CarCareTruth — Terms of Service

Operator: SierraNova Labs LLC, a California limited liability company Site: carcaretruth.com (the "Platform") Effective date: May 12, 2026 Version: 2026-05-12

1. Acceptance of Terms

By checking the "I agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy" box at signup, or by clicking the sign-in or create-account button immediately below a conspicuous notice that doing so accepts these Terms, you ("you" or "User") agree to these Terms of Service (the "Terms"). The Terms are a binding agreement between you and SierraNova Labs LLC, a California limited liability company ("CarCareTruth," "we," "us," or "our"). If you do not agree to these Terms, do not register, do not submit content, and discontinue use of the Platform.

The signup interface presents links to these Terms and to the Privacy Policy in a contrasting color, above the assent button, before account creation can complete. Consistent with EU Digital Services Act Article 14, these Terms are written in clear and unambiguous language and are accessible at /terms at all times. These Terms incorporate by reference our Privacy Policy at /privacy, our Community Guidelines at /community-guidelines, the Disclaimer at /disclaimer, and the Affiliate Disclosure at /disclosure. In the event of conflict between these Terms and any incorporated document, these Terms control unless the other document expressly states otherwise.

We may update these Terms from time to time. For material changes, we will give you at least 30 days' advance notice before the new Terms take effect (see §27). Continued use of the Platform after the notice period means you accept the updated Terms, except that material changes to §24 (Dispute Resolution) require affirmative re-acknowledgement as provided in §27 and §24.7, and continued use alone — whether during the notice window or after the amendment's effective date — does not constitute acceptance of an amended §24.

2. Eligibility — Adults Only

The Platform is for adults. You must be at least 18 years old to access, register for, or post content to the Platform.

By using the Platform, you represent and warrant that:

You are 18 years of age or older.
You have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract in your jurisdiction.
Your use of the Platform does not violate any law that applies to you.

If you are under 18, do not create an account, do not submit content, and do not use features that require registration. If we learn that an account holder is under 18, we will suspend the account and delete associated personal data, subject to any legal retention obligation.

The Platform is operated from the United States and is primarily intended for U.S. users. If you access the Platform from outside the United States, you are responsible for complying with the laws of your jurisdiction.

3. Accounts

One account per person. Each individual may hold one active account. Operating duplicate or "sockpuppet" accounts is a violation of these Terms and may result in suspension or termination of all related accounts.

Accurate information. You agree to provide accurate, current information when you register and to keep your profile reasonably up to date. We do not verify identity, but material misrepresentation (such as impersonating another person) is a violation.

No sharing. Your account is personal to you. You may not share your login credentials, transfer your account, or let another person use it.

Account security. You are responsible for keeping your password confidential and for all activity that occurs under your account. Notify us immediately at support@carcaretruth.com if you suspect unauthorized access. We are not liable for losses caused by your failure to maintain reasonable password security.

Termination right. We reserve the right to suspend or terminate any account at any time, with or without notice, for violation of these Terms, for conduct that harms the Platform or other users, or as required by law (see §18).

New-account probation and rate limits. New accounts are subject to a probationary period during which posting frequency is limited, external URLs may be blocked, and new accounts originating from the same IP address may be flagged for review. These limits are administrative anti-spam measures, not penalties, and are lifted automatically as the account establishes a positive history. Current limits are published at /community-guidelines. Adjustments that materially restrict user posting rights are handled under §27 (material change); routine anti-spam threshold tuning is not material.

Reputation and trust tiers. The Platform uses a reputation system. Posting, commenting, voting, reporting, and other privileges may be expanded or restricted based on conduct on the Platform — for example, an account with a pattern of removed content may be subject to additional review of new posts. These determinations are conduct-based and viewpoint-neutral (§18). Reputation status carries no monetary value and is not transferable.

4. License to Use the Platform

Subject to your compliance with these Terms, CarCareTruth grants you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable license to access and use the Platform for your own non-commercial purposes — reading reviews, participating in the community, and shopping through affiliate links.

You may not:

Scrape, crawl, or otherwise extract data from the Platform by automated means, except as expressly permitted by our robots.txt or by separate written agreement.
Use bots, headless browsers, or automation tools to access the Platform.
Reverse engineer, decompile, or otherwise attempt to extract the source code of any part of the Platform.
Resell, redistribute, or otherwise commercially exploit Platform content — including editorial reviews, scores, and rubrics — without our prior written permission.
Interfere with, disrupt, or place an unreasonable load on the Platform, our infrastructure, or other users.
Use scraped or extracted Platform content to develop a competing product or service.

Permitted research and journalism use. Limited, good-faith use of publicly available Platform content for research, journalism, academic study, or commentary is permitted, provided you attribute CarCareTruth and link back to the original source page. This permission does not extend to bulk extraction, automated scraping, or republication of substantial portions of editorial content. It also does not extend to product data, images, prices, ratings, review counts, or other content sourced from the Amazon Product Advertising API or the Rainforest API (see §14 and §19); CarCareTruth lacks authority to sublicense that data.

5. AI-Assisted Editorial Content

CarCareTruth publishes reviews, scores, summaries, and recommendations about consumer auto-care products. We want you to understand exactly how that content is produced before you rely on any of it.

5.1 How our reviews are made. Our editorial process is an AI-assisted pipeline operating under human supervision by SierraNova Labs LLC. For each product, an AI system reads the manufacturer's published Safety Data Sheet (SDS), the product listing and specifications, and a curated set of public community sources (including but not limited to Reddit threads, forum posts, YouTube videos, and Amazon customer reviews). The AI drafts the editorial output — the TL;DR, "What it is," "Who should buy it," "How it performs," "Safety," "Bottom line," and FAQ sections — and computes the numeric CarCareTruth Score, Health score, Environment score, and PPE tier assignments from a published rubric available at /methodology. Outputs are then audited against the underlying SDS and source material before publication. PPE tier assignments are reviewed by human editorial staff prior to publication; the AI output is a draft, never the final decision. Every PPE tier that differs from the SDS Section 8 indication — whether higher or lower — receives human editorial review and a documented chemistry rationale before publication. Every editorially AI-assisted page carries a visible "AI-assisted, human-supervised" indicator. The final published content reflects our editorial judgment, not the AI's raw output.

5.2 AI can be wrong. AI systems make mistakes. They can misread an SDS field, misclassify a hazard code, misattribute a community claim, or produce summaries that sound confident but are inaccurate in detail. We audit for this, but no audit is perfect. By using CarCareTruth, you accept that any individual review, score, or recommendation on the site may contain errors and is offered as our good-faith interpretation of cited sources, not certified fact.

5.3 "Truth" is our methodology, not a warranty. Our brand stands for calibrated honesty: we publish our good-faith interpretation of cited sources, we disclose what we don't know, and we score products against a published rubric rather than a vibe. The Platform's name reflects our editorial methodology, not a warranty of factual accuracy on any specific page. The full scoring rubric for each category is published at /methodology and is available for inspection. We stand behind our methodology. We do not guarantee that every fact, score, or interpretation on the site is correct. Where we identify an error, we correct it.

