.01
Public sources only
Public pages and public records. Nothing from behind a login, a form or a paywall.
Trust
Trust and due diligence
The answers funds and data platforms ask for before licensing data: who we are, what we deliver, where it comes from, how personal data is kept out and how the service is protected.
Company
Who you contract with
- Legal entity
- Vertex Innovation Collective Ltd.
- Governing law
- The terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Quebec and the federal laws of Canada that apply there.
- Contact
- Security, privacy and legal: support@fokals.com. Partnerships: partners@fokals.com.
- Licence
- Internal business use under the terms. Resale, redistribution, embedding in a product and investment research are licensed by separate written agreement: see data licensing.
- Questionnaires
- We complete due diligence questionnaires, and share the full methodology on request.
Data
What you receive
- Content
- Information about companies from public sources, with our labels, scores, groupings, aggregates, series, summaries and reports. The fields are described in the data dictionary.
- Delivery
- A REST API, the MCP for AI assistants, and bulk files in CSV or JSON Lines, all joined on one company identifier. See delivery.
- Refresh
- Daily and weekly, by dataset.
- Provenance
- Each packaged delivery includes a manifest naming its sources, period, versions and licence.
- Versions
- Every labelled or scored row names the version of the definitions it was written under.
Where it comes from
Public sources only, collected under published rules. The full statement is on sourcing and compliance.
.02
First-party by design
What companies publish themselves, public filings and open reference data used under its licence. Nothing from data brokers, marketplaces or social networks.
.03
An identified crawler
Every request names FokalsBot, and robots.txt is read and obeyed before every request, on every path.
.04
No MNPI
Every input is public when it is observed. Nothing comes from insiders, from companies under confidentiality or from any non-public source.
Personal data
Companies, not people
- The datasets describe companies. No profile of a person is built, and no person is followed from one company to another.
- Contact details in job descriptions are removed before anything is stored.
- People named in regulatory filings are kept as their role only, never by name: a leadership change is the company’s statement and the role concerned.
- No social network, visitor, cookie or device data is read or bought.
- The public website sets no cookies and loads no analytics, advertising or tracking scripts.
- An account holds a name, an email address, a place and a record of sign-ins. Requests to see, correct or delete them are answered within 30 days.
- Service providers process data on our instructions: hosting, database and sign-in, background processing, email delivery and card payments.
Details are in the privacy notice.
Security
How the service is protected
- In transit
- The website, the API and the MCP are served over HTTPS only, and the application’s database connections verify the server’s certificate.
- Credentials
- Passwords and API keys are stored only as hashes. Keys are issued per client, limited by minute and by day, and refused immediately once revoked.
- Database access
- Row-level security is enabled on every table, so each session reads only the rows its role allows.
- Administration
- Administrative access is by role, and every change to settings or keys is recorded with the account that made it.
- Payments
- Card details are entered on our payment processor’s PCI DSS certified page and never reach us. We receive the amount, the date and a reference.
- Backups
- The database is backed up daily, and each backup is kept for seven days.
- Abuse protection
- The free tools and the sign-in forms are limited per network, counted by a one-way keyed hash of the address, never the address itself.
- Report a vulnerability
- Write to support@fokals.com. Our security contact is also published at /.well-known/security.txt.
Change management
How the data changes
- API versions
- The version is in the path. Within a version, fields and endpoints are added, and nothing documented is renamed, removed or given a different meaning. A change that would break a client goes into a new version, and the previous one stays for at least six months after the new one is announced.
- Definitions
- Labels, intent scores, vendor scorecards, agent readiness scores, projects in job postings, company health, likely next adoptions and lookalikes are written under named versions. A breaking change is released under a new version with at least 90 days’ notice.
- Accuracy checks
- Labels are checked by hand, field by field, and every check is kept.
- Methodology
- The methodology overview is public. The full methodology, with its changelog, is shared on request.
Source documents
Read Sourcing and complianceWhat is collected and how, what never is, and how a site owner opts out.Read MethodologyCollection, coverage, cadence and versioning for every dataset, in overview.Read Data dictionaryEvery dataset and field, with its type and meaning.Read API referenceEndpoints, authentication, limits and versioning.Read FokalsBotWhat the crawler reads, how it behaves and how a site owner controls it.Read PrivacyWhat is held about the people who use the website and the product, and for how long.