The fine print, in plain words

1. Who we are

Pod buster is operated by the Taplio team at lempire SAS ("lempire", "we", "us"), the company that provides Taplio.

lempire SAS, a simplified joint-stock company (société par actions simplifiée) incorporated under French law, with a share capital of €640.32
Registered office: 128 rue La Boétie, 75008 Paris, France
Trade and Companies Register: 823 475 082 R.C.S. Paris
VAT number: FR61823475082
Publication director: Guillaume Moubeche
Hosting: Vercel Inc.
Contact: podbuster@taplio.com

2. What Pod buster is

Pod buster is a paid, one-off check of a LinkedIn creator's engagement. You give us the URL of a public LinkedIn profile. We look at the public reactions and comments on that creator's most recent posts to detect coordinated engagement. We then email you a private report with a verdict: "No coordinated pattern", "Some signals" or "Strong signals", or "Not enough public data".

The analysis is automated. We do not log in to LinkedIn, we do not contact the creator, and the creator is not notified of the check.

Pod buster is meant for professional use: brands, agencies and businesses evaluating a creator before working with them.

3. An opinion, not a finding

A report expresses our opinion, formed by applying a statistical method to public data. It describes how engagement behaves, not why.

• It is not a statement of fact that a creator, or anyone else, has acted dishonestly, broken any rule, or bought or faked engagement.
• Coordinated engagement can have ordinary explanations: colleagues, friends, a loyal community, a company team, or a group the creator joined in good faith.
• "Some signals" and "Strong signals" mean that patterns we look for are present in the data we could read. They are not a finding of wrongdoing.
• "No coordinated pattern" does not guarantee that a creator's engagement is organic, or that it will stay so.

4. Accuracy and limits

We work carefully, but every report has limits you should keep in mind:

• Third-party data. We get public LinkedIn data through a third-party data provider. We do not control it and cannot guarantee that it is complete, accurate or up to date.
• Partial reads. On some posts only part of the reactions or comments can be read. The report says so, and figures measured on those posts are lower bounds.
• Sampling. The report covers a small number of recent posts at one point in time. It may not reflect the creator's other posts, past or future.
• Method. Thresholds and signals are statistical. They can produce false positives and false negatives, and we may change them over time.

The service and every report are provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law allows, we give no warranty of any kind, express or implied, including about accuracy, completeness, fitness for a particular purpose or results.

5. Your decisions are yours

A report is one input among others. You alone decide whether to sponsor, hire, pay, renegotiate with or decline a creator, and you are solely responsible for those decisions and their consequences. Please use your own judgement and, where it matters, other sources. We are not a party to any agreement between you and a creator.

6. Confidentiality and acceptable use

Each report is confidential and licensed to you for your own internal decision about the creator checked. You agree that you will not:

• share, forward, publish, post or resell a report, in whole or in part, including screenshots, outside your own organisation;
• use a report, or our name, to accuse, shame, harass, threaten or defame anyone, or to damage anyone's reputation;
• try to identify the accounts that a report pseudonymises (Account A, B, C);
• order checks to build lists or profiles of people, or for any unlawful purpose.

You may discuss the substance of a report privately with the creator concerned, for example to ask questions before a deal. If you breach this section, we may refuse future orders, and you are responsible for any claim that results from your breach.

7. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows:

• our total liability for any claim related to Pod buster or a report is limited to the amount you paid for the check concerned;
• we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, including lost profits, lost deals, lost opportunities, or costs of a campaign or sponsorship.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot legally be limited, such as liability for fraud or gross negligence where the applicable law forbids it.

8. Price and refunds

The price is shown on the website at the time of your order and is paid in advance through our payment provider. Each payment covers one check of one creator.

• If the creator has too little recent public activity for a reliable read, we tell you and refund you in full.
• If we cannot deliver your report for any other reason, we refund you in full.
• Once a report has been delivered, the check is complete. A verdict you disagree with is not, on its own, a reason for a refund. If you think the report contains an error, write to us (see section 9).

No right of withdrawal. We start the check, and pay our data costs, as soon as your payment is confirmed, and we deliver the report within 24 hours. By ordering, you ask us to start the check immediately and you expressly waive any right of withdrawal you may have, for example under Article L. 221-28 of the French Consumer Code, since the service is fully performed before any withdrawal period would end. The refunds listed above still apply.

9. Contesting a report

If you are a creator and believe a Pod buster report about you is wrong, or if you are a buyer and think your report contains an error, write to podbuster@taplio.com with the LinkedIn profile concerned and, if you have it, the report reference (PB-0000). Tell us what you believe is wrong; any context helps, for example colleagues or a community that explains part of your engagement.

A person reviews every request. We aim to reply within 30 days. If we find an error, we correct the report and send the corrected version to the buyer. We will not disclose who ordered a check without that buyer's consent, unless the law requires us to.

10. Personal data

What we use. Only public LinkedIn data, obtained through a third-party data provider: the creator's public profile and recent posts, the public reactions and comments on those posts, and the public activity of the accounts that engaged with them. We never log in to LinkedIn and never access private messages or private profiles. For buyers, we keep the order details our payment provider passes to us (email address, the profile you asked us to check, amount).

Third parties are pseudonymised. Accounts that engage with a creator are never named in a report. They appear only as counts or as Account A, B, C. To recognise groups that act the same way across creators, we keep a pseudonymised internal record of detected groups and may state in a report that a group also acts together on other creators we have checked, without naming them.

How long we keep it. Raw data collected for a check: 8 days. Reports: 12 months. Internal record of detected groups: 12 months.

Who is responsible. lempire SAS (see section 1) is the data controller for Pod buster. We process buyers' data to perform the order. We process the public data of creators and of the accounts that engage with them on the basis of our legitimate interest, and that of our buyers, in assessing whether engagement on a creator's posts is coordinated before money is spent on it, limited to public data, pseudonymised and kept for short periods as described here.

Your rights. Whether you are a buyer, a creator who was checked, or an account that appears in the data, you can ask for access to your data, its rectification, restriction or deletion, or object to its processing, by writing to podbuster@taplio.com or privacy@lempire.com. You can also lodge a complaint with your data protection authority; in France, the CNIL.

lempire's general privacy policy also applies: taplio.com/our-privacy-policy.

11. No affiliation with LinkedIn

Pod buster is an independent service. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or approved by LinkedIn Corporation. LinkedIn is a trademark of LinkedIn Corporation.

12. General

• We may update these terms. The version in force on the day of your order applies to that order.
• If a part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest still applies.
• These terms are governed by French law. In the event of a dispute, we will first try to reach an amicable agreement with you. Failing an amicable settlement within fifteen (15) days, the courts within the jurisdiction of the Paris Court of Appeal have exclusive jurisdiction, unless mandatory law gives you the right to go to another court.

Questions about these terms: podbuster@taplio.com