tiers and is not live for the free downloader today; see the banner above and section 2.1 for what runs now. It supplements (and does not displace) our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and DMCA Procedure.

2. Operator attestation Planned · Pro / Studio (not yet live)

Not implemented for the free downloader. The free tier has no accounts and no attestation step; this gate is planned only for paid operator accounts and will apply when those accounts ship. Nothing in this section describes a control that runs today.

When the paid tiers launch, each capture would be preceded by an explicit operator attestation that the operator has a lawful basis to access and preserve the artifact in the operator’s jurisdiction. The attestation text would be fixed and presented to the operator at submission; the act of submitting the capture would be the act of attesting.

The attestation would be recorded as part of the audit log entry for the capture. The values we intend to record are:

• The verbatim attestation text shown to the operator at submission.
• The UTC timestamp of submission.
• The operator’s authenticated session identifier.
• A SHA-256 hash binding the attestation to the specific capture (URL + platform + capture session ID).

Once implemented, liability for the accuracy of the attestation would be the operator’s. False attestations would be a material breach of the Terms and may also constitute fraud, perjury, or other offences depending on the use the capture is put to.

2.1 Live safeguards on the free downloader Live today

The free downloader streams the requested bytes through to you and retains no copy of the artifact. Because it has no accounts and no attestation, abuse is mitigated with infrastructure-level controls rather than per-capture attestations. What runs today is:

• Cloudflare Turnstile. A CAPTCHA challenge gates submissions to screen out automated abuse.
• Rate limiting. An Upstash Redis counter caps usage at roughly 3 captures per 6 hours.
• Fingerprint key. The rate limit is keyed on a hash of your IP address, user-agent, and accept-language header. We do not store these raw values as an account record; the hash exists to enforce the limit.
• Datacenter fetch. A Cloudflare Worker performs the server-side fetch of public endpoints from datacenter IP addresses.

These controls are best-efforts abuse mitigation, not a chain-of-custody or forensic-integrity mechanism. They do not produce an audit log, an attestation record, or a verification packet.

The active processors that support these safeguards are Cloudflare (Turnstile and the fetch Worker) and Upstash (the Redis rate-limit counter). They are documented in the Privacy Policy.

3. Audit-log discipline Planned · Pro / Studio (not yet live)

The free downloader keeps no audit log. The tamper-evident audit log described here is planned for the paid tiers and is not yet in production. As designed, the audit log would be a tamper-evident record of every action taken with respect to a paid capture. For each capture and each subsequent action against it, the log is intended to contain:

• The capture session ID.
• The source URL and source platform.
• The subject account handle as reported by the platform at capture time.
• The UTC capture timestamp.
• The SHA-256 hash of the captured artifact bytes.
• The verbatim attestation text and submission timestamp.
• The operator account identifier.
• The IP address of the request, retained for a limited abuse-mitigation window, then truncated.
• Every re-download, retention-window action (auto-delete, manual delete, takedown), and any access by counsel or staff under documented process.

As designed, audit-log entries would be immutable in the ordinary course. Corrections would be made by appending a new entry that references and explains the prior entry; the prior entry would not be modified or deleted. Database-administrator actions that touch the audit log would themselves be logged in a separate system-administration log retained on the same terms.

4. Operator access to the audit trail Planned · Pro / Studio (not yet live)

When the paid tiers ship, each paid operator would be able to review and export their own audit log from the account dashboard. The free downloader provides no audit log: there are no accounts, the artifact streams through, and nothing is retained as chain-of-custody documentation.

Paid operators would also be able to generate a verification packet for any specific capture: a bundle containing the artifact, the metadata sidecar, the attestation entry, and the audit-log entries that touch that capture. The verification packet is intended to be signed and timestamped so counsel or a third party can re-hash the artifact and verify the packet has not been altered. Verification packets are not available on the free downloader.

5. Lawful process: subpoenas, warrants, court orders

Lawful process is directed to the contact email at the bottom of this page. We require service in writing from a recognised legal authority or counsel of record. Our intended posture is:

• Acknowledgement: we aim to acknowledge receipt within about 1 business day, with a tracking ID, as a best-efforts target rather than a guarantee.
• Scope review: we read the request narrowly and respond only with what is plainly within scope. Overbroad, ambiguous, or improperly served requests receive a written response identifying the deficiency and (where appropriate) proposing a narrowed scope.
• Operator notification: where the request concerns a paid, account-holding operator, we aim to notify that operator unless prohibited by law, court order, or non-disclosure provisions of the request itself, so they have the opportunity to challenge the request before compliance. Free-tier use is anonymous with no contact on file, so there is no operator for us to notify.
• Substantive response: for valid, in-scope requests, we aim to respond within the time required by the request or, where none is specified, within roughly 30 days as a best-efforts target.
• Challenge: we will challenge requests we reasonably believe to be unlawful, overbroad, or improperly served. We may also intervene in proceedings where third-party rights are at stake.

We charge reasonable cost recovery for compliance with civil subpoenas as permitted by law. Compliance with criminal-process requests is provided without charge.

6. Preservation requests Planned · Pro / Studio (not yet live)

Preservation requests only become meaningful once the paid tiers retain artifacts; the free downloader retains nothing to preserve. When paid retention ships, counsel or law-enforcement may submit preservation requests via the contact email at the bottom of this page. A valid preservation request would pause the routine retention-window deletion for the specifically identified captures for an initial window of roughly 90 days, extendable on written renewal. The preservation event would itself be audit-logged, and where the request concerns a paid, account-holding operator we aim to notify that operator unless the request is accompanied by a non-disclosure provision. Anonymous free-tier use leaves no operator to notify.

