Terms of Service
(last updated December 20, 2024)
Is this a binding contract?
You agree to this: This is a real contract. Seriously. Anyone that uses FormerGov (whether a member or a visitor) must agree to these terms of service, as a legally binding agreement, so we tried to make the terms more fun to read than the average contract. In the end, it is still a contract, so mostly boring.
This contract is with you: This agreement is with you, the Member, Visitor, or Searcher, even if you are using our services on behalf of an organization or if an organization is paying for your use of FormerGov.
What if I don’t agree to this?: If you do not agree to these Terms of Services, do not access or otherwise use FormerGov, and feel free to stop reading. We reserve the right to restrict, suspend, or terminate your account if you breach this contract, or the law, or are otherwise misusing FormerGov.
We can update this contract: Life is full of change, so we may make changes to the Agreement. If we make material changes to the Agreement, we will let you know, either through our website, or by other means, to provide you the opportunity to review the changes before they become effective.
Will changes be retroactive?: We don’t have a time machine (yet) so changes will not be retroactive, as we don’t want to interfere with the space/time continuum. If you object to any changes, you can always close your account. Your continued use of FormerGov after we publish or send a notice about our changes to these terms means that you consent to the updated terms as of their effective date.
Are there certain minimum requirements for using FormerGov?
Why, yes! Thank you for asking. Here are some of the minimum requirements:
Species requirement: You must be a human (we’ve been burned on that one before–darn typing hamster!);
Age requirement: You must be 18 years or older;
Competence requirement: No, we are not talking about general competence. You just must have the legal ability to enter into a contract on your own behalf (because, as we said, this is a contract);
Accuracy requirement: All the information you or your delegates provide to us must be accurate and up-to-date;
Real person requirement: You must not create a fake identity, misrepresent your identity, create a profile for anyone without their express content, or attempt to use another’s FormerGov account without their permission;
Real content requirement: You must only provide FormerGov with accurate information that you have the right to share for publication. Don’t provide us with confidential information about your friends or employers. Remember: what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Compliance requirement: You must comply with all applicable laws, including laws preventing false or misleading representations or omissions (e.g., fraud), privacy laws, intellectual property laws, anti-spam laws, export control laws, tax laws, and regulatory requirements;
Professionalism requirement: You must use our site in an appropriate and professional manner. Pretend you are wearing a top hat and have a long curly mustache if that helps. If you are a Member offering services, you represent and warrant that you have the necessary experience, ability, and licenses, and that you will provide services consistent with professional community standards.
Do you verify members or the services they provide?
We offer limited identity verification: We give Members the options below for verifying their identity. Members who have had their identity verified have a brown diamond mark on their profile.
CLEAR: Our members have the option of validating their identity with CLEAR, the same company that validates identity at the airport. See www.clearme.com/clear-verified. We partnered with CLEAR, in part, because we figured that if they were good enough to validate identity at the airport, they were good enough for us!
Entity Verification: To the extent we met with an entity (e.g., law firm) that purchased memberships for its employees, we will defer to the entity to verify its own employees.
WARNING: Even for members that are “verified,” there is no way CLEAR or anyone else can be 100% certain that a person is who they say they are, or that their email account has not been compromised. Thus, to paraphrase your parents, you should always exercise caution in interacting with strangers. Among other things, consider trying the “confidence builders” below.
We do not validate profile information: Members are required to provide accurate information but we do not verify the accuracy of member profiles. That person who claims to be the former President of the United States was most likely not the President of the United States. You never know, but it seems unlikely to us that a Former U.S. President would take the time to create a profile on our website.
Confidence builders: Here are some additional steps you can consider to help increase your confidence regarding the identity and background of members:
Many employers do background checks on their employees. Thus, consider checking the member’s profile on his or her employer’s website;
Type the member’s name into a search engine (e.g., Google, Yahoo, Bing) to look for confirmatory evidence of his or her identity and background;
Visit the website of the member’s former government employer and/or a historical version of that website (e.g., through archive.org);
Speak with the member to assess his or her knowledge and experience. If the member has a thick Russian accent, he or she is may not actually be from Kansas; or
Ask for and speak with references for the member. Former government employees typically know other government employees from the same agency who could help verify their identity.