5.4 Scores and verdicts are protected opinion. Every CarCareTruth score, rank, recommendation, comparative statement, award, "buy it," "skip it," or similar verdict is the publisher's subjective evaluative opinion, based on disclosed non-defamatory facts about the rubric, methodology, and source set. These statements are not, and are not intended to be, statements of objectively verifiable fact. Each score, verdict, or comparative statement is based on the methodology, rubric, weights, and source set publicly disclosed at /methodology and on the product page — non-defamatory facts that the reader can examine. A reader who disagrees with the underlying disclosed facts is free to reach a different conclusion from the same record. No CarCareTruth score, rank, or verdict is offered as, or should be read as, an undisclosed-fact assertion about a product's chemistry, performance, or safety. The underlying sources for any specific factual claim are maintained internally and available on request to brand owners and journalists. This framing applies whether the assessment is favorable or unfavorable to a product, brand, or category.

5.5 Reporting errors. If you believe a review, score, or safety claim on CarCareTruth is materially incorrect, email support@carcaretruth.com. Brands and manufacturers disputing a claim should use the same address; we maintain internal source records for each editorial decision and will review documented corrections in good faith. Brands and manufacturers may submit corrections at any time. CarCareTruth commits to issuing a written response within 30 days of receiving a documented dispute — that 30-day window is our maximum response time, not a takedown obligation. Scores and editorial content remain published during review unless CarCareTruth's editorial team determines that a correction or annotation is warranted, in which case the page is updated.

5.6 User-submitted product ratings are not editorial scores. Some product pages display user-submitted ratings (which may include effectiveness, health, environmental, or quality components) alongside CarCareTruth's editorial scores. Editorial scores are produced under §5.1 and reflect SierraNova Labs LLC's published rubric. User ratings are independent third-party content under 47 U.S.C. § 230(f)(3) and reflect only the views of the submitting user. CarCareTruth does not solicit any particular rating value, does not require any explanatory text, and does not adopt any user rating as its own. User ratings are visually distinguished from editorial scores, are not used as inputs to the CCT Score or any editorial sub-score, do not affect award eligibility, ranking, or sort order, and are subject to the same moderation rules as any other user content. User ratings are removed only for violation of these Terms or the Community Guidelines (for example, off-topic content, doxxing, or spam) — never because the rating is unfavorable to a product. CarCareTruth does not suppress, deprioritize in ranking or sort order, or selectively display user ratings on the basis of whether the rating is favorable or unfavorable to a product, brand, or sponsor. Removal decisions are logged and subject to the §18 appeal process, consistent with 16 C.F.R. § 465.4. CarCareTruth does not vouch for any individual user rating and disclaims liability for user-rating content to the maximum extent permitted by §21.2.

5.7 AI-generated FAQ and "what users say" summaries. Where a product page or other surface displays an FAQ section, a "what users say" digest, or any similar summary generated or aggregated by AI from user-submitted content, public community sources, or product Q&A, the section carries the §5.1 AI-assisted indicator. AI summaries are best-effort interpretations of underlying sources and may misattribute, paraphrase imperfectly, or omit context. The underlying sources are retained internally and reviewed under the §5.5 corrections process. "What users say" digests are mechanical aggregations (extracted quotations and paraphrases) of existing user-submitted content; CarCareTruth does not augment, fact-check, or add commentary that materially develops the underlying statements within the digest itself, and each excerpt remains attributable to its original submitter via the source-record under §5.5. Digests draw exclusively from independent third-party user submissions; operator-authored content under §17 does not appear on user-rating surfaces (§17) and is additionally excluded from the digest source set as a secondary safeguard.

6. Safety Data, PPE, and Hazard Information

CarCareTruth displays safety information about the chemical products we review — including Health scores, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) tier suggestions, Globally Harmonized System (GHS) hazard pictograms, hazard codes, California Proposition 65 warnings where applicable, and ingredient-level health and environment flags. This section explains what that information is, and more importantly, what it is not.

6.1 The manufacturer's SDS is the authoritative document. Every chemical product reviewed on CarCareTruth has — or should have — a Safety Data Sheet published by the manufacturer or its distributor. The SDS is the legally authoritative source of safety information for that product. CarCareTruth's safety panels are plain-language summaries derived from the SDS and the underlying ingredient chemistry. If you are buying a product for professional, commercial, occupational, or large-volume use, you must consult the manufacturer's original SDS directly and follow the manufacturer's instructions. Our summaries are written for a typical home user reading a product page; they are not a substitute for the SDS itself, the manufacturer's label, or any applicable occupational safety guidance.

6.2 Scores are informational, not advice. The CarCareTruth Score, Health score, Environment score, Quality score, Confidence rating, ingredient flags, and any related badges or labels on the site are informational summaries of publicly available data. They are not medical advice, occupational health advice, industrial hygiene guidance, OSHA-compliance determinations, chemical-engineering opinions, regulatory certifications, or product-safety endorsements. They are not a substitute for advice from a licensed physician, certified industrial hygienist, OSHA-qualified safety officer, environmental engineer, or any other qualified professional. If you have a health condition, a known sensitivity, or a workplace exposure context, consult a qualified professional before using a chemical product.

6.3 PPE tiers translate hazard codes — they don't certify safety. CarCareTruth displays PPE tier suggestions (typically: required, recommended, situational, or category omitted) for eyes, skin, lungs, and ventilation. These tiers are translations of GHS hazard codes and ingredient chemistry — not generic Section 8 precaution prose — into a tier suited to a typical home-detailer use case. They are not occupational safety guidance, they are not employer compliance instructions, and they do not satisfy any OSHA, NIOSH, or other workplace-safety obligation. If you are using a product in a workplace, your employer's hazard assessment, exposure-control program, and PPE program govern — not the badge on our product page.

The chemistry, not generic SDS Section 8 prose, determines the tier shown. Where SDS Section 8 contains broad legal-precaution language ("wear a respirator where exposure may occur," "use in a well-ventilated area") that is not supported by a corresponding health hazard code, the tier reflected on the product page reflects the chemistry analysis published in our rubric at /methodology, with our reasoning visible on the product page. In some cases CarCareTruth's tier reflects a level different from what SDS Section 8 prose alone would suggest — higher where H-codes and ingredient chemistry indicate hazard the Section 8 prose understates, lower where Section 8 prose is unsupported boilerplate. The decision logic is in the published rubric, and the chemistry basis for any difference is visible on the product page.

A PPE tier different from SDS Section 8 prose is a published editorial conclusion about how the hazard codes and ingredient chemistry translate to a typical home-detailer use case under our rubric. It is a statement about the rubric's analysis — not personal advice to any reader, and not directed to any particular user's circumstances. No reader-specific duty arises from the publication of a tier. The user-facing badge for a tier produced through this chemistry analysis is labeled "Beyond SDS". CarCareTruth's editorial voice describes PPE tiers as translations of hazard data, not as personal safety recommendations directed at any reader; no statement on a product page, tooltip, or "Beyond SDS" panel constitutes medical, occupational, or industrial-hygiene advice (see §6.2). The SDS tier is always a safe and reasonable choice. If you follow the SDS tier rather than a CarCareTruth lower tier, you are following a safe choice; no reliance on a CarCareTruth lower tier is ever required.