7. Takedown handling

Copyright takedowns are governed by our DMCA Procedure: we review complete notices promptly, with counter-notification per § 512(g). Timing depends on the notice and the circumstances; we do not operate a monitored service level and therefore publish no guaranteed response window. The live free tier has no accounts, so there is no account to terminate.

Non-copyright takedowns (privacy, defamation, harassment, GDPR / data-protection erasure, court orders, platform-policy enforcement) are evaluated on the same best-efforts timeline. We weight requests against the public interest in the captured material, the rights asserted, and any pending lawful process. Where the paid audit log is live, every takedown action would be recorded there with its basis and timestamp.

We reserve the right to remove or restrict access to captured content at any time in response to lawful process, a credible report of abuse, breach of these Terms, or a determination by us that continued availability poses material risk to the operator, to a third party, or to the platform.

8. Operator accountability

Everyone who uses the Service is responsible for the captures they make and the use they put captured material to. On the free downloader there are no accounts, so this responsibility rests on the visitor directly. For the planned paid tiers, we intend to enforce operator responsibility through:

• The attestation gate at the point of capture for paid operator accounts, once that gate ships. It is not implemented for the free downloader today.
• The repeat-infringer policy under § 512(i): three substantiated takedowns in a rolling 12 months results in account termination.
• Suspension or termination of paid accounts for false attestations, evasion of the attestation gate, or other material breaches of the Terms.
• Cooperation with lawful process where the operator is a target of investigation or litigation, subject to the procedure in section 5.

8.1 Browser extension Live today

Our Chrome extension performs capture on the client side, inside your own browser. It uses your own session and cookies and your own residential IP address. Nothing about that capture passes through our servers, and we do not see or retain the captured bytes.

Because the extension acts as you, you are the actor and you bear responsibility for what you capture and how you use it. Your use of the extension must comply with each platform’s terms of service, with applicable law, and with the rights of any subject of the captured material.

9. Authorization scope (what does “lawful basis” mean?)

The planned operator attestation references “a lawful basis in your jurisdiction”. That phrase is deliberately broad because what counts as a lawful basis differs across jurisdictions and across roles. Even though the attestation gate is not yet live, the same lawful-basis expectation applies to anyone using the free downloader or the extension today. Examples we recognize as plainly within scope:

• You are the rights-holder of the captured content.
• The content is part of the public record (e.g., a public official’s public posts).
• The capture is journalistic work product covered by press-freedom protections.
• The capture is conducted under court-authorized discovery or a preservation order.
• The capture is conducted on behalf of an authorized client investigation by counsel or a licensed investigator.
• The capture is conducted by or for a regulated trust-and-safety, brand-protection, or anti-fraud function under documented authority.
• The capture is for academic research under your institution’s ethics review.

Examples we do not recognize and that would constitute a false attestation: stalking, harassment, doxxing, non-consensual intimate imagery, infringement for commercial exploitation, capture from accounts behind privacy controls you have not been granted access to, and any other capture without a credible lawful basis. Once the attestation gate ships it would be your representation that you fall within the former, not the latter; until then, the expectation that you fall within the former still applies to all use of the Service.

10. Data retention summary

The retention windows are documented in the Privacy Policy. The free downloader retains no artifact: the bytes stream through and no copy is kept. Where the paid tiers store artifacts, the storage backend is Cloudflare R2 with Supabase, not any AWS service. The retention model we intend to operate is:

• Free downloader: the artifact is streamed through and not retained; there is no stored copy to delete.
• Pro captures (planned): artifact retained for roughly 30 days, then permanently deleted.
• Studio captures (planned): artifact retained for roughly 90 days, then permanently deleted.
• Audit-log entries (planned): retained for the lifetime of the account plus any statutory record-keeping obligation, then deleted.
• Preservation-request captures (planned): retention-window deletion is paused for the duration of the preservation request and any documented renewal.
• Account closure (planned): account email, captures, and capture-metadata rows wiped within about 24 hours as a best-efforts target; audit-log retention continues per the bullet above.

Once the paid dashboard ships, operators would be able to request deletion of any specific capture at any time, recorded in the audit log, with the artifact unrecoverable after the deletion completes.

11. Transparency reporting Planned

Beginning with the calendar year following first paid revenue, we intend to publish an annual Transparency Report covering the prior calendar year, as a best-efforts commitment rather than a binding guarantee. The report would aggregate (without identifying any operator, subject, or capture):

• Number of DMCA takedown notices received, acted on, refused as deficient, withdrawn, and counter-notified.
• Number of non-copyright takedown / removal requests, by category and disposition.
• Number of subpoenas, search warrants, and other legal-process requests received, by jurisdiction and disposition.
• Number of preservation requests received and outstanding.
• Number of accounts terminated under the repeat-infringer policy.
• Median and 95th-percentile time-to-action for each category.

The report would be published to /legal/transparency and the URL shared with paid operators by email when each year’s report goes live.

12. Jurisdictional reminder

socials.download operates from the United States. The Terms select Georgia law and Fulton County, Georgia courts for disputes between operator and Service. None of the foregoing alters the operator’s obligation to comply with the laws of any jurisdiction in which the operator is located, in which the subject is located, or in which the captured material may be used. Operators are solely responsible for ensuring their use complies with applicable laws in their jurisdiction.

13. Contact

All correspondence (compliance questions, policy questions, DMCA notices, privacy and data-rights requests, general product questions): contact@socials.download.