Home / Editorial and Sourcing Policy
Our standards

Editorial and sourcing policy

How we distinguish reported facts from guidance, choose sources, review content, and tell readers when information changed.

Published and reviewed September 14, 2026 · Data Breach Help Editorial Team

Editorial responsibility

The Data Breach Help Editorial Team writes and reviews our original guides. We identify the team on each guide, show publication and review dates, cite supporting sources, and avoid attaching names or credentials that do not belong to a real contributor.

Source priority

We prefer primary and authoritative sources: notices from the affected organization, court records, government agencies, regulators, and the Have I Been Pwned breach catalogue. Reputable reporting may provide context when primary material is unavailable. Sources are linked near the relevant guide or in a clearly labeled source section.

Breach catalogue pages

Structured incident facts and narratives come from the Have I Been Pwned catalogue unless a page states otherwise. We remove HTML formatting, identify HIBP as the catalogue source, and add our own explanations of limitations and actions matched to the reported data categories. Catalogue facts can change when the provider updates a record.

Original guides

Guides are written to answer a specific user question. We synthesize source material, explain practical distinctions, and add context rather than copying a source or republishing a news feed. Legal and financial outcomes are described conditionally because they depend on the incident and individual circumstances.

Review and updates

We review a page when its underlying source changes, when a reader raises a supported concern, or when the guidance may no longer be current. The displayed review date indicates when the page was last checked; it is not a promise that every linked source changed on that date.

Independence and conflicts

Editorial explanations are not changed to promise legal eligibility or compensation. If commercial, referral, or sponsored relationships affect a page, they should be disclosed on that page. We do not accept payment to alter a breach record or conceal a documented correction.

Corrections

Material factual errors are corrected as soon as reasonably possible and handled under our Corrections Policy. Send questions or evidence to support@databreachhelp.com.