Standing Index
Effective date: September 1, 2026 Last updated: September 1, 2026 Version 1
These terms apply to your use of standingindex.io and anything we offer through it. By using it, you agree to them. If you don’t agree, don’t use it.
1. Who can use Standing Index
You must be 18 or older.
By using Standing Index you’re confirming that you’re 18 or older and that you can enter into a binding agreement.
There are no passwords or logins yet. Your email address is what connects you to the records you file, so use one you control and can still reach later.
2. Privacy
Our Privacy Policy explains what we collect, what we publish, and what you can ask us to do about it. It’s part of these terms.
3. What Standing Index is
Standing Index collects records about how companies treat the people who deal with them — customers, employees, contractors and partners — and publishes what those records show.
We’re building. Not everything described here is live yet, and we may add, change or remove features. We’ll tell you before anything changes how your information is handled; see the Privacy Policy.
Filing records earns founding member status once you’ve filed ten. Standing Index is free to use today, and some parts of it may become paid later. If we introduce anything you’d have to pay for, we’ll set out the terms for it before you’re asked to pay anything.
4. Your records
You keep ownership of what you write. Your words are yours.
You give us permission to publish them. When you file a record, you grant Standing Index a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store it, publish it, display it, and include it in company profiles, comparisons, industry views and aggregate figures.
When you sign up, you give us permission to publish counts drawn from sign-ups — how many people, in which industries, in which places. That permission covers the counts only. We don’t publish your individual sign-up answers.
Records aren’t published yet. They’re collected now and go live when the full site launches. We’ll email you at least 14 days before that happens, so you can have any of them removed first.
That permission lasts while the record is in the index. If you ask us to delete a record, the licence for it ends, we stop publishing it, and it stops counting toward any figures we show. Copies other people made while it was public are beyond our reach.
We don’t sell your records and we don’t license individual records to other companies to republish.
We can license what we build from them. Charts, distributions, aggregate figures and comparisons drawn across many records are our own work, and we may display, syndicate or license those — including allowing others to embed them. Anything shared that way is aggregate: it doesn’t identify you and it isn’t your record on its own.
What other people see. A published record shows your handle — a short label like `@user_a3f9k` — and the record itself. Nothing else — not your email address and not your name. Your handle is the same across everything you file, so records under it can be seen as a group.
You’re responsible for what you write. By filing a record you’re confirming it describes your own experience, that you have the right to share it, and that it’s true as far as you know.
Check whether you’ve agreed not to say it. Employment contracts, severance agreements and NDAs sometimes restrict what you can say about a company you worked for or with. We don’t know what you’ve signed and we can’t advise you on it. If you’re under any agreement like that, work out where you stand before you file — the risk of breaching it falls on you, not on us.
5. What we own
Standing Index owns the site, its design, its name and branding, the software behind it, the database of records as a compilation, and the charts, figures and comparisons we produce from it. Those are ours even though the individual records inside them are yours.
Using Standing Index doesn’t give you any rights to any of that beyond using the service as intended.
6. Rules for records
A record should describe your own dealings with a company: what you were told, what happened, and whether the two matched.
Don’t name individual people. Write about the company, not about a person who works there. No names, and no descriptions specific enough to identify one person. If someone’s conduct matters to what happened, describe the role and the behaviour.
Don’t post anything you know to be false. Your opinion of a company is yours. Invented facts are not.
Don’t file a record where you have a conflict of interest. That means a company you own or hold a financial stake in, one owned or run by a family member, or a direct competitor of yours.
Having worked for a company, or contracted with one, is not a conflict — those records are exactly what this is for.
Don’t file about a company you haven’t actually dealt with.
Don’t file fake or paid records. Don’t write records at anyone’s request in exchange for anything, and don’t ask anyone to write one for you.
Don’t post personal information — contact details, addresses, or anything identifying a person who didn’t choose to be in your record. Leave your own out too; a record isn’t the place for it.
Don’t post harassment, threats, or hate speech.
Don’t spam. No promotional content, no unrelated links, no duplicate records.
Don’t post anything illegal, or anything that infringes someone else’s copyright or trademark.
7. When we take a record down
We may remove a record that breaks the rules in section 6.
