Trust Score Methodology

The Veri-Trust Trust Score is intended to present eligible community ratings in a structured and understandable format.

It helps users review the general direction of published community feedback before deciding whether to proceed with a meeting, service, rental, collaboration, or other interaction.

The Trust Score does not establish facts about a person and must not be interpreted as an official finding concerning that person.

Users remain responsible for their own decisions, independent checks, precautions, and assessment of the circumstances.

The principal Trust Score is calculated from the mandatory trust rating submitted with each eligible published community review.

Each trust rating is provided on a scale from 1 to 5.

Where a contributor provides an optional reliability rating, that rating may be used to calculate a separate reliability indicator.

The Trust Score may also be displayed together with contextual information such as the number of published reviews, review categories, tags, publication dates, and available written feedback.

Only reviews that are eligible for display under the applicable moderation status are included in the public Trust Score.

A review that has been removed, rejected, restricted, unpublished, or otherwise excluded from public display is not included in the public calculation.

A review may be excluded where it violates the Terms of Service, Community Guidelines, Moderation Policy, privacy requirements, or applicable law.

Veri-Trust may temporarily exclude a review while a report, dispute, legal request, or moderation investigation is being assessed.

The principal Trust Score is the arithmetic mean of the trust ratings attached to all eligible published reviews associated with the relevant protected identifier.

The ratings are added together and divided by the number of eligible published ratings.

The resulting score may be rounded for display, for example to one decimal place.

Each eligible published trust rating currently has the same numerical weight in the principal calculation.

Reliability is a separate indicator and is not automatically merged with the principal Trust Score.

Where reliability ratings are available, the displayed reliability value is calculated from eligible published reviews containing a reliability rating.

Reviews without a reliability rating are excluded from the reliability average but may remain included in the principal Trust Score.

The number of reliability ratings may therefore be lower than the total number of trust ratings.

Veri-Trust does not currently apply hidden author rankings, undisclosed demographic criteria, protected characteristics, payment status, or inferred personal characteristics when calculating the principal Trust Score.

A user’s subscription plan does not increase the numerical weight of a review.

The identity, nationality, ethnicity, religion, political opinions, health, sexual orientation, gender, or other legally protected characteristic of a person must not be used to calculate the Trust Score.

Written comments are not automatically transformed into a positive or negative score through undisclosed sentiment analysis.

Eligible published trust ratings currently have the same weight regardless of their publication date.

A recent review therefore does not automatically receive a greater numerical weight than an older review.

Review dates may nevertheless be displayed so that users can consider the age and context of available feedback.

If Veri-Trust introduces recency weighting in the future, the applicable formula, weighting periods, and effects on existing scores will be described in an updated version of this methodology before or when the change is deployed.

Community feedback may be assigned to categories such as dating, freelance or business, rental, service, creator, or another category supported by the platform.

Categories help users understand the context in which the reported interaction occurred.

A category does not automatically increase or decrease the principal Trust Score.

Where category-specific averages are introduced or displayed, they will be calculated only from eligible published reviews within the relevant category and will be clearly distinguished from the overall score.

Veri-Trust may display a descriptive label next to a numerical Trust Score to make the result easier to understand.

These labels are summaries of the numerical rating range and are not independent findings about a person.

They must not be interpreted as a guarantee that an interaction will be safe or unsafe.

A Trust Score may be based on a small number of published reviews.

A score based on one or a few reviews has a higher level of uncertainty and should be interpreted cautiously.

Veri-Trust displays or may display the number of eligible reviews alongside the score so that users can assess the amount of information available.

The absence of reviews does not mean that a person is safe, unsafe, verified, unverified, reliable, or unreliable.

Where no eligible published rating exists, Veri-Trust should display that no community score is currently available rather than assigning a neutral or assumed score.

The Trust Score may change when a new eligible review is published, an existing review is removed or restricted, a moderation decision changes, or a technical correction is applied.

Recalculation may occur immediately or after a reasonable technical processing period.

A change in score does not necessarily mean that the person’s conduct has changed. It may result solely from a change in the set of reviews eligible for inclusion.

Users and affected individuals may report or dispute community feedback through the available reporting, moderation, privacy, or removal-request procedures.

Submitting a report does not automatically remove the review or change the score.

Veri-Trust may temporarily restrict a review during an investigation where this is necessary and proportionate.

If a review is removed from the eligible published dataset, the public Trust Score is recalculated without that review.

If a review remains eligible after assessment, it may continue to be included in the calculation.

A Trust Score may concern a person who has not created a Veri-Trust account.

The score is associated with a protected or pseudonymized identifier used for matching and not with a publicly displayed raw email address or telephone number.

The absence of a Veri-Trust account does not mean that the person has approved, confirmed, or verified the information.

A person who does not have an account may request access, correction, restriction, objection, review, or removal where applicable through the Data & Review Removal Requests procedure.

Email addresses and telephone numbers used for matching may be normalized and transformed into cryptographic hashes or other protected identifiers.

Hashing is a pseudonymization measure and does not necessarily make the information anonymous under data protection law.

