PhoneYa Terms of Use & Community Guidelines

Effective Date: August 14, 2026

Last Updated: August 14, 2026

Welcome to PhoneYa. These Terms of Use and Community Guidelines ("Terms") govern your access to and use of PhoneYa.com and any related pages, features, databases, content, tools, and services operated by PhoneYa (collectively, the "Service").

By accessing, searching, browsing, submitting information to, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1. About PhoneYa

PhoneYa is an informational and community reporting service designed to help users research telephone numbers, share experiences involving calls or messages, and identify potentially unwanted, suspicious, fraudulent, or otherwise noteworthy communications.

Information displayed through PhoneYa may originate from multiple sources, including user submissions, public records, government data, third-party sources, automated analysis, and PhoneYa's own aggregation, organization, classification, and analysis.

PhoneYa does not guarantee that information displayed through the Service is complete, current, or accurate.

The appearance of a telephone number, person, company, organization, or other entity on PhoneYa does not establish that the person or entity engaged in fraud, spam, illegal activity, or other misconduct.

Telephone numbers may be spoofed, reassigned, transferred, shared, or otherwise associated with different users over time. Users should independently verify important information before acting on it.

2. Permitted Personal Use

PhoneYa grants you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and use the Service for lawful personal and informational purposes in accordance with these Terms.

This permission does not include the right to systematically collect, reproduce, redistribute, commercialize, or create a database from information obtained through PhoneYa.

3. Automated Access, Scraping, and Data Extraction

Except where expressly authorized in writing by PhoneYa, you may not access or use the Service through automated means for the purpose of collecting, extracting, copying, monitoring, reproducing, or acquiring PhoneYa content or data.

Prohibited activities include, without limitation:

scraping, crawling, spidering, harvesting, or data mining;

automated querying of telephone numbers;

sequential or algorithmic querying designed to enumerate telephone numbers or records;

bulk downloading or extraction;

copying or reconstructing all or a substantial portion of the PhoneYa database;

using bots, scripts, headless browsers, automated agents, browser automation, or similar technologies to collect PhoneYa data;

circumventing rate limits, CAPTCHAs, bot-detection systems, access restrictions, crawler directives, or other technical measures;

rotating IP addresses, proxies, accounts, devices, user agents, or other identifiers for the purpose of avoiding access restrictions;

accessing undocumented endpoints, internal APIs, feeds, or other interfaces not intentionally made available for that use; or

directing, assisting, encouraging, or enabling another person or system to engage in prohibited automated access.

Ordinary indexing by general-purpose search engines that PhoneYa has not blocked through its technical controls or crawler directives is permitted solely for the purpose of discovering, indexing, and displaying PhoneYa pages in ordinary search-engine results.

Permission granted to a search-engine crawler does not constitute permission for any other automated collection or use of PhoneYa data.

PhoneYa may modify or revoke automated-access permissions at any time.

4. Competitive and Commercial Use

Unless PhoneYa provides prior written authorization, you may not use information obtained from the Service to create, operate, populate, improve, supplement, or support:

a reverse telephone lookup service;

caller-identification software or services;

a spam, scam, fraud, or telephone-reputation database;

a people-search or data-broker service;

a competing website, application, database, API, browser extension, software product, or information service;

a commercially distributed dataset; or

any substantially similar product or service.

You may not sell, sublicense, redistribute, syndicate, publish, commercially exploit, or provide bulk access to information collected from PhoneYa.

You may not use PhoneYa as a substitute data source for information that you would otherwise need to collect, license, purchase, or independently develop for a commercial product or service.

Organizations interested in legitimate commercial access, research access, data licensing, or API access may contact PhoneYa to request written authorization.

5. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Unless expressly authorized in writing by PhoneYa, PhoneYa content may not be systematically collected or used to:

train, fine-tune, evaluate, benchmark, or improve an artificial intelligence or machine-learning model;

create embeddings or vector databases;

populate retrieval-augmented generation systems;

create synthetic datasets derived from PhoneYa;

provide grounding data for an AI product or service; or

develop datasets intended for artificial intelligence or machine-learning applications.

This restriction does not prohibit an individual user from using generally available AI tools to assist with their own personal interpretation of information they lawfully viewed on PhoneYa.

6. PhoneYa Content and Database Rights

PhoneYa does not claim ownership of individual facts, telephone numbers, government records, public-domain material, or third-party public information merely because such information appears through the Service.

However, as between you and PhoneYa, PhoneYa retains all rights it may have in its original and proprietary materials, including its:

original written content;

editorial descriptions and annotations;

scam and call classifications;

proprietary labels and categorizations;

summaries and analyses;

database organization;

selection, coordination, and arrangement of information;

aggregation and presentation of information;

scoring and ranking systems;

software and source code;

website design and user interface;

graphics;

trademarks;

branding; and

other protectable elements of the Service.

