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Data Use and Licensing Terms

Effective date: 23 June 2026

These Data Use and Licensing Terms apply to business customers only.

1. Purpose

These Data Use and Licensing Terms govern the Customer's use of Hackford Data supplied through the Hackford platform, exports, APIs, reports, bespoke datasets and related services.

They form part of the Agreement between Hackford Data Ltd, trading as Hackford, and the Customer.

2. Definitions

In these Data Use and Licensing Terms:

"Affiliate" means an entity that directly or indirectly controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with a party.

"Agreement" means, as applicable, the Order, the Master Subscription Terms, these Data Use and Licensing Terms, the DPA, and any other document expressly incorporated into the Order.

"Customer", "you" or "your" means the customer entity identified in the Order.

"Hackford Data" means data, records, search results, classifications, profiles, matches, relationship data, derived data, enrichment, exports, API responses, reports and other outputs made available by or through the Services. Hackford Data includes regulatory and third-party source information made available through the Services and Hackford's proprietary enrichment of that information.

"Master Subscription Terms" means Hackford's master subscription terms forming part of the Agreement.

"Order" means an order form, online order, statement of work or other ordering document accepted by both parties that describes the purchased package, users, fees, term, renewal, entitlements and other commercial terms.

Other capitalised terms have the meanings given in the Master Subscription Terms unless the context requires otherwise.

3. Licence

Subject to the Customer paying applicable fees and complying with the Agreement, Hackford grants the Customer a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable and non-sublicensable licence to use Hackford Data for the Customer's internal business purposes during the Subscription Term or agreed project term.

The Customer's Affiliates or wider group companies may use Hackford Data only if the Order expressly permits group access. Where group access is permitted, the Customer is responsible for use of Hackford Data by those Affiliates and group companies.

This licence includes the right to use Hackford Data for:

  • regulatory and commercial market research;
  • firm and people searches;
  • market mapping and account prioritisation;
  • relevant, targeted B2B business development;
  • importing selected records into the Customer's CRM;
  • internal reporting and analysis;
  • internal scoring, prioritisation and segmentation models;
  • compliance-consultancy, advisory and professional-services work for the Customer's clients;
  • sharing limited extracts with clients where reasonably necessary for a legitimate client engagement;
  • using selected records alongside other data providers for an otherwise permitted internal purpose;
  • retaining customer-created notes, reports and aggregate analysis, subject to these terms.

4. Professional-Services and Client Use

Where the Customer is a consultant, adviser or professional-services firm, it may use Hackford Data to support work for its own clients, provided that:

  • the Customer remains responsible for its own use of Hackford Data;
  • any client extract is limited to what is reasonably necessary for the relevant engagement;
  • the client is not given general access to the Hackford platform, database, API or raw export files;
  • the client is not allowed to resell, sublicense or republish Hackford Data;
  • Hackford Data is not presented as legal, regulatory, financial or other professional advice from Hackford.

5. CRM, Internal Models and Customer Materials

The Customer may import selected records into its CRM, marketing, sales, research, compliance or client-service systems where reasonably required for a permitted use.

The Customer may use selected Hackford records in internal scoring, prioritisation, segmentation, research and client-engagement workflows. The Customer may also use selected Hackford records alongside data from another data provider, provided that the Customer does not use substantial quantities of Hackford Data, bulk exports, replicated datasets or Hackford's non-public classifications or methods to create or maintain a data product that materially substitutes for the Hackford service.

The Customer may create its own notes, tags, analysis, reports, presentations, models and client materials using Hackford Data. The Customer owns its own original materials, but does not acquire ownership of Hackford Data embedded in or used to create those materials. Any embedded Hackford Data remains subject to these terms.

6. Restrictions

The Customer must not:

  • resell, sublicense, distribute or otherwise commercialise raw Hackford Data;
  • provide any third party with general access to the platform, API, database, exports or substantial parts of Hackford Data;
  • publish substantial datasets, bulk exports or raw record-level extracts publicly;
  • use substantial quantities of Hackford Data, bulk exports, replicated datasets or Hackford's non-public classifications or methods to create or maintain a data product that materially substitutes for the Hackford service;
  • systematically extract, download or replicate Hackford Data beyond agreed export, API or usage limits;
  • scrape the platform or use unauthorised automated access;
  • share credentials, API keys or named-user accounts;
  • circumvent export limits, API restrictions, rate limits, paywalls, access controls or usage controls;
  • use Hackford Data for indiscriminate bulk marketing, harassment, nuisance communications or irrelevant outreach;
  • use Hackford Data as the sole basis for employment, credit, regulatory, disciplinary, licensing, access-to-services or other materially adverse decisions about any person or organisation;
  • imply endorsement, approval or sponsorship by the FCA, SEC, any other regulator, public authority or third-party source;
  • knowingly use inaccurate Hackford Data after receiving a correction or update from Hackford or another reliable source.

