By accessing or using Stodacom Desktop ("Service"), whether as an individual researcher, a background-check client, an organization administrator, or a candidate invited into the workforce screening workflow, you confirm that:
-
You have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms and any policies referenced in them (including our Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, and GDPR Compliance statement)
-
You are at least 18 years old, or are using the Service under a lawful invitation (for example, as a candidate in an organization's hiring workflow) with the appropriate consent captured by that organization
-
You will comply with all applicable laws and regulations in the jurisdiction(s) in which you use the Service, including any laws governing background screening, data protection, and employment decisions
If you do not agree to these Terms, you must immediately discontinue use of the Service.
2. Eligibility Requirements
Who can use our Service and under what conditions.
Age Requirement
You must be at least 18 years old to register a research, background-check, or organization account with Stodacom Desktop. By registering, you represent and warrant that you meet this requirement.
Legal Capacity
You must have the legal capacity to enter into a binding agreement under the laws of your jurisdiction, and lawful grounds to request any screening or verification you initiate through the Service.
Business & Organizational Use
If you register an organization (workforce/HR) account, you represent that you have the authority to bind that organization to these Terms. "You" and "your" will then refer to that organization, and your organization is responsible for the actions of every team member, hiring manager, or compliance reviewer it invites into its account.
3. Account Registration & Security
How to create and maintain your account securely.
Authentication Methods
Google Sign-In
Optional authentication via Google OAuth. We only receive the basic profile information (name, email, profile picture) permitted by Google's OAuth scopes.
Email, Password & PIN Fallback
Standard email and password login. You may additionally set up a 4-digit security PIN as a fallback authentication method; your PIN is stored using industry-standard cryptographic hashing, never in plain text.
-
Confidentiality
You are solely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your login credentials and PIN. Never share them with anyone.
-
Account Activity
You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your account, including actions taken by team members you invite. Notify us immediately of any unauthorized access or suspected security breach.
-
Information Accuracy
Keep your account and billing information accurate, complete, and up to date at all times.
4. Services, Billing & Payments
What the Service includes, and how each account type is billed.
Stodacom Desktop offers three distinct service tracks, each with its own billing model. The specific plan, pricing, and features available to you are shown in your account dashboard and on the relevant order or plan-selection page at the time of purchase — that in-app pricing, not this document, is the authoritative source for current fees.
Research & OSINT Screening
Subscription plans (including a free trial where offered) grant a pool of screening and export credits that refresh on your plan's term. Additional one-time top-up packs can be purchased at any time if you exhaust your quota before it refreshes.
Background Check Ordering
No subscription fee. You pre-fund a wallet balance (by bank transfer or card); each check you order is billed against that balance at checkout. An order that would exceed your balance is rejected outright — we never create a partially-paid or unpaid order.
Workforce & HR Screening Suite
Organizations subscribe to a monthly platform plan (which sets a team seat limit and available features) in addition to per-check wallet billing for screening checks run through the hiring workflow, billed to the organization's own wallet.
Continuous Monitoring
-
Annual Subscription
Both background-check clients and organizations may opt a person into continuous monitoring (ongoing periodic re-screening) at one of several tiers. This is billed as a one-time annual charge against your wallet, renewing yearly unless cancelled.
-
Renewal & Grace Period
We remind you 7 days before a monitoring subscription renews, and retry the charge daily once due. If a renewal remains unpaid after a 14-day grace period, the monitoring subscription is automatically cancelled or deactivated — the underlying employee or subscribed-person record is not deleted.
-
Volume Pricing
Customers with a high volume of active monitored subscriptions may qualify for automatic volume-based discounts, applied to future purchases and renewals; discount thresholds are shown in-app and are not retroactive.
Fees for a check that has already been processed, a monitoring period that has already begun, or a subscription billing period already in progress are non-refundable, except as required by applicable law.
Wallet top-ups are held as a prepaid balance and remain available for future orders; they are not automatically refunded on account closure. Contact us via Section 16 if you believe you were charged in error.
5. Acceptable Use Policy
How you may and may not use our Service.
Permitted Uses
Legitimate due diligence, KYC/AML, and risk-assessment research
Employment, vendor, or tenant background screening where you have a lawful basis and any legally required consent
Ongoing compliance monitoring of persons or entities you are legally permitted to monitor
Prohibited Uses
Screening a person without the consent or lawful basis required in your jurisdiction
Using screening results to make unlawfully discriminatory decisions
Stalking, harassment, or any use intended to harm a data subject
Reselling or redistributing raw screening data outside your organization without authorization
6. Prohibited Activities
Activities that are strictly forbidden on our platform.