Nothing in these Terms transfers any PhoneYa intellectual-property rights to you.

7. User Reports, Comments, Replies, and Other Submissions

PhoneYa allows users to submit reports, comments, replies, descriptions, classifications, corrections, and other information ("User Content").

You remain responsible for User Content you submit.

By submitting User Content, you represent that you have the right to provide it and that your submission does not knowingly contain materially false information, unlawfully disclose confidential information, infringe another person's rights, or otherwise violate applicable law or these Terms.

You grant PhoneYa a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, display, publish, distribute, moderate, edit, format, analyze, summarize, categorize, aggregate, and otherwise use your User Content in connection with operating, improving, promoting, protecting, and developing PhoneYa and related services.

This license includes the right to create aggregated information, classifications, summaries, statistics, analyses, and other derivative materials based on User Content.

PhoneYa may remove, edit, decline to publish, restrict, categorize, or otherwise moderate User Content at its discretion.

8. Community Guidelines

PhoneYa is intended to be a useful community resource for sharing information about telephone calls and messages.

Reports and replies should help other users understand who may be contacting them, what occurred during the interaction, and whether the communication may be unwanted, suspicious, misleading, fraudulent, legitimate, or otherwise noteworthy.

By submitting User Content, you agree to follow these Community Guidelines.

Be Truthful and Relevant

Submissions should reflect your genuine experience or information you have a reasonable basis to believe is accurate.

Do not:

fabricate calls, messages, conversations, identities, or events;

knowingly submit false or materially misleading information;

report a number solely to damage a person or business;

coordinate submissions intended to artificially affect a number's reputation or report count;

repeatedly submit substantially identical reports; or

misrepresent speculation, assumptions, or rumors as established facts.

When you are uncertain about something, describe it as an opinion, impression, or suspicion rather than stating it as an established fact.

For example, saying "The caller claimed to be from my bank, but I suspected it was a scam" is more useful than asserting that a particular person or company committed fraud when you cannot verify that conclusion.

Describe the Call, Not the Person

PhoneYa is intended primarily to document telephone activity.

Useful reports may include:

what the caller or sender said;

what organization they claimed to represent;

whether the call was automated or prerecorded;

whether repeated calls were received;

whether the caller requested money, passwords, verification codes, account information, or other sensitive information;

whether a message contained suspicious links;

whether the communication appeared to be telemarketing, debt collection, political outreach, a survey, a legitimate business call, or another type of communication; and

other details that could help another user recognize or evaluate a similar call.

Focus on what happened rather than attacking the person you believe was responsible.

No Harassment, Threats, or Abuse

Do not use PhoneYa to harass, threaten, intimidate, bully, stalk, or encourage harassment of another person.

Disagreement is permitted. Personal attacks, threats of violence, encouragement of retaliation, and targeted abusive behavior are not.

Replies should address the information being discussed rather than attack another PhoneYa user.

Protect Personal Information

Do not post sensitive personal information about another person.

This includes information such as:

Social Security numbers;

financial account or payment-card information;

passwords or authentication codes;

private email addresses;

private residential addresses;

medical information;

government identification numbers; or

other sensitive information that could reasonably expose someone to identity theft, harassment, or physical harm.

A telephone number that is already the subject of a PhoneYa page may naturally be discussed on that page.

Publicly available business information may also be discussed when relevant to identifying or understanding a caller.

No Impersonation

Do not impersonate another person, business, government agency, PhoneYa employee, or other organization.

Do not falsely claim to represent the owner or authorized user of a telephone number.

Businesses and Number Owners May Respond

Businesses, organizations, and individuals associated with a telephone number may participate in discussions and provide corrections, explanations, or additional context.

Such responses must follow the same Community Guidelines as every other submission.

PhoneYa may identify or distinguish verified representatives where verification features are available. The absence of a verification designation does not necessarily mean a response is illegitimate.

No Spam or Promotional Content

Do not use reports or replies primarily to advertise products, services, websites, referral programs, telephone numbers, or other commercial offerings.

Relevant identification of a business associated with a call is permitted.

No Automated or AI-Generated Submission Campaigns

You may not use bots, scripts, automated systems, artificial intelligence, or other tools to generate or submit reports or replies at scale without PhoneYa's prior written authorization.

Using a writing or AI tool to help an individual user improve the wording of a genuine submission is permitted, provided the underlying information accurately reflects the user's experience.

One Experience, One Genuine Report

PhoneYa may combine, remove, de-emphasize, or otherwise moderate duplicate, repetitive, coordinated, or apparently manipulated submissions.