Do NOT rely on a CarCareTruth lower PPE tier — follow the SDS tier instead — in any of the following situations: (a) occupational, commercial, or large-volume use; (b) you have asthma, COPD, fragrance/chemical sensitivity, or any respiratory, skin, eye, or allergy condition that increases susceptibility; (c) you are pregnant or nursing; (d) children, pets, or other sensitive populations are present in the application space or on the treated surface; (e) you are working in an enclosed, poorly ventilated, or confined space (including an attached garage with the door closed); (f) the application is prolonged, repeated, or involves high product volume; (g) you are spraying, atomizing, or otherwise aerosolizing the product (versus wiping or directed application); (h) you are diluting or working from concentrate; (i) you are using the product on or near hot surfaces, open flame, or in conjunction with other chemicals (volatilization and chemical interaction can change exposure pathways); (j) any other condition outside typical home-detailer use. This list is illustrative, not exhaustive — if any factor outside typical home-detailer use applies, follow the SDS tier. In any of these situations, the SDS tier governs and the CarCareTruth tier should be treated as superseded.

It is not a determination that the SDS is wrong. A CarCareTruth lower tier reflects chemistry analysis for typical home use only and is not a license to ignore the SDS in any setting where the SDS controls.

6.4 No warranty on hazard information. Hazard pictograms, signal words, H-codes, P-codes, Proposition 65 status, ingredient lists, VOC values, flash points, pH values, and other chemistry fields displayed on CarCareTruth are sourced from manufacturer documents and may not reflect the most current version of the SDS. Manufacturers update SDS documents periodically; product formulations change; regional SKUs differ. CarCareTruth makes no warranty that any safety field on the site is current, complete, or accurate for the specific unit you purchase. Always read the label and the SDS that came with the product.

6.4a Proposition 65 warnings. Where CarCareTruth displays a "Prop 65 Warning" badge on a product page, the badge reflects the Proposition 65 warning status that the manufacturer or retailer has indicated for that product through public labeling, listing data, or regulatory filings. CarCareTruth is not the seller of any product, does not make an independent determination of whether a product is required to bear a Proposition 65 warning under Cal. Health & Safety Code § 25249.6, and does not provide the legally operative "clear and reasonable warning" required under the statute and its implementing regulations (27 C.C.R. § 25600 et seq.) — that warning is the responsibility of the seller and is delivered through the product's packaging, label, or point-of-sale signage. The absence of a Prop 65 badge on a CarCareTruth product page is not a representation that the product is Prop 65–free or that no warning applies; it means we have not located source data indicating a warning. If Proposition 65 status is material to your purchase decision, consult the current product label and the OEHHA Proposition 65 list directly.

6.4b General hazard-reference pages. Standalone reference pages on CarCareTruth that explain GHS hazard codes, ingredient categories, or chemistry concepts (for example, /hazard-codes, /chemicals, /safety) are general educational summaries. They are not product-specific and the disclaimers in §6.2 and §6.4 apply to them with equal force. Nothing on a reference page constitutes medical, occupational, or regulatory advice.

6.5 "No SDS on file" means we couldn't verify. Where a product page indicates that no SDS was located, the Health score reflects that absence of verifiable safety data — it is not an affirmative statement that the product is unsafe, nor an affirmative statement that the product is safe. It means we could not confirm what's in the bottle from a primary source. Treat such products with appropriate caution and consult the manufacturer directly if safety matters to you.

6.6 You assume the risk of your decisions. You are responsible for any product you purchase, use, store, transport, or dispose of, and for any decision you make in reliance on content displayed on CarCareTruth — including any decision about whether and how to wear protective equipment, ventilate a workspace, mix or apply a chemical, or allow others (including children, pets, or sensitive populations) near a product or treated surface. To the maximum extent permitted by California law, SierraNova Labs LLC and CarCareTruth disclaim all liability for personal injury, property damage, environmental harm, occupational claims, or other losses arising from your use of any product we review or your reliance on any information published on the site. We are not the manufacturer, importer, distributor, or seller of the products reviewed. This §6.6 does not limit liability for matters excluded under §21.4 (fraud, willful injury, gross negligence, violation of law), and any allocation of risk for reliance on a "Beyond SDS" tier is bounded by §21.4.

6.6a Specific PPE reliance. Where CarCareTruth publishes a PPE tier lower than the manufacturer's SDS, you acknowledge that the SDS tier remains a safe and reasonable choice and that following the lower CarCareTruth tier is your independent decision based on your own assessment of your specific use, environment, health condition, and the conditions enumerated in §6.3. CarCareTruth does not warrant that the lower tier is safe for your specific circumstances, and the lower tier is superseded by the SDS tier in any of the situations listed in §6.3. You assume the risk of any decision to follow a lower CarCareTruth tier in lieu of the SDS tier, subject to §21.4.

6.7 Brand index pages and nominative use. CarCareTruth publishes brand-index pages (for example, /brands/<brand-slug>) that list and link to products marketed under a given third-party trademark. These pages use the brand name and, where displayed, brand logos solely for nominative identification and editorial commentary under §7.3 and §19, do not imply affiliation with or endorsement by the trademark owner, and use only as much of the mark as is necessary for identification.

7. Editorial Opinion; Brand and Manufacturer Communications

7.1 Reviews are opinion based on sourced facts. CarCareTruth publishes editorial opinions about consumer auto-care products, based on (a) the manufacturer's published SDS and product documentation, (b) product specifications and listing data, and (c) public community sources including but not limited to Reddit, automotive forums, YouTube, and verified-purchase product reviews. Where we make a factual claim about a product, we maintain internal records of the sources that support it. Where we express an opinion (about effectiveness, value, fit-for-purpose, or comparative ranking), the opinion is our own and is offered as commentary protected under applicable U.S. law.

7.2 Disputes from brands or manufacturers. Manufacturers, brand owners, or distributors who believe a CarCareTruth review contains a factual inaccuracy should contact support@carcaretruth.com with the product page URL, the specific claim disputed, and any documentation supporting the correction (SDS revision, lab report, reformulation notice, etc.). We will review documented corrections in good faith and update or annotate the page where the evidence warrants. Disagreement with an opinion-based statement (a score, a "skip it" recommendation, a comparative ranking) is not a correctable factual error.

7.3 No endorsement by manufacturers. Unless a product page explicitly carries the "Sponsored" label described in §11, no review or score on CarCareTruth is endorsed, sponsored, reviewed, or approved by the product's manufacturer. Mentions of brand names, product names, trademarks, and logos are for identification and commentary purposes only and do not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by the trademark owner.

7.4 Community-source attribution and fair use of public commentary. CarCareTruth reviews incorporate brief quotations, paraphrases, and attributed claims drawn from public community sources, including Reddit threads, automotive forums, YouTube videos and transcripts, manufacturer Q&A, and verified-purchase consumer-review prose. Such use is transformative, accompanied by editorial analysis and rubric-based scoring, is limited to portions necessary for the comment or criticism being offered, and is made in reliance on 17 U.S.C. § 107 (fair use) and applicable nominative-fair-use doctrines. CarCareTruth retains an internal record (URL, timestamp, and the specific quoted excerpt — not a full copy of the source page or transcript) linking each attributed community claim to its source for editorial accountability and brand-dispute review under §7.2. Where a community source identifies a specific natural person, CarCareTruth's use is editorial commentary and news reporting on a matter of public concern, exempt from the publicity-rights statutes of every state whose law could reasonably apply, including Cal. Civ. Code § 3344(d) (news, public-affairs, and sports-broadcast exemption), N.Y. Civ. Rights Law §§ 50–51, 765 ILCS 1075/35 (Illinois Right of Publicity Act), and Tenn. Code § 47-25-1107. A rights-holder who believes a specific quotation exceeds fair use should use the §16 DMCA procedure; an individual depicted or quoted who believes their content has been misused outside fair use should contact legal@sierranovalabs.com.

