Data Ethics Policy

Grail Den aggregates publicly available market data from auction houses, marketplaces, and dealer platforms to provide collectibles intelligence, price comparisons, and deal alerts. We believe that operating with transparency and respect for data sources is not just good ethics — it's good business.

This policy describes our commitments to responsible data practices.

1. Respect for robots.txt & Platform Rules

Grail Den's data collection systems:

• Obey robots.txt directives. If a site's robots.txt disallows crawling of certain paths or all automated access, we respect that directive without exception.
• Honor Terms of Service. Where a platform's terms of service explicitly prohibit automated data collection, we seek alternative data access methods (such as official APIs, data partnerships, or publicly provided feeds) or exclude that source entirely.
• Use official APIs when available. Many platforms offer public APIs, search endpoints, or data feeds. We prefer these authorized channels over any form of web scraping.
• Identify ourselves. Our automated systems use descriptive User-Agent strings where technically appropriate, so site operators can identify and contact us.

If a source requests that we cease data collection, we will comply promptly.

2. Rate Limiting & Server Courtesy

• Conservative request rates. We enforce delays between requests that significantly exceed the minimum needed, typically several seconds between requests to any single domain.
• Off-peak scheduling. Routine data collection runs are scheduled during off-peak hours when possible to minimize any impact on source platform performance.
• Backoff on errors. If a source returns errors (rate limits, server errors, or timeouts), our systems back off exponentially and do not retry aggressively.
• Minimal footprint. We request only the data we need. We do not crawl entire sites indiscriminately or download assets (images, media) beyond what's necessary for attribution and display.

3. No Paid or Restricted Content

• Publicly available data only. We only collect data that is freely accessible to any visitor without authentication, payment, or special access.
• No circumvention. We do not bypass paywalls, CAPTCHAs designed to block automated access, authentication systems, or any other access controls.
• No credential sharing. We do not use stolen, shared, or purchased login credentials to access restricted areas of any platform.
• Respect for premium content. If a platform offers both free and premium data tiers, we only access the free tier unless we have an explicit commercial data agreement.

4. Source Attribution

• Clear source labeling. All market data, listings, and price information displayed on Grail Den is labeled with its source platform (e.g., "via eBay," "via Heritage Auctions," "via Julien's Auctions").
• Direct links. Where possible, we link directly to the original listing or source page so users can verify data and engage with the source platform.
• No misrepresentation. We never present third-party data as our own original content. Aggregated statistics and analyses are clearly labeled as derived from external sources.
• Trademark respect. Platform names and logos are the property of their respective owners. Our use of these marks is for identification and attribution purposes only.

5. User Data Handling

• No personal data scraping. Our data collection systems do not target, collect, or store personal information of individuals from source platforms (such as usernames, profiles, contact details, or bidding histories).
• Item-focused data. We collect item-level data: titles, descriptions, categories, images, prices, and sale dates. Not bidder identities or seller personal information.
• User data on Grail Den. For data that Grail Den users voluntarily provide to us (account information, collection data, search queries), see our full Privacy Policy.
• No selling of user data. We do not sell, rent, or share our users' personal data with third parties for their marketing purposes.

6. AI & Machine Learning Ethics

• Transparency about AI limitations. All AI-generated assessments (authentication scores, price estimates, condition analysis) are clearly labeled as AI-generated and informational only.
• No false authority. We do not present AI confidence scores as certifications, professional appraisals, or guarantees of authenticity or value.
• Bias awareness. We acknowledge that AI models can reflect biases in training data. We work to identify and mitigate systematic biases in our models, particularly those that could affect pricing or authenticity assessments.
• Human oversight. Critical platform decisions (account suspensions, dispute resolutions, fraud detection) involve human review and are not made solely by automated systems.

7. Reporting Concerns

If you are a platform operator and believe that Grail Den's data collection practices violate your terms of service or robots.txt directives, or if you have any concerns about our data practices, please contact us:

Backyard Dreaming LLC
Santa Monica, California

We commit to acknowledging all data ethics concerns within two (2) business days and resolving them within ten (10) business days. If you request that we cease collecting data from your platform, we will comply within 48 hours of verification.