Do not create multiple reports, identities, or accounts for the purpose of making an opinion appear more widely held than it actually is.

Replies Should Add Something Useful

Replies are intended to provide additional context, answer questions, corroborate or dispute information, or otherwise improve the usefulness of a PhoneYa discussion.

Good-faith disagreement is welcome.

If you dispute another user's report, explain why. Do not attack the reporter or attempt to intimidate them into removing their submission.

9. False Reports and Database Manipulation

You may not knowingly submit false, fabricated, misleading, malicious, or fraudulent information.

You may not attempt to manipulate PhoneYa by:

submitting coordinated or duplicate reports;

artificially increasing report counts;

posting fabricated reviews or comments;

falsely identifying a telephone number as belonging to another person or organization;

attempting to improve or damage a telephone number's reputation through coordinated submissions;

submitting content for compensation without disclosure;

using automated systems to generate reports or comments without authorization; or

otherwise attempting to poison, distort, manipulate, or interfere with PhoneYa's database.

PhoneYa may use automated and manual systems to identify and address suspected manipulation.

10. Moderation

Every report may be screened before publication.

PhoneYa may use automated systems, human review, or both to detect spam, abuse, manipulation, personal information, potentially unlawful content, or violations of these Terms.

PhoneYa may, in its discretion:

approve or reject submissions;

edit formatting or remove sensitive information;

remove or restrict content;

limit the visibility of content;

categorize or reclassify content;

close or restrict discussions;

identify suspected manipulation or coordinated activity;

restrict users or technical sources associated with abuse; or

preserve information relating to suspected misuse when reasonably necessary to protect the Service or its users.

Publication of a report or reply does not mean PhoneYa has independently verified or endorsed it.

PhoneYa is not obligated to publish every submission.

11. No Verification or Guarantee of User Reports

User Content represents statements made by individual users and does not necessarily represent the views or conclusions of PhoneYa.

PhoneYa does not independently verify every report, comment, or reply.

A report that a caller claimed to represent a bank, government agency, business, charity, law-enforcement agency, or other organization does not mean that the telephone number actually belongs to that organization.

Telephone numbers may be spoofed, reassigned, transferred, shared, or otherwise associated with different users over time.

Users should independently verify important information.

12. Reporting Content, Corrections, and Disputes

If you believe a report, reply, telephone-number listing, or other content on PhoneYa violates these Terms, contains inaccurate information, infringes your rights, or requires correction, please contact us using the current contact information provided on PhoneYa.com/about.

When possible, include:

the telephone number or PhoneYa page involved;

the specific content at issue;

the reason you believe it should be corrected, removed, or reviewed; and

any relevant information that may help PhoneYa evaluate the request.

PhoneYa may request additional information when reasonably necessary to evaluate a correction, ownership, impersonation, privacy, intellectual-property, or legal request.

Submitting a request does not guarantee removal or modification.

PhoneYa may consider available evidence, the source and nature of the information, user reports, public-interest considerations, applicable law, and other relevant factors when evaluating a request.

13. Safety Information

PhoneYa may display warnings, educational information, scam-prevention guidance, risk indicators, or other safety-related information.

Such information is provided for general informational purposes and should not be treated as professional legal, financial, medical, law-enforcement, cybersecurity, or other professional advice.

If a caller claims to represent your bank, credit-card company, government agency, or another sensitive organization, consider ending the call and independently contacting the organization using a trusted telephone number or official communication channel.

14. Third-Party Services and Affiliate Relationships

PhoneYa may provide links to third-party websites, databases, products, or services.

Some links may be affiliate or referral links. PhoneYa may receive compensation when users click certain links, purchase services, or otherwise interact with third-party providers.

Third-party services are operated independently from PhoneYa. PhoneYa does not control and is not responsible for their content, availability, privacy practices, accuracy, pricing, products, or services.

The inclusion of a third-party link does not necessarily constitute an endorsement or guarantee.

PhoneYa may provide additional disclosures regarding compensated or affiliate relationships where appropriate or required by law.

15. Prohibited Conduct

In addition to the restrictions elsewhere in these Terms, you may not:

use PhoneYa for unlawful purposes;

interfere with the operation or security of the Service;

attempt to gain unauthorized access to PhoneYa systems;

probe or test vulnerabilities without written authorization;

introduce malware or malicious code;

overwhelm or intentionally degrade the Service;

impersonate PhoneYa or its personnel;

misrepresent an affiliation with PhoneYa;

frame, mirror, clone, or reproduce the Service in a misleading manner;

remove copyright, trademark, attribution, or proprietary notices;

collect information about PhoneYa users except as expressly permitted;

attempt to identify anonymous contributors through technical means;

use PhoneYa to harass, stalk, threaten, or unlawfully investigate another person; or

facilitate another person's violation of these Terms.