7.5 Excerpts from Amazon customer reviews. Where a product page displays brief excerpts from publicly posted Amazon customer reviews, those excerpts are quoted in reliance on 17 U.S.C. § 107 (fair use) for the limited purposes of comment, criticism, and consumer-protection commentary, accompanied by editorial analysis on the same page. Such excerpts are attributed to "Amazon customer review" (not to CarCareTruth or any CarCareTruth user), are limited to portions necessary for the comment or criticism being offered, are not editorial content of CarCareTruth, and are not used as inputs to the editorial CCT Score or sub-scores. The reference to Amazon is nominative-fair-use identification of where the excerpt was publicly posted (see §19); it does not imply that Amazon endorses, reviews, has authorized, or has any commercial relationship with CarCareTruth's editorial use of the excerpt. Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. CarCareTruth makes no claim that Amazon, the Amazon Product Advertising API, or any data provider sublicenses Amazon customer-review prose to CarCareTruth or to any third party; such excerpts are not sourced via PAAPI, and PAAPI-sourced fields (price, rating, review count) are kept separate from the review-prose excerpts. To the extent Amazon's Associates Operating Agreement or Conditions of Use restrict copying of customer-review prose from amazon.com, CarCareTruth's excerpting is performed outside the Associates program (no Special Link is rendered in or adjacent to the excerpt, and no commission is paid on an action attributable to viewing the excerpt) and rests independently on 17 U.S.C. § 107. Removal requests by review authors should be directed to Amazon, which hosts the underlying content; CarCareTruth will additionally honor a documented removal request directed to legal@sierranovalabs.com.

8. Affiliate Links and Disclosure

8.1 What affiliate links are. Many product pages and posts on CarCareTruth contain affiliate links — links to retailers (primarily Amazon) and to manufacturer/brand-direct programs that pay SierraNova Labs LLC a commission on qualifying purchases. The commission comes out of the retailer's or manufacturer's margin; you pay the same price you would by going to the retailer or brand directly, with no markup or added fee.

8.1a Manufacturer-direct and other affiliate programs. Besides Amazon, CarCareTruth participates (or may participate) in manufacturer-direct and other brand-affiliate programs — for example, links to a manufacturer's own storefront or to an authorized distributor. Where those programs require their own disclosure language, we display it adjacent to the link. The commitments in §5.6 (no rating suppression), §8.3 (commissions never affect editorial), §8.4 (link behavior), §8.5 (no Associates links in UGC, email, or SMS), §11 (sponsored labeling), and §17 (operator-content rules) apply to every affiliate program we participate in, not only Amazon.

8.2 Required Amazon Associates disclosure. As an Amazon Associate, CarCareTruth earns from qualifying purchases. This statement appears on every page containing an Amazon affiliate link, adjacent to the link itself and visible without scrolling on any screen where a "buy" call-to-action appears (not buried in the footer), as required by the Amazon Associates Operating Agreement and the FTC Endorsement Guides at 16 C.F.R. Part 255. Prices and availability may have changed since the most recent update.

8.3 Commissions never affect what we publish. Affiliate commissions, and the existence or amount of any affiliate relationship, do not influence editorial scores (Quality, Health, Environment, Opinion, or the composite CCT score), product rankings, sort order, award eligibility, coverage decisions, or the content of reviews and notes. Scoring is governed by the published rubric for each product category and is independent of commercial relationships. A product earns the same score whether or not we earn anything when you buy it.

8.4 How affiliate links behave. Affiliate links open in a new tab (target="_blank") and carry rel="sponsored noopener noreferrer" to identify the link as paid and protect your browser session, per Google's link guidelines and the Amazon Associates Operating Agreement. Clicking takes you to the retailer's site; from that point forward the retailer — not CarCareTruth — controls the transaction.

8.5 User posts that mention products. When a user post tags or mentions a product, the resulting product chip links to the CarCareTruth product page for that item, not directly to a retailer. Product chips inside user posts are internal links to editorial pages; they do not carry an Amazon Associates tracking tag and do not pay a commission to the posting user or to CarCareTruth on click. The affiliate link is rendered only on the CarCareTruth product page itself. This architecture is intentional and is designed to comply with the Amazon Associates Operating Agreement's restrictions on placement of Associates links in user-generated content, email, offline materials, and cloaked or redirected URLs. CarCareTruth does not place Amazon Associates links in email, SMS, PDFs, offline materials, or behind any redirect or link-cloaking mechanism. Users do not earn affiliate commissions on links inside their posts; all affiliate revenue accrues to SierraNova Labs LLC.

8.6 Pinned posts and user "shop windows." Users may pin a post to the top of their profile, including posts that tag CCT-catalog products. Users do not earn affiliate commissions from clicks on tagged products in their pinned post or any other user post; all affiliate revenue accrues to SierraNova Labs LLC (see §8.5). Users who pin content describing a product they received free, at a discount, or in exchange for posting must comply with the user-side material-connection disclosure obligation in §11.5.

9. No Retailer Relationship — You Buy From the Retailer, Not From Us

9.1 What CarCareTruth is. CarCareTruth is a product-review and community publication operated by SierraNova Labs LLC. CarCareTruth is not a seller, manufacturer, distributor, importer, wholesaler, or retailer of any product reviewed on the site. We do not maintain inventory, process payments, ship merchandise, or handle returns, refunds, exchanges, warranties, or customer service.

9.2 Your purchase is with the retailer. When you click an affiliate link and buy, your transaction is governed entirely by the retailer's terms, privacy policy, return policy, and warranty terms. The sale contract is between you and that retailer. CarCareTruth is not a party and has no authority to modify, enforce, or interpret it.

9.3 Disputes about a purchase. If a product bought through a link on CarCareTruth arrives damaged, never arrives, doesn't match the description, breaks, or causes any other problem, contact the retailer that fulfilled your order. CarCareTruth cannot intervene in retailer transactions and is not liable for retailer conduct.

10. Price Accuracy

10.1 Prices come from the retailer. Prices and availability shown on CarCareTruth are pulled from third-party data providers (the Amazon Product Advertising API and the Rainforest API) that mirror retailer pricing. We refresh regularly, but not in real time. Each displayed price is labeled with the time it was last refreshed from the source API.

10.2 Checkout price controls. Prices change. The price displayed on CarCareTruth may differ from the price at checkout — sometimes higher, sometimes lower. The price the retailer charges at checkout is the price that applies to your order. CarCareTruth is not liable for price differences and does not warrant that any displayed price will be honored by the retailer.

10.3 Promotions, coupons, and shipping. Retailer promotions, coupons, Prime pricing, Subscribe & Save discounts, taxes, and shipping are determined by the retailer at checkout and are not (or are only partially) reflected in our price display.

10.4 Amazon Subscribe & Save and other recurring offers. Where a retailer link points to a product available via Amazon's Subscribe & Save program (or any other recurring offer), enrollment, renewal pricing, renewal terms, billing, cancellation, and dispute resolution for the recurring relationship are controlled by Amazon (or the applicable retailer) and governed by Amazon's terms — not CarCareTruth's. CarCareTruth is not the offering party for any recurring subscription, does not collect payment, and does not have authority to modify the recurring terms. Any disclosures required under California's Automatic Renewal Law (Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17600 et seq.) for Subscribe & Save or similar offers are the responsibility of the retailer presenting the offer.