We also don’t vouch: You acknowledge that FormerGov does not supervise, direct, control or monitor Members in the performance of the services they offer and agree that (1) FormerGov is not responsible for the offering, performance or procurement of these services; (2) FormerGov does not endorse any particular Member’s offered services; and (3) nothing shall create an employment, agency, or joint venture relationship between FormerGov and any Member offering services.
We are not responsible for the content of others: By using FormerGov, you may encounter content or information that might be inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, illegal, offensive, or otherwise harmful. FormerGov typically does not review content provided by our Members or others for accuracy or legal soundness. You agree that we are not responsible for others’ content or information. We cannot always prevent this misuse of FormerGov, and you agree that we are not responsible for any such misuse.
Who owns all this valuable intellectual property?
Who owns the stuff we made?: Us. We reserve all of our intellectual property rights in FormerGov, including articles we author, trademarks, service marks, graphics, photos, advertisements, and logos used in connection with FormerGov.
Who owns the stuff you made?: You. You own all of the content and personal information you provide to FormerGov, but you grant us a non-exclusive license to it. Specifically, you grant FormerGov a worldwide, transferable and sublicensable right to use, copy, modify, distribute, publish and process, information and content that you provide us, without any further consent, notice or compensation.
Can I end that license?: Yes, you can end our license for specific content by deleting the content or by closing your account. Note that it may take us some time to remove the content from our systems, including our backups. You should also note that to the extent you already shared this information and third-parties stored or copied it, we haven’t come up with a legal way to sneak into their hard drives and take it back.
Whose IP rights can I violate? Nobody’s. You agree not to violate the intellectual property rights of FormerGov or others, including copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets or other proprietary rights. For example, do not copy or distribute a Member’s profile without their permission.
Do I have ownership rights in the articles I submit?: That’s what we want to know! If you submit original articles for potential publication on FormerGov, you warrant that you are the original author of the article or that you have permission from the original author to publish the work on FormerGov under your name. If you provide articles for publication on FormerGov, you are responsible for the accuracy, quality, and soundness of any information or guidance provided. FormerGov may suggest grammatical, formatting, or substantive edits to your article. You may decide whether to accept these edits, but FormerGov reserves the right not to publish any submitted article, for any reason. You agree not to have your feelings hurt . . . for an excessive period of time.
Will you advertise me or my profile offsite?: Not without your consent. Although FormerGov is intended to help promote you and your profile, we will get your express consent before using your profile for advertising off of our platform. If you author articles for FormerGov, you consent to us promoting them on and off of our platform. If you use one of our services or features, we may mention that with your name and/or photo to promote that feature within our site.
Scraping and similar unfair competition: You agree not to engage in unfair competition or do sneaky stuff, such as:
Developing, supporting or using software, devices, scripts, robots or any other means or processes (including crawlers, browser plugins and add-ons or any other technology) to scrape FormerGov or otherwise copy profiles or other data from FormerGov;
Copying, using, disclosing or distributing any information obtained from FormerGov, whether directly or through third-parties (such as search engines), without the consent of FormerGov (though you are welcome to refer Members to others, or others to Members);
Deep-linking to FormerGov for any purpose other than to promote FormerGov, your profile, or another’s profile on FormerGov, without FormerGov’s consent;
Using bots or other automated methods to access FormerGov, add or download contacts, send or redirect messages;
Monitoring FormerGov’s availability, performance or functionality for any competitive purpose;
Engaging in “framing,” “mirroring,” or otherwise simulating the appearance or function of FormerGov;
Reverse engineering, decompiling, disassembling, deciphering or otherwise attempting to derive the source code for FormerGov or any related technology that is not open source;
Leasing, loaning, renting, trading, selling or otherwise monetizing FormerGov or related data or access to the same, without FormerGov’s consent;
Overlaying or otherwise modifying our site or its appearance (such as by inserting elements into it or removing, covering, or obscuring an advertisement included in it)
Do I have any IP rights in the feedback I provide?: Are you kidding? We welcome any feedback and suggestions sent to us at contact@formergov.com. If you provide feedback or suggestions, we may use and share the feedback, without providing any compensation. We agree that our feelings will not be hurt . . . for an excessive period of time.
Is FormerGov a storage site?: No. Is your house a canoe? FormerGov is not a storage service, like DropBox or Google Drive. We are not required to store, maintain, or provide you a copy of any content or information that you or others provide, except as required by law or noted in our Privacy Policy. Thus, it is important that you make a backup copy of any content shared with FormerGov, off of our site.