16. Technical Enforcement

PhoneYa reserves the right to protect the Service, its users, and its data through technical and administrative measures.

These measures may include rate limiting, request throttling, bot detection, CAPTCHAs, IP or network blocking, device or browser analysis, access logging, traffic-pattern analysis, crawler directives, and other reasonable security and anti-abuse technologies.

PhoneYa may restrict or terminate access where it reasonably believes that activity violates these Terms, threatens the Service, or involves unauthorized automated collection.

Attempts to circumvent such restrictions may constitute an additional violation of these Terms.

17. Third-Party and Government Information

PhoneYa may incorporate, organize, analyze, display, or reference information originating from governmental agencies, public databases, telecommunications sources, or other third parties.

PhoneYa does not claim copyright ownership over third-party material or public-domain information where no such ownership exists.

PhoneYa's rights in its own Service, database organization, annotations, classifications, analyses, and other original material are separate from whatever rights may apply to underlying source information.

18. Intellectual Property Complaints

If you believe content appearing on PhoneYa infringes intellectual-property rights that you own or are authorized to enforce, please contact PhoneYa using the current contact information at PhoneYa.com/about.

Please provide sufficient information to identify the material and explain the basis of your claim.

PhoneYa may remove or restrict access to material while evaluating a complaint.

19. No Warranty

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE."

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, PHONEYA DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, RELIABILITY, AND AVAILABILITY.

PHONEYA DOES NOT WARRANT THAT INFORMATION AVAILABLE THROUGH THE SERVICE IS ACCURATE, COMPLETE, CURRENT, OR ERROR-FREE.

PHONEYA DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL ALWAYS BE AVAILABLE, SECURE, OR FREE FROM TECHNICAL ERRORS.

20. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, PHONEYA AND ITS OWNERS, OPERATORS, AFFILIATES, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, CONTRACTORS, AND AGENTS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES ARISING FROM OR RELATING TO YOUR USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SERVICE.

PHONEYA IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ACTIONS YOU TAKE OR REFRAIN FROM TAKING BASED ON INFORMATION OBTAINED THROUGH THE SERVICE.

PHONEYA IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR LOSSES RESULTING FROM CALLS, MESSAGES, SCAMS, FRAUD, THIRD-PARTY CONDUCT, USER CONTENT, OR THIRD-PARTY SERVICES DISCUSSED OR LINKED THROUGH THE SERVICE.

Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that cannot legally be excluded under applicable law.

21. Indemnification

To the extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless PhoneYa and its owners, operators, affiliates, officers, employees, contractors, and agents from claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and reasonable expenses arising from your User Content, your misuse of the Service, or your violation of these Terms or applicable law.

22. Suspension and Termination

PhoneYa may restrict, suspend, or terminate access to the Service if PhoneYa reasonably believes that a user has violated these Terms, abused the Service, threatened its operation or security, engaged in unauthorized collection or use of PhoneYa data, or attempted to manipulate PhoneYa content or systems.

PhoneYa may take reasonable measures to prevent a restricted party from circumventing those restrictions.

Provisions that by their nature should survive termination, including provisions concerning intellectual property, data-use restrictions, User Content licenses, disclaimers, limitations of liability, and dispute provisions, will survive termination to the extent permitted by law.

23. Changes to the Service or Terms

PhoneYa may modify the Service or these Terms from time to time.

When material changes are made, PhoneYa may update the "Last Updated" date and provide additional notice where appropriate or required by law.

Continued use of the Service after revised Terms become effective constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms to the extent permitted by applicable law.

24. Governing Law and Venue

These Terms and disputes relating to the Service will be governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict-of-law principles, except where applicable law requires otherwise.

Any dispute not subject to another legally required forum shall be brought in a court of competent jurisdiction located in San Diego County, California, and you consent to jurisdiction and venue there, except where applicable law provides otherwise.

25. Severability

If any provision of these Terms is determined to be invalid, unlawful, or unenforceable, that provision will be enforced to the maximum extent permissible and the remaining provisions will remain in effect.

26. No Waiver

PhoneYa's failure to enforce any provision of these Terms does not waive its right to enforce that provision or any other provision later.

27. Entire Agreement

These Terms constitute the agreement between you and PhoneYa concerning your use of the Service, together with any additional policies or terms expressly incorporated by reference.

28. Contact

For questions regarding these Terms or Community Guidelines, content or correction requests, intellectual-property matters, authorized data access, data licensing inquiries, or other legal or general inquiries, please use the current contact information published at PhoneYa.com/about.

The About page is PhoneYa's designated location for current contact information and may be updated from time to time.