11. Sponsored Content and Paid Placements

11.1 What "Sponsored" means here. A "Sponsored" post, product feature, or banner is a placement a brand has paid SierraNova Labs LLC to include. Sponsorship pays for visibility — placement, prominence, or inclusion in a feature surface — and nothing else. It does not purchase a score, a rank, an award, an editorial conclusion, or favorable language. A sponsored review is still a real review using the same rubric we apply to every other product in that category.

Structural separation. Sponsored placements are visually and semantically separated from editorial content; sponsored items do not appear in algorithmic ranking surfaces (homepage "top picks," category leaderboards, search relevance ranking, comparison roundups) unless the surface itself is labeled as sponsored. Editorial scoring and sponsorship sales are handled through separate internal workflows.

11.2 How sponsored content is labeled. Every sponsored placement carries a server-rendered, full-width amber banner at the top of the content: "Sponsored by [Brand] — CarCareTruth editorial scores not affected." The banner is rendered server-side (not by JavaScript) and cannot be hidden, dismissed, collapsed, or styled out of view by the user or any client-side script. This satisfies the "clear and conspicuous" standard of 16 C.F.R. § 255.5 and the FTC 2024 Final Rule on Endorsements and Testimonials. This labeling applies to every surface that hosts sponsored content — product pages, group posts, profile posts, future newsletter placements, and future discovery surfaces. Wherever the is_sponsored flag is true, the server-rendered banner appears; the flag is set exclusively by SierraNova Labs administrators per §11.3.

11.3 Only CarCareTruth can mark something Sponsored. The is_sponsored flag that drives the banner is set exclusively by SierraNova Labs administrators through an internal admin tool. Users cannot self-declare content as sponsored through any public UI or API. If you believe content is undisclosed paid promotion, report it to support@sierranovalabs.com — we will investigate and either add the disclosure or remove the content.

11.4 Sponsorship inquiries. Brands or agencies interested in sponsored placements may contact support@sierranovalabs.com. All sponsorships are governed by a written agreement; verbal or informal promises do not create a sponsorship.

11.5 User-side material-connection disclosure. Users who post on CarCareTruth must independently disclose any material connection to a product they post about — including receiving it free or at a discount, being employed by or affiliated with the brand, or receiving any compensation tied to the post. This obligation is independent of our Sponsored labeling system and is required by the FTC Endorsement Guides. Failure to disclose is a violation of these Terms and may result in content removal or account action.

11.6 Verified-brand and manufacturer accounts. CarCareTruth offers a verified-brand account program through which manufacturers, distributors, or brand owners can claim a profile representing their brand. A "Verified Brand" badge reflects evidence CarCareTruth reviewed at the time of verification; it is not a representation of current corporate ownership, trademark validity, distributor authorization, or any endorsement, authentication, or sponsorship by CarCareTruth of any product, claim, or transaction. CarCareTruth makes no warranty as to the identity, authority, or trademark rights of any verified account. Verified brand accounts (a) carry a permanent, server-rendered badge identifying them as a brand account; (b) cannot self-set the Sponsored flag on their own posts — sponsorship status is set only by SierraNova Labs administrators per §11.3; (c) are subject to all material-connection disclosure obligations in §11.5 with respect to any product they themselves manufacture, distribute, or have a financial interest in; and (d) cannot use the in-platform moderation report queue to dispute editorial scores, reviews, or commentary about their own products; the §5.5 / §7.2 brand-dispute channel is the exclusive route for such disputes. This restriction applies only to reports that target editorial content about the brand's products; verified-brand accounts retain ordinary §18 appeal rights with respect to moderation actions against their own posts. Verified brand accounts are governed by a separate written brand-account agreement in addition to these Terms. Verification evidence. Verification requires at minimum (a) control of an email address at the brand's primary domain, (b) a copy of the U.S. or other national trademark registration certificate (or written authorization from the registrant), and (c) a signed brand-account agreement. CarCareTruth reserves the right to require additional evidence and to revoke verification at any time. Verification evidence is retained for the badge's lifetime plus one year. The Verified Brand badge reflects a one-time identity check at the time of verification and is not a continuing representation; CarCareTruth does not audit ongoing trademark ownership, distributor authorization, or corporate status. Impostor or misidentified verification. If you are a brand owner and a Verified Brand account on the Platform purports to represent your brand without your authorization, contact legal@sierranovalabs.com; we will conduct expedited review within 5 business days, remove the verified badge pending review, and suspend the account on documented showing of unauthorized use. A trademark owner who believes a Verified Brand badge creates consumer confusion may also use the §19 trademark-complaint procedure.

11.7 No user-paid features at this time. CarCareTruth does not currently offer any paid feature, subscription, or recurring-charge mechanism; this paragraph is a forward-looking commitment, not a current offering. CarCareTruth does not currently charge users for any feature. If we introduce a paid subscription, recurring billing, or any "negative option" offer in the future (Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17600 et seq.; 16 C.F.R. Part 425 or any successor Negative Option Rule then in effect), enrollment will use affirmative consent at the time of purchase, the offer terms will be presented in a clear-and-conspicuous manner before charge, cancellation will be available through the same channel used for enrollment (a click-to-cancel mechanism), and we will send an acknowledgement of enrollment including the offer terms, cancellation policy, and cancellation method, in a form the consumer may retain (Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17602(a)(3)). Any such offer will be governed by a separate subscription agreement that supplements these Terms. Inclusion of a feature on a waitlist or roadmap is not a commitment that the feature will launch.

12. Future Advertising and Commercial Surfaces

12.1 What may appear later. CarCareTruth monetizes today through affiliate links and may later add display or programmatic ads, sponsored placements in discovery surfaces (homepage, category, search, feed), sponsored community posts, sponsored newsletter placements, and additional brand-direct affiliate programs.

12.2 Labeling commitments carry over. Whatever monetization surfaces we add, §8 (disclosure adjacent to every CTA), §11.2 (server-rendered, user-undismissable Sponsored banner), and §8.3 (commissions never affect editorial) apply. We will not introduce a paid surface that violates these commitments.

12.3 Notice of new commercial surfaces. Material changes to monetization — for example, introducing display ads — are material changes to these Terms under §27 and require advance notice.

13. Your Content and the License You Grant Us

13.1 What "Your Content" means

"Your Content" is anything you post, upload, or submit to CarCareTruth — profile info, posts, group posts and comments, replies, photos, ratings and reviews, FAQ submissions, reports, appeals, and items saved to your Garage, Storage Cabinet, or Accessory Kit.

13.2 You keep ownership

You own Your Content. Nothing in these Terms transfers ownership to us.

