How the facts on this site are checked

Every date, amount, web address and mailing address on this site was read in an official source's own text and is shown beside that source and the day it was checked. Below: which sources count, what that date means, how often it's renewed, what happens when a source can't be read, and how mistakes are corrected.

Which sources count

A fact is published only when it was read word for word in one of these:

1. The court record. Court orders (preliminary approval, final approval), the docket, and the documents filed with the court, such as the settlement agreement and the court-approved notices. When a court order and a website disagree, the page says so.
2. The settlement's own documents. The official settlement website named in the court-approved notice, the long-form notice and the claim form.
3. Government sources. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Federal Judicial Center, the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the IRS, the U.S. Postal Service, PACER and the federal courts, and state attorneys general.
4. The administrator's own site, for facts about the administrator itself: its legal name, its domains, its case list, the contact details it publishes, and what it says its notices and payments look like.

News stories and fact-checks can be mentioned as reporting, and are marked as such, but they're never the source of a date, an amount, a domain or an address. Settlement trackers, law firm pages and claim-filing services are never sources. When a tracker gives a different date from the official notice, the settlement's page says so without naming the tracker, and shows the official date.

Web addresses get the strictest rule, because the notice check compares yours against them. A domain is listed only when its owner names it on its own site, or a court document names it. A domain is never guessed from a company's name, and a payment or email-sending domain follows the same rule.

What "checked on" means

It's the day the official source was opened and the fact was found in its text and compared with what this site shows. It isn't the day the source was written or last changed.

Each fact carries its source and that date where you read it, and each page ends with one list of the sources it uses. The site is never republished with a fact checked more than two weeks earlier: the fact is read again in its source first, or it comes off the site.

The weekly review

Once a week, every source behind the site is opened again and compared with the version that was read before. The review lists:

• every source whose text has changed since it was last read, and every source that couldn't be reached;
• every fact that rests on one of those sources, or that was last checked more than a week ago;
• every settlement by days left to each of its dates: the claim deadline, the dates to opt out and object, and the final approval hearing.

What changed is read again in full before anything on the site is touched. A settlement is shown as open only while its claim deadline is at least 10 days away. Once a deadline passes, the settlement's status is changed, and the days-left counter says so at once, because it counts from today's date on your own device. Changes that affect a date, an amount or what a tool tells you are listed with their date on What's new.

When an official site can't be reached

This site is written from outside the United States, and some official settlement websites refuse visitors from abroad or put up a security challenge. Those challenges are never bypassed. Instead, in this order:

1. the documents the site links to (the long-form notice, the claim form, the settlement agreement) are read directly;
2. the same documents are read in the court record, through CourtListener's RECAP archive;
3. the official page is read in an Internet Archive copy, and the source is then listed as an "archived copy" with the date of that copy, so you can see exactly how old it is. The AT&T data breach settlement page relies partly on archived copies and marks each one.

If none of those gives a reliable reading, the fact isn't published. If a settlement's page can't be built from facts read that way, the page isn't published at all. One large settlement was left out at launch for that reason: its official site could be read only in archived copies, and a court order and the site gave different dates for the same hearing.

Corrections

If a date, an amount, a domain or a rule here doesn't match its official source, write to hello@settlementnotices.com with the page and a link to the official document. The fact is read again in the source. If it was wrong, it's fixed on the one page where it lives and the correction is listed on What's new with its date.

What the tools do with what you type

The tools run entirely in your browser. What you type or tick isn't sent anywhere, and it isn't stored: close or reload the page and it's gone. The site sets no cookies and runs no analytics or ads.

Two tools build search links for you, to CourtListener and to the PACER Case Locator. If you choose to open a CourtListener link, the case name or number you typed is part of that link and goes to CourtListener, the same as if you had searched there yourself. Nothing goes anywhere unless you open the link.

The tools describe; they don't decide. No tool tells you whether your own notice is genuine, which option to choose, or what you'll be paid. Each result ends with what it depends on and how to confirm it in the official record.