Have you thought about security at all?
What if we have a data breach?: The information we collect is intended to be public. Courts have held that one can’t cause any cognizable injury by breaching data that is already public. All credit card or billing information is entirely collected by a third-party, Stripe, and we have no access to it. Identity verification information stays with third-parties (i.e., CLEAR or employers.) .
Do not provide us with any sensitive information. What is “sensitive information?” That is any information that you would feel even slightly upset or litigious about if it were made public. For example, please use business contact information that is already public and/or disposable.
What if we have a ransomware attack?: If we get a ransomware attack or other operational attack, our plan is to not pay the ransom, and will get back up when we can. We plan to have purportedly immutable backups of the site so it hopefully won’t take that long, but let’s not test that. While we hope to generally be live, members and searchers should have no expectation that the site will always be up. FormerGov shall not be liable for any loss, cost, expense (including attorney fees), liability, damage, or claim caused by FormerGov’s downtime.
What if our site is defaced?: If our site is defaced, we may issue a press release and use the opportunity to increase awareness and traffic to our site, and your profile may become more valuable as a result (or not, who knows, but it's worth a try, right?)
Wait, do you care about our security at all?: We are always concerned about the personal safety of our users and members, whether on or off of our website. Here is what you are expected to do for your security and for the security of others:
Use a strong unique password that you don’t use on other sites. You can check haveibeenpwned.com to see if it has already been hacked (Spoiler Alert: It has, so make up a different one);
Keep your password secret and confidential (though you may share it with a trusted delegate, such as an administrative assistant, or long-time pet).
Set up multi-factor authentication (MFA). We know MFA can be a bit of a joy kill but it has a huge return on investment (ROI).
Do not share a FormerGov account with anyone else.
Take appropriate steps to verify the identity and background of anyone you meet online (here or otherwise) and don’t put yourself in unsafe situations.
Report any unauthorized access or misuse of your account immediately to contact@formergov.com.
Do not attempt to override any feature or bypass or circumvent any access controls or use limits of FormerGov.
Do not interfere with the operation of, or place an unreasonable load on FormerGov (e.g., spam, denial of service attack) or post anything that contains malicious or unwanted code.
For heaven’s sake, don’t send anyone naked or otherwise compromising photos or recordings of yourself or anyone else. Nobody actually wants to see that.
What should I know about paying for FormerGov?
Purchasing your membership: Thank you for thinking about purchasing a membership! It may just be the best decision you ever make! When you purchase your Membership, your credit card or PayPal (or other payment method) will automatically be charged at the start of each subscription period for the fees applicable to that period. To avoid future charges, please cancel before the renewal date. We are happy to cancel your subscription at any time, but once you have paid your annual membership fee, we tend to use that for things like marketing to searchers (to bring you opportunities), as well as food, water, shelter, electricity, and paying our other bills. Thus, we are generally not in a position to refund the annual fee once paid.
Taxes and fees: They say that nothing in life is certain except for death and taxes. Putting death aside for now, when you make payments, certain taxes and fees may be added to our prices. Taxes and other applicable fees may be calculated based on the information that you provide us at the time of purchase, such as what state you live in. Your purchase may also be subject to foreign exchange fees or location-based price differences (i.e., exchange rates). Having watched a lot of late night infomercials, we will not charge for “handling,” unless we actually “handle” something.
Third-Party Processing: We use a third-party payment processor to handle payments for our Services. Our payment processor may store and continue billing your payment method (e.g., credit card) even after it has expired, to avoid interruptions in your Services and to use to pay other Services you may buy. We hope we picked a reliable third-party processor, but we have no control over the security and practices of any third-party.
Future changes: Nothing in life is permanent. We may change or discontinue any of our services or modify our prices prospectively.
I have no plans to sue FormerGov but purely hypothetically, can I?
Limitations of liability: The bottom line is that nobody can stop you from suing anybody else, but it’s not a very nice thing to do, especially to someone who is really trying to increase your profile in good faith. The limitations of liability discussed below are part of the basis of the bargain between you and FormerGov and shall apply to all claims of liability (e.g., warranty, tort, negligence, contract and law) even where FormerGov has been told of the possibility of any such damage, and even if these remedies fail their essential purpose.