You agree NOT to engage in any of the following prohibited activities:
-
Malware & Harmful Code
Upload viruses, malware, or harmful code
-
Reverse Engineering
Decompile, disassemble, or reverse engineer our software
-
Automated Access
Use bots, scrapers, or automated systems to access the Service
-
Unauthorized Access
Attempt to gain unauthorized access to accounts, data, or systems
-
Service Interference
Overload, spam, or disrupt our infrastructure
-
Billing Circumvention
Attempt to bypass wallet balance checks, screening quotas, or seat limits
Violation of these prohibited activities may result in immediate account suspension or termination and potential legal action.
7. Intellectual Property
Who owns what, and what you're licensed to use.
The Service — including its software, screening methodology, proprietary databases, risk-scoring models, user interface, and the Stodacom Desktop name and logo — is owned by us or our licensors and is protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. Subject to your compliance with these Terms, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the Service for your own internal business or personal purposes.
You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, lease, or create derivative works based on the Service, nor use our name, logo, or branding without prior written permission. This section does not affect your ownership of data you submit to the Service, addressed in Section 8.
8. User Content & Screening Data
Data you submit, and data our screening process generates.
"User Content" means anything you or your organization submits to the Service — search queries, subject names and identifiers, uploaded documents, candidate records, case notes, and similar information. You retain ownership of your User Content. By submitting it, you grant us a license to store, process, and use it solely to provide, maintain, and improve the Service, and you represent that:
-
You have the right to submit the data, and, where required by law, have obtained the data subject's consent before requesting a screening or check on them
-
The information you submit is accurate to the best of your knowledge
-
Your use of the resulting screening reports complies with applicable data-protection and consumer-reporting laws in your jurisdiction
Reports, risk scores, and other outputs generated by the Service from your requests belong to you for your own use, subject to the underlying source data remaining subject to any third-party rights and to our right to retain records for audit, security, and legal-compliance purposes as described in our Privacy Policy.
9. Termination
How this agreement ends, for you or for us.
Termination by You
You may stop using the Service and close your account at any time. Closing your account does not entitle you to a refund of fees already incurred under Section 4.
Termination by Us
We may suspend or terminate your access, with or without notice, if you breach these Terms, misuse the Service, fail to pay amounts owed, or if required to do so by law.
Effect of Termination
On termination, your right to access the Service ends immediately. Any remaining prepaid wallet balance, and any data we retain, are handled as described in our Privacy Policy and applicable law. Provisions of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination (including Sections 7, 8, 10, 11, and 12) will survive.
10. Disclaimers
Important limits on what we promise about screening results.
Screening results, PEP and sanctions matches, adverse media findings, entity registry data, and risk scores produced by the Service are compiled from public records, government and regulatory sources, proprietary databases, and other third-party sources. This data may be incomplete, delayed, or contain inaccuracies that originate with the underlying source, not with us. A "no match" result does not guarantee a person or entity is free of adverse history, and a "match" does not by itself confirm identity beyond available identifiers.
THE SERVICE AND ALL RESULTS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. You are solely responsible for independently verifying any result before relying on it, and for complying with any law applicable to your use of screening data to make decisions about a person — including, where applicable, laws requiring you to give notice to or obtain consent from the person screened, or to allow them to dispute inaccurate information.
11. Limitation of Liability
The cap on what either party can recover from the other.
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, STODACOM DESKTOP AND ITS OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AND AGENTS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, OR GOODWILL, ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law, including liability for fraud or gross negligence.
12. Indemnification
Your responsibility if your use of the Service creates a claim against us.
You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Stodacom Desktop and its officers, employees, and agents from any claim, damages, loss, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of: (a) your use or misuse of the Service; (b) your violation of these Terms or any applicable law, including laws governing consent, data protection, or the use of background-screening information; (c) any decision you make about a data subject based on results obtained through the Service; or (d) User Content you submit.
13. Dispute Resolution
How we aim to resolve disagreements.
If a dispute arises out of or relating to these Terms or the Service, both parties agree to first attempt to resolve it informally by contacting us at the email address in Section 16 and negotiating in good faith for at least thirty (30) days before pursuing any other remedy.
14. Governing Law
Which country's law governs this agreement.
Stodacom Desktop is operated from Kampala, Uganda. Unless your legal counsel directs otherwise, these Terms are intended to be governed by the laws of that jurisdiction, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles.
15. Changes to These Terms
How and when we update this agreement.
We may update these Terms from time to time to reflect changes to the Service, applicable law, or our business practices. When we make material changes, we will update the "Last updated" date above and, where required, notify you by email or through an in-app notice. Continued use of the Service after an update takes effect constitutes your acceptance of the revised Terms. If you do not agree to the changes, you should stop using the Service and may close your account as described in Section 9.
16. Contact Information
How to reach us with questions about these Terms.
Stodacom Desktop
For legal inquiries regarding these Terms of Service
Response time: We aim to respond to legal inquiries within 3-5 business days
Legal Agreement Status
By using Stodacom Desktop, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms of Service.