13.3 The license you grant CarCareTruth

By submitting Your Content, you grant SierraNova Labs LLC a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to host, store, reproduce, display, distribute, transmit, and create derivative works of Your Content for these purposes only: (a) operating and maintaining the Platform (caching, indexing, search, backups, format conversion, resizing); (b) promoting the Platform and its community — featuring a post on the homepage, in an email digest, on CarCareTruth's official social media, or in CarCareTruth's own press coverage about CarCareTruth, and aggregating Your Content into leaderboards, achievement displays, or other community-statistic surfaces; (c) letting other users interact with Your Content as the product is designed (quoting, replying, embedding a product card in a review you wrote); and (d) displaying Your Content on its associated product page where you have marked the content public (for example, public Product Notes shown in the "In the Wild" section of a product page, or Garage / Storage Cabinet / Accessory Kit entries shown on your public profile). The license is sublicensable solely to (i) our service providers (hosting, CDN, backup, analytics, image-safety scanning) acting on our behalf, and (ii) other users for in-Platform interactions and the standard platform features described in this section. Sublicenses to other users under clause (ii) survive deletion of the original post only to the extent the derivative interaction (quote, reply, embed) was created before deletion and remains on the Platform; they do not authorize new copies after deletion. It is not a license to resell Your Content, to train, fine-tune, or otherwise use Your Content as training data for any generative AI or large language model (whether operated by CarCareTruth or by any third party), or to redistribute Amazon-sourced product data, ASINs, images, or Product Advertising API content to any third party. For clarity, use of Your Content as inputs to inference-time classification, retrieval, moderation, search-indexing, or safety-screening systems operated by CarCareTruth or its processors is covered by license clauses (a) and (c) above and is not "training" within the meaning of this section.

13.4 What this license does NOT allow

We will not sell or license Your Content to a third party for that third party's commercial use outside CarCareTruth; use Your Content in third-party paid advertising in a way that suggests you personally endorse a product or brand (absent a separate written agreement); or claim authorship — your byline stays on your work. To the extent the license in §13.3 permits use of Your Content on the Platform or in platform marketing, you also waive any moral rights, droit moral, and right-of-publicity claims you might otherwise assert with respect to those specific licensed uses described in §13.3, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law. This waiver does not extend to use of your name or likeness in third-party paid advertising, which requires separate written consent as stated below. We will not use your name, voice, or likeness in paid third-party advertising without your separate written consent.

CarCareTruth's editorial contributions are reserved. CarCareTruth's editorial selection, arrangement, scoring, ranking, commentary, and presentation surrounding Your Content (including roundups, leaderboards, comparison views, and aggregated lists that incorporate Your Content) are CarCareTruth's own copyrightable contributions under 17 U.S.C. § 103. Nothing in this §13 grants you any rights in those contributions or in any derivative work CarCareTruth creates that incorporates Your Content together with editorial material.

13.5 How long the license lasts

The display license terminates when you delete the content or your account. A narrower retention license — limited to the three categories enumerated in this §13.5 (backups, moderation records, legally required retention) and to no other use — survives deletion for the periods stated: (i) encrypted database backups that age out within the Supabase plan's retention window (typically 7–14 days, matching the backup-retention section of the Privacy Policy) and in no event longer than thirty-five (35) days from deletion; (ii) moderation records on the basis described in the retention section of the Privacy Policy; and (iii) any longer period legally required — most notably content reported to NCMEC under 18 U.S.C. § 2258B (at least 90 days, or longer on law-enforcement request). If you delete a post we stop displaying it.

13.6 Your warranty to us

When you submit content, you represent — and are responsible if untrue — that you own it or have all rights needed to post it; that it does not infringe any third party's copyright, trademark, trade secret, privacy, publicity, or other rights; that it complies with these Terms and the Community Guidelines; and that any photo of identifiable people was taken with their knowledge in a context where they would reasonably expect public posting, or with permission; and that for any intimate, sexually suggestive, or medically sensitive image of an identifiable person, you have the depicted person's express, contemporaneous consent to public posting on the Platform. If a third-party claim is made against us because Your Content breached this warranty, you agree to be responsible for it to the extent the law allows (see §21).

13.7 Personal product spaces (Garage, Storage Cabinet, Accessory Kit)

Information you save in the Garage (vehicle profiles), Storage Cabinet (consumables), or Accessory Kit (durables and wishlist) is Your Content under §13.1 and is licensed to CarCareTruth solely under §13.3. Garage entries are user-supplied and not verified by CarCareTruth; product fitment, compatibility, or recommendation surfaces that key off Garage data are informational only and do not warrant compatibility with your specific vehicle, model year, or VIN — always confirm with the manufacturer or a qualified professional. Storage Cabinet and Accessory Kit entries are records of what you have told us you own or want; they are not an inventory we maintain, and rebuy reminders or wishlist-driven price alerts are informational, not advice. Affiliate-link disclosures under §8 apply on every surface inside these spaces where a buy CTA appears. CarCareTruth will not aggregate Garage, Storage Cabinet, or Accessory Kit data across users for advertising-targeting, look-alike modeling, or marketing-segmentation purposes, and will not share or sell such data with any advertiser, affiliate program, or data broker (as that term is defined in Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.99.80(d) (Delete Act)).

13.8 Content visibility, edit history, and removal tombstones

Visibility you choose, we honor. Content you mark private is visible only to you (and, where applicable, to other users you have approved). We use private content only as needed to operate, secure, and moderate the Platform. Public content — including public posts, public Product Notes, and public Garage / Storage Cabinet / Accessory Kit entries — is visible to anyone who can reach the Site.

Edits are public. When you edit a post or comment, the edited version replaces the prior version publicly and the post displays an "Edited" timestamp; we may, in our discretion, retain prior versions for moderation or legal-compliance purposes. Retained prior versions are not published or republished by CarCareTruth; access is limited to authorized SierraNova Labs personnel and law enforcement under lawful process.

Tombstones. When a post or comment is removed, a content-neutral placeholder may remain visible in its original location to preserve thread coherence. Tombstones identify only that content was removed; they do not state the reason, do not name the user, do not state or imply that the removed content violated any specific rule, do not identify the reporting party, and do not characterize the user. Removal may occur for many reasons, including author request, legal process, technical error, or platform housekeeping. The rule basis for any enforcement-driven removal is communicated privately to the affected user under the Statement of Reasons in §18, not in the public tombstone. Where a removal is the result of an enforcement decision that is reversed on appeal under §18, the tombstone is removed and the original content is restored to its position in the thread. No tombstone is rendered for content removed under §15 (CSAM or NCII); such content is removed without trace from the public surface.

14. Acceptable Use and Prohibited Content

The Community Guidelines at /community-guidelines describe what is allowed in detail. They are incorporated into these Terms by reference; violating them violates these Terms.

The following are prohibited in every context — including private groups, drafts, profile bios, image uploads, comments, and reports:

Spam. Bulk, automated, or repetitive posting; unsolicited commercial messages; affiliate link stuffing; coordinated sockpuppet engagement.
Impersonation. Pretending to be another real person, brand, or organization in a way that deceives others.
Child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Any sexual content involving anyone under 18. Zero tolerance — see §15.
Sexualized depictions of minors in any form — including real, AI-generated, computer-generated, drawn, stylized, or "cartoon" depictions, and any content that meets the definition in 18 U.S.C. § 2252A or 18 U.S.C. § 2256.
Non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) of any adult, including imagery obtained or shared without the depicted person's consent and "deepfake" sexual imagery of identifiable people.
Bestiality and other sexual content involving animals.
Doxxing. Posting another person's private information (home address, personal phone, workplace, financial records, government ID, precise location) without their consent.
Credible threats. Threats of violence or physical harm directed at a specific person or group.
Illegal goods. Facilitating the sale, exchange, or distribution of controlled substances, weapons, stolen goods, or other illegal items.
Coordinated inauthentic behavior. Fake-account networks; manipulating votes, reactions, follows, or ratings; buying or selling accounts.
Ban evasion. Creating a new account to circumvent a prior suspension or termination, or helping someone else do so.
Platform abuse. Defeating Platform security, scraping in violation of robots.txt or rate limits, or interfering with other users.
Commercial data extraction. Scraping, harvesting, or systematically copying product listing data, pricing, ratings, review counts, or other Amazon Product Advertising API–sourced content displayed on the Platform for republication or redistribution. CarCareTruth holds Amazon-sourced data under a license that does not permit sublicensing to users or third parties. The display of Amazon-sourced data on the Platform is provided to end users solely for personal browsing of the Platform; no license to the underlying Amazon data is granted by these Terms (see §19, third-party product data).