Nothing in this clause prevents the Customer from using selected Hackford records in an internal CRM, internal scoring model, permitted client engagement or alongside another data provider for an otherwise permitted purpose.

7. AI Use

The Customer must not upload bulk Hackford Data, bulk exports or replicated Hackford datasets to public or shared AI services.

The Customer must not use Hackford Data to train, fine-tune or otherwise improve a general-purpose AI model.

The Customer may use limited selected records in a secure enterprise AI service for an otherwise permitted internal purpose, provided that Hackford Data is not used for model training and is not exposed to third parties.

8. Personal Data and Direct Marketing

Business-contact data can remain personal data where an individual is identifiable, even where the data relates to that individual's professional role.

For Hackford-supplied personal data, Hackford and the Customer act as independent controllers for their respective processing. They are not joint controllers. Hackford does not act as the Customer's processor merely because the Customer accesses or exports Hackford Data.

The Customer is responsible for its own lawful basis, transparency information, direct-marketing rules, communications, security and retention. In particular, the Customer must:

  • use professional contact information only for relevant professional purposes;
  • identify itself clearly in outreach;
  • provide straightforward contact details and an easy opt-out;
  • respect objections and opt-outs;
  • maintain and screen against an appropriate suppression list;
  • distinguish between companies, corporate subscribers, individual subscribers, sole traders, partnerships and other recipient types where different direct-marketing rules apply;
  • where the Customer cannot determine whether a recipient is a corporate subscriber or an individual subscriber, apply the stricter individual-subscriber rules;
  • cooperate reasonably with Hackford on material corrections, objections, suppression requests and rights requests relating to Hackford-supplied personal data.

Privacy queries for Hackford should be sent to Daniel Robinson as Privacy Contact at dan.robinson@hackforddata.com.

9. Source and Regulator Restrictions

Where Hackford Data includes FCA Financial Services Register or related FCA Register Extract data, the Customer must not:

  • reproduce FCA logos;
  • use Hackford Data or FCA-derived data in advertising or promotion in a way that implies FCA endorsement;
  • use the data in a knowingly misleading, libellous or slanderous way;
  • make representations for or on behalf of the FCA;
  • disseminate complete or near-complete copies of the FCA Financial Services Register or a substantial subset of it.

Where Hackford expressly notifies the Customer of source restrictions applying to other regulators, public authorities, registers, public sources or third-party sources, the Customer must comply with those notified restrictions.

10. Accuracy, Freshness and Use of Data

Hackford Data is provided as an information resource. It may include official-source data, public-source data, third-party data, derived classifications, matching, enrichment and Hackford analysis. Source data may be delayed, incomplete, changed by the source, or interpreted differently depending on context.

The Customer should consider source dates, confidence indicators, caveats and context supplied with Hackford Data. Hackford Data should not be treated as legal, regulatory, financial, employment, credit or professional advice.

Where Hackford notifies the Customer of a material correction, deletion, objection or source caveat, the Customer must take reasonable steps to apply it to relevant copies, CRM records, reports and client materials under its control.

11. Confidentiality

Public-source facts are not themselves confidential merely because they are included in Hackford Data.

Non-public exports, compilations, classifications, reports, access credentials, API responses, licensed datasets, pricing, documentation, non-public platform materials and Hackford's non-public methods are Hackford Confidential Information.

The Customer must restrict access to Hackford Confidential Information to authorised users and personnel who need access for permitted purposes. The Customer remains responsible for use of Hackford Data by its users, employees, contractors, advisers, Affiliates and clients who receive permitted extracts.

12. Suspension, Termination and Post-Termination Use

Suspension, termination and general consequences of termination or expiry are governed by the Master Subscription Terms.

On expiry or termination of the relevant Order:

  • the Customer must delete bulk exports, replicated datasets and local copies of those bulk exports and replicated datasets within 30 days;
  • the Customer may retain selected records that were already in active use in a genuine customer, prospect, advisory or client relationship before termination;
  • the Customer may retain customer-created notes, reports and aggregate analysis;
  • the Customer must not use retained records for new bulk campaigns or to reconstruct a Hackford substitute.

All privacy, source, confidentiality and non-redistribution obligations in the Agreement continue to apply to retained records and retained materials containing Hackford Data.