We may remove a record we judge to be misleading — demonstrably untrue, or presented so as to leave a reasonable person with the wrong impression of a company. We use judgment here, in one direction: toward people reading the index getting accurate information.
We may remove content when the law requires it, including in response to valid legal process.
None of that is available to the companies in the index. They can’t pay to have a record removed, changed, hidden or added, and a company disliking a record isn’t a reason to touch it. If a company thinks a record is untrue or breaks a rule, they can tell us, and we apply the same standard we’d apply to anyone else’s report. A complaint from a company, or from a company’s lawyer, doesn’t get a different answer than the same complaint from a member.
Companies can’t currently respond publicly to records about them. That may change, and we’d update these terms first.
If we remove something you filed, we’ll tell you and name the rule it broke. You can file a corrected version, or reply and tell us why you think we’ve got it wrong — either way a person will look at it.
We don’t review every record before publishing it, and we don’t guarantee that everything we publish is accurate. Removing content is a right we hold, not a duty we owe.
8. Things you can’t do
- Interfere with, disrupt, or overload the service
- Try to access data or systems that aren’t yours, or file records under someone else’s email address
- Upload malicious code
- Scrape or bulk-collect from the service without our written permission (this may change; if we open it up we’ll say so here)
- Use the service to break the law or infringe anyone’s rights
- Impersonate anyone, or misrepresent your connection to a company
9. Losing access
You can stop using Standing Index at any time.
We may stop accepting records from you if you break these terms, and once accounts exist we may suspend or close your account. Where it’s reasonable to do so, we’ll warn you first and give you a chance to put it right. We may act without warning where content is causing harm, where the law requires it, or where someone is deliberately abusing the service.
10. If someone asks us who you are
Every record is tied to an email address. Occasionally someone — usually a company — may demand we hand it over, through a subpoena, court order or other legal process.
Where the law requires us to comply, we will. We’re not in a position to fight every request through the courts.
We’ll tell you first whenever we’re allowed to, so you have the chance to respond or get advice before anything is handed over. Sometimes a court order forbids us from telling you; where that happens, we can’t.
We don’t hand over identities on request. A company asking, complaining, or threatening isn’t legal process. If a request looks overbroad or improper, we’ll say so rather than simply complying.
11. Copyright and trademark
If you believe something on Standing Index infringes a copyright or trademark you own, email info@standingindex.io with enough detail to identify the material and your claim. We remove infringing material, and we may stop accepting records from anyone who repeatedly posts it.
If we remove something you filed because of a copyright complaint, we’ll tell you, and you can respond.
12. What we don’t promise
Standing Index is provided as is. We don’t warrant that it will be available, uninterrupted, error-free, or that anything published on it is accurate or complete.
Records are written by other people. We don’t endorse them, verify each one, or take responsibility for them.
TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, STANDING INDEX IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.
13. Limits on our liability
To the fullest extent the law allows, Standing Index isn’t liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, arising from your use of the service or from anything published on it.
To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability to you for any claim relating to these terms or the service is limited to one hundred US dollars.
Nothing here limits liability that can’t be limited by law.
14. If you cause us a problem
If someone brings a claim against us because of something you posted, because you broke these terms, or because you broke the law, you agree to cover the resulting costs, including reasonable legal fees, to the extent the law allows.
15. Governing law and where disputes go
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict of laws rules.
Any dispute arising from these terms or the service will be brought in the state or federal courts located in California, and you and Standing Index consent to those courts.
You may still bring a qualifying claim in small claims court.
If you have a problem, email us first. Most things are quicker to sort out that way.
16. Changes to these terms
We may update these terms. If we do, we’ll post the new version with its date.
Before any material change, we’ll email everyone who has given us an address at least 14 days before it takes effect. Continuing to use Standing Index after that date means you accept the new terms. If you don’t accept them, stop using the service before they take effect.
17. Everything else
These terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and Standing Index.
If part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest still applies. If we don’t enforce something immediately, we haven’t given up the right to enforce it later. You can’t transfer your rights under these terms; we may transfer ours if the business is sold or reorganised.
Sections 4 (Your records), 5 (What we own), 8 (Things you can’t do), 12 (What we don’t promise), 13 (Limits on our liability), 14 (If you cause us a problem) and 15 (Governing law and where disputes go) continue to apply after you stop using Standing Index.
18. Contact
info@standingindex.io