Raw matching identifiers are not publicly displayed in Trust Score results.

Veri-Trust applies access limits, moderation rules, reporting procedures, content restrictions, and technical safeguards intended to reduce privacy and abuse risks.

The Trust Score must not be calculated from special-category data or criminal-offence information.

Users must not submit information concerning racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade-union membership, genetic data, biometric identification data, health, sex life, or sexual orientation.

Users must not submit criminal convictions, alleged offences, police records, investigations, accusations of criminal conduct, or similar information.

Such content may be blocked, restricted, redacted, investigated, or removed when detected.

The Trust Score does not verify a person’s identity.

It does not check official registers, criminal records, police databases, credit records, employment records, immigration status, professional licences, or identity documents.

It does not determine whether a person has committed an offence or violated a legal obligation.

It does not measure compatibility, morality, social value, financial solvency, professional competence, health, or legal status.

It does not predict how a person will behave in a future situation.

The Trust Score is not a safety clearance and does not classify a person as definitively safe or dangerous.

A high score does not eliminate risk, and a low score does not establish wrongdoing.

Community feedback may be incomplete, inaccurate, disputed, context-dependent, outdated, or based on a limited number of experiences.

Users should consider the score together with the review count, context, dates, written feedback, their own verification, and appropriate safety precautions.

The arithmetic calculation and display of the Trust Score are automated.

Automated rules may also be used to apply access limits, determine whether a review has an eligible publication status, or identify content for moderation review.

Veri-Trust does not intend the Trust Score, by itself, to make a decision that produces legal effects or similarly significantly affects the person concerned on behalf of Veri-Trust.

The score is presented as informational community feedback and does not create an obligation for users to accept or refuse an interaction.

Moderation, disputes, objections, removal requests, and alleged calculation errors may be subject to human review.

A person may request an explanation of the data categories used, verification of the reviews included in the calculation, correction of an inaccurate calculation, restriction of disputed processing, or review of eligible feedback.

Where processing is based on legitimate interests, the person may object on grounds relating to their particular situation.

Veri-Trust will assess the request in accordance with applicable law, the Privacy Policy, the GDPR Information page, the Moderation Policy, and the Data & Review Removal Requests procedure.

A user or affected person may report a suspected technical or arithmetic error.

Veri-Trust may verify the eligible review count, source rating values, publication statuses, association with the relevant protected identifier, and rounding applied to the result.

Where an error is confirmed, Veri-Trust may correct the calculation, update the displayed score, correct the underlying record, or take another appropriate measure.

A disagreement with the opinion expressed in an eligible review is distinct from a mathematical calculation error and may require a moderation or removal review.

Veri-Trust prohibits fabricated reviews, duplicate reviews intended to distort results, coordinated rating campaigns, retaliatory feedback, paid manipulation, automated submissions, and attempts to artificially increase or decrease a score.

Reviews or accounts associated with suspected manipulation may be investigated, restricted, excluded from calculation, suspended, or removed.

Technical and moderation signals used to investigate manipulation do not automatically form part of the public Trust Score.

A published review represents a contribution submitted through the Veri-Trust platform and does not necessarily mean that every underlying fact has been independently verified.

Account authentication, moderation status, anti-abuse controls, and reporting mechanisms may improve accountability but do not prove that every statement is accurate.

Veri-Trust may introduce additional credibility or verification indicators in the future.

Any future credibility weighting that affects the numerical score will be documented transparently in this methodology.

Subscription plans may affect the number of searches permitted, the number of reviews visible, access to alerts, reporting priority, or other platform functionality.

A subscription plan does not increase or decrease the numerical weight of a review.

Paying users do not receive a more favourable Trust Score and cannot purchase a score adjustment.

Veri-Trust does not accept payment in exchange for removing valid negative feedback or increasing a person’s rating.

Where a user requests an automatic translation, the translated version is intended to make the original comment understandable in another supported language.

The original comment remains the reference version.

A translation does not change the numerical trust rating or reliability rating attached to the review.

Automatic translations may contain errors or nuances that differ from the original. Users may view the original comment where that functionality is available.

Veri-Trust may update this methodology to reflect product changes, legal requirements, improved safeguards, corrections, or changes to the calculation model.

A material change may include introducing recency weighting, reviewer credibility weighting, category-specific scoring, minimum review thresholds, confidence indicators, or a different mathematical formula.

Material changes affecting the meaning or calculation of existing scores will be described on this page with an updated publication date.

Where appropriate, Veri-Trust may also communicate material changes through the platform or by email.

This methodology should be read together with the Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, GDPR Information, Community Guidelines, Moderation Policy, and Data & Review Removal Requests procedure.

Where a conflict exists, applicable law and the specific legal document governing the relevant processing or platform action take priority.

Questions concerning the methodology: legal@veri-trust.app.

Privacy rights, objections, and data requests: privacy@veri-trust.app.

Moderation and disputed reviews: moderation@veri-trust.app.

General support: support@veri-trust.app.

Requests may also be submitted through the Data & Review Removal Requests page.