You must be 18. CarCareTruth is adults-only. If we learn an account was created by someone under 18, we will close it and delete the associated data.

User-side safety tools. The Platform provides the following user-side safety tools as features of the service, subject to §21.1 ("AS IS" / "AS AVAILABLE") and the limitations in §21; availability of any particular tool may change as the Platform evolves under §27a: (a) block another user, which prevents the blocked user from viewing the blocker's profile, following, commenting, or messaging; (b) report any post, comment, profile, group, or message via the in-app report button; (c) appeal any moderation action taken against your account or content at /appeals; and (d) adjust profile and per-note privacy at /settings/privacy. Use of these tools is encouraged. Abusive reporting — coordinated, retaliatory, or knowingly false reports — is itself a violation of these Terms.

15. CSAM — Zero Tolerance and How We Respond

CarCareTruth has zero tolerance for child sexual abuse material. Even though the Platform is adults-only and centered on car care, photos taken in homes, driveways, and garages can occasionally capture children — so we run the same pipeline a much larger platform would.

Pre-upload screening. Every image is screened automatically before publication, using Microsoft Azure Content Safety (and over time additional services such as Thorn Safer). Flagged uploads are blocked, no public post is created, and the matter is routed to internal review.

If CSAM is identified — through screening, a user report, or our moderation — (1) the content is removed from public view immediately, typically within minutes; (2) the submitting account is banned, and appeals are summarily denied where CSAM is confirmed; (3) we report to NCMEC via the CyberTipline as soon as reasonably possible after confirmation, as required by 18 U.S.C. § 2258A(a)(1); (4) we preserve the content and associated account data as evidence for 90 days (or longer if law enforcement so instructs) under 18 U.S.C. § 2258B, and provide it to law enforcement on lawful request; and (5) we refer directly to law enforcement when severity warrants.

Reporting CSAM. Use the in-app report button or email support@sierranovalabs.com with the URL. You can also report directly to NCMEC at https://report.cybertip.org.

15.1 Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery (NCII) — Take It Down Act compliance

Non-consensual intimate imagery — including AI-generated or "deepfake" sexual imagery of identifiable adults — is prohibited under §14 and is removed on report. To request removal, email support@sierranovalabs.com (or legal@sierranovalabs.com) with the subject line "NCII Removal Request", and include the elements required by the Take It Down Act: (1) a physical or electronic signature of the identifiable individual or a person authorized to act on their behalf; (2) identification of, and information reasonably sufficient to permit us to locate, the intimate visual depiction (including the URL); (3) a brief statement that the identifiable individual has a good-faith belief that the intimate visual depiction was published without the consent of the identifiable individual; and (4) information reasonably sufficient to permit us to contact the requester (name, email, and where applicable, a phone number). We will use reasonable efforts to remove confirmed NCII within 48 hours of our receipt of a valid request, consistent with the Take It Down Act (Pub. L. 119-12 (2025)). If a request lacks information necessary for CarCareTruth to locate the imagery or verify the requester, we will request that information; the 48-hour statutory window runs as provided by the Take It Down Act and its implementing regulations.

15.2 Underage-user reports

Reports that an account holder is under 18 are handled on a priority basis and reviewed as soon as reasonably practicable; underage-account reports take priority over routine moderation queues. CarCareTruth does not commit to a specific response time, but treats these reports as time-critical. A "credible report" includes any report supported by reasonable evidence (e.g., the account's own statements, photographs, parent or guardian submission). A separate COPPA Account Deletion path is available to parents and guardians at privacy@carcaretruth.com (subject "Under-18 Account — Parental Notice") — content and personal data associated with a confirmed under-13 account are deleted in line with 16 C.F.R. § 312.10. This priority handling is an operational practice, not a contractual SLA giving rise to damages.

16. Copyright — DMCA Notice, Counter-Notice, Repeat-Infringer Policy

CarCareTruth complies with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512. If content on CarCareTruth infringes your copyright, send us a takedown notice; we act on properly formed notices promptly.

16.1 Designated DMCA agent

CarCareTruth has registered a DMCA designated agent with the U.S. Copyright Office under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(2). The designated agent of record is:

Agent: DMCA Agent
Organization: SierraNova Labs LLC
Mailing address: SierraNova Labs LLC, c/o United States Corporation Agents, Inc., 500 N Brand Blvd, Suite 890, Glendale, CA 91203-3398
Phone: (559) 777-9019
Email: dmca@carcaretruth.com

The registration is current with the U.S. Copyright Office DMCA Designated Agent Directory and is also published at /dmca. Direct copies of the registration are available through the Copyright Office's public directory at https://dmca.copyright.gov/dmca/search.html.

16.2 How to send a takedown notice

Send notices to dmca@carcaretruth.com. To be valid under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3), your notice must include: (1) your signature (physical or electronic, or that of an authorized agent); (2) identification of the copyrighted work; (3) identification of the infringing material and its specific URL on carcaretruth.com, sufficient to permit CarCareTruth to locate the material; (4) your name, address, phone, and email; (5) a good-faith statement that the use is not authorized; and (6) a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the notice is accurate and that you are (or are authorized to act for) the copyright owner. Incomplete notices are returned and not acted on until complete.

No duty to monitor (17 U.S.C. § 512(m)). CarCareTruth has no duty to monitor user content or to affirmatively seek facts indicating infringement, but will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to material upon obtaining actual knowledge or awareness of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent. Nothing in §18 (Moderation) creates a general monitoring obligation under §512.

16.3 Counter-notice — if your content was removed by mistake

Submit counter-notices to dmca@carcaretruth.com. A valid counter-notice must include: (1) your signature; (2) identification of the removed content and the URL where it appeared; (3) a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you have a good-faith belief the removal was a mistake or misidentification; (4) your name, address, phone, and email; and (5) consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for the district where you live — or, if you are outside the United States, the United States District Court for the Central District of California — and agreement to accept service of process from the original complainant.

If your counter-notice is valid, we will promptly provide the original complainant with a copy of the counter-notice, including all statutorily required elements, and inform the complainant that we will replace the removed material in not less than 10 nor more than 14 business days following our receipt of the counter-notice, unless the complainant first notifies us that it has filed an action seeking a court order to restrain the alleged infringer, as required by 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(2)(B)–(C).