No warranties: Your access to and use of our website and any content on it are at your own risk. Our services are provided to you on an “AS IS” basis. We make no warranty or representation and disclaim all responsibility and liability for: (i) the security or reliability of the website and any content on it; (ii) any harm to your computer system, loss of data, or other harm that results from your access to or use of the website or any content; and (iii) whether our services will meet your requirements or be available on an uninterrupted, secure, or error-free basis. We disclaim any implied or statutory warranty, including any implied warranty or title, accuracy of data, non-infringement, merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Disclaimed or liability and damages limitation: In the immortal words of Shaggy, “Wasn't me.” We disclaim all liability to the greatest extent allowable and conscionable under law. To the greatest extent permitted by applicable law, the Company shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or any loss of profits, lost business opportunities, revenues, or reputation whether incurred directly or indirectly, or any loss of data or other intangible losses resulting from (i) your access to or use of or inability to access or use this service; (ii) any conduct or content of any third party on the services, including without limitation, any defamatory, offensive, or illegal conduct of other users of third parties; (iii) any content obtained from the service; (iv) unauthorized access, use or alteration of your transmission or content; or (v) downtime of the site that prevents others from viewing your profile or content. The limitations of this subsection shall apply to any theory of liability, whether based on warranty, contract, statute, tort (including negligence) or otherwise. You agree that, at very most, we can be liable for the amount you paid us for use of our services during any given calendar year.
Dispute resolution like gentle folk: To the extent any disputes arise, you agree to first try talking it out with us. Any notice to us should be sent to contact@formergov.com. We are reasonable people. Next, we can try a pillow fight, but the pillows have to be uniformly fluffy. Third, you agree to try Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), such as mediation, arbitration, or another pillow fight. The last resort would be to go to court, but it would be an appropriate court in Montgomery County, Maryland. We both agree that such court in Montgomery County, Maryland would have jurisdiction over the matter. Both parties agree to waive a trial by jury to the extent permissible by law.
Class action waiver: You also waive the right to bring any class actions or other joint/group actions against us. We are really small (especially our CEO) and it is totally unfair to gang up on us like that.
Venue: We are based in the great State of Maryland, so you agree that the law of Maryland will apply to any disputes and any disputes, legal actions, etc. will be venued in Montgomery Country, Maryland. That just seems fair, but as of the time of this writing, we’ve never had any legal disputes at all (not even one pillow fight), so we are crossing our fingers that Maryland law is reasonable.
Severability: If a court of competent jurisdiction finds any part of this contract unenforceable, you agree that the court should modify the terms to make that part enforceable while still achieving its intent. If the court cannot do that, you agree to ask the court to remove that unenforceable part and still enforce the rest of this Contract. (We believe this provision has been in practically every boilerplate contract since 1602, when a judge in England, wearing his trademark gray wig, found an entire contract to be void because of one inconsequential provision. A tip of the hat to that judge from us lawyers.)
Only agreement: This provision is here because sometimes parties to a contract end up arguing, “The contract says X, but then the seller said ‘Not X’.” This Contract is the only agreement between us regarding FormerGov and supersedes all prior agreements regarding FormerGov.
Non-waiver: If we don't act to enforce a breach of this Agreement, that’s just because we are super busy. It does not mean that we have waived our right to enforce this Agreement, through terminating your Membership, a pillow fight, or any of the means discussed above.
Assignment: You may not assign or transfer this Agreement (or your membership) to anyone without our consent. You agree, however, that FormerGov may assign FormerGov and this Agreement to our affiliates or a party that buys FormerGov or its parent without your consent. There are also no third-party beneficiaries to this Contract.
I like FormerGov a lot but can we just be “friends”?
“Hi bye” friends: We thought we would include a section on “just being friends” at the end of our Terms of Service, because that’s how most of our first dates end. We know . . . it’s not us, it’s you. And that’s okay! We still want to be friends. We may provide you with notices and messages through our websites, apps, contact information, or carrier pigeon. If your contact information becomes out-of-date (or our carrier pigeon gets lost), you may miss out on these notices. Thus, please keep your contact information current (and please keep an eye out for lost carrier pigeons.)
How to reach us: We won’t try to make you feel guilty if you don’t reach out every now and then, but you can reach us at any time at contact@formergov.com. Our response speed may be inversely proportional to our meteoric rise in popularity. We apologize in advance for the timeliness and quality of our response. Chalk it up to the fact that we were both probably having a bad day.