16.4 Repeat-infringer policy

If we receive three valid DMCA takedowns against you within any rolling 12-month period, your account will be permanently terminated. A counter-noticed strike remains on the rolling 12-month count by default. CarCareTruth retains discretion under §512(i) to disregard or remove a strike where it determines, on documented evidence, that the underlying notice was materially false, abusive, or filed in bad faith under §512(f), or where the original complainant fails to file a court action under §512(g)(2)(C) within the statutory window. Any such determination is logged at the time it is made, and strike logs, strike-removal logs, and §512(f) determinations are retained for no less than seven years. CarCareTruth may also decline to count a strike in documented cases of demonstrable bad-faith or knowingly materially misrepresented notices under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f); such decisions are logged. CarCareTruth retains discretion to terminate accounts for repeat infringement at any time in "appropriate circumstances" as that phrase is used in 17 U.S.C. § 512(i), including (without limitation) egregious cases involving deliberate or large-scale infringement, even where the three-strike threshold has not been reached.

16.5 Bad-faith notices

Sending a false DMCA notice violates 17 U.S.C. § 512(f). We may decline to act on notices we determine in good faith are abusive, and may bar repeat senders of bad-faith notices.

17. Platform-Authored Operator Content Disclosure

SierraNova Labs LLC operates a subset of accounts on CarCareTruth itself, separate from independent third-party users. These are internally called "Starter Content" accounts. We disclose this clearly so you are not misled about who is speaking, consistent with the FTC's 2024 Final Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials (16 C.F.R. Part 465).

Posts and comments from these accounts carry a permanent server-rendered visible label that identifies the post as operator-authored — for example, "By CarCareTruth Staff" or "Operator post — AI-assisted" — adjacent to every post, comment, or reply, in a manner that is unavoidable and consistent with 16 C.F.R. § 465.5. The account holder cannot remove the label.
These accounts never post product ratings, star reviews, testimonial-style endorsements, or any consumer-review-shaped content on product pages. Operator content does not appear in any UI surface where a reasonable consumer would attribute it to an independent reviewer. Operator accounts may not post content styled, formatted, or framed as a consumer review, hands-on test result, ownership testimonial, or first-person product experience (e.g., "I tried this and…", "works great on my truck"); operator content uses publisher voice. Operator-authored entries that appear on product pages in any Q&A, FAQ, or "community answer" format carry the operator-account label inline with the entry, regardless of surface.
Operator content is excluded from aggregate ratings, leaderboards, trophy counts, "verified purchase" cues, and other community-statistic surfaces, so it never inflates a product's rating or a user's standing.
Operator accounts cannot file moderation reports or appeals against real users, cannot vote on real-user content, and do not receive structured-data author markup (schema.org/Person, Review) that would imply an independent human reviewer. Where the Platform exposes a multi-axis user-rating mechanism on product pages (e.g., effectiveness, health, environmental, or quality ratings), operator accounts are programmatically excluded from submitting any value in those columns. Operator accounts also do not earn or display reputation-tier badges that imply community-earned standing.
SierraNova Labs LLC is the speaker of record for everything these accounts publish. Some operator content is generated with AI tooling under SierraNova Labs LLC's direct human oversight; the AI-assisted label described above applies to all such content.
Operator content is not represented as the personal experience of any human reviewer. No post from an operator account is offered as a consumer's lived experience, hands-on test, or testimonial.

Operator-account data is handled the same as any other account under the Privacy Policy at /privacy, with the additional disclosure features described in this §17.

18. Moderation, Suspension, and Termination

Our right to moderate. We may, in our reasonable discretion, remove or restrict content, limit a post's visibility, suspend an account, or terminate an account for: violation of these Terms or the Community Guidelines; behavior that harms other users, third parties, or the Platform; legal or regulatory requirements (including law-enforcement requests we must honor); extended inactivity (24+ months, with 30 days' email notice before reclamation); or confirmed CSAM (§15). We aim to give you notice and the specific rule violated, except where doing so is impractical (active abuse), would interfere with a law-enforcement investigation, or would expose another user to harm.

Content-based, viewpoint-neutral framing. Moderation decisions are based on conduct and content under these Terms and the Community Guidelines, applied without regard to the political or ideological viewpoint expressed. (Nothing in this paragraph limits our authority to act on spam, undisclosed paid promotion, coordinated inauthentic behavior, or other §14 violations regardless of the viewpoint accompanying them.) Our moderation is the exercise of editorial discretion by a private publisher and is itself expressive activity protected under the First Amendment, per Moody v. NetChoice, LLC, 144 S. Ct. 2383 (2024). CarCareTruth is below the user thresholds in Texas HB 20 and Florida SB 7072.

Appeals. You can appeal at /appeals. Appeals resulting from suspension or termination are reviewed by a human, not an automated system.

Statement of reasons (EU users — DSA Article 17). Where required by Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, we provide a statement of reasons identifying the rule that was the basis for action, the date and time of the decision, whether the decision was reached by automated means in whole or in part and the role of any human reviewer, and your appeal options — in the in-app notification and, where appropriate, by email. Where DSA Article 24 requires submission to the European Commission's DSA Transparency Database, we additionally submit the statement of reasons there.

Trusted flaggers (DSA Article 22). Notices submitted by entities awarded trusted-flagger status by a Digital Services Coordinator under DSA Article 22 are processed with priority and without undue delay. CarCareTruth does not itself award trusted-flagger status; any such status is conferred by the relevant Digital Services Coordinator.

Out-of-court dispute settlement (EU users — DSA Article 21). EU users who disagree with our final appeal decision may refer the dispute to a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body under Article 21. This does not deprive you of your right to go to court.

Single point of contact (EU users). Our single point of contact for EU users and authorities under DSA Articles 11 and 12 is support@sierranovalabs.com (English preferred).

Termination by you. You may terminate your account at any time at /settings/account. Some data may be retained as required by law or as described in the Privacy Policy (for example, NCMEC-reported content under 18 U.S.C. § 2258B, or tax records).

Recommender systems (DSA Article 27). Where the Platform uses recommender systems to order content (homepage feeds, leaderboards, search results, category roundups), the main parameters are: editorial score and award status, recency, category match, and — for logged-in users — explicit signals such as Garage vehicles and follows. We do not use behavioral profiling, off-Platform tracking, or covert engagement signals for ranking. The published methodology at /methodology describes how editorial scores are computed.

Automated moderation decisions. Some moderation decisions are made by automated systems. To handle volume and to respond to CSAM, NCII, and other high-harm content within legal timelines, we use automated tools — including AI-driven content review and rule-based filters — to remove, hide, or restrict the visibility of content, and to flag accounts for human review. Content that an automated CSAM scan flags is held in quarantine and reviewed by a human child-safety reviewer before any law-enforcement reporting or permanent action; once confirmed by human review, CSAM removal is not appealable in light of 18 U.S.C. § 2258A. Quarantine of automated-flagged content pending human review is itself a moderation action subject to the appeal process above. Automated removal or restriction of other content is subject to the appeal process above, where a human reviews the decision. Our automated systems operate under a published trust gradient that applies more conservative defaults to new and low-reputation accounts and biases toward human review for established accounts. On appeal, you may request a plain-language summary of the basis for the original decision; we will provide one unless doing so would expose another user, compromise an active investigation, or reveal proprietary detection methodology. For automated decisions, the statement of reasons identifies (i) the policy or rule applied, (ii) the categories of signals the automated system relied on (e.g., text-classifier label, image-classifier label, account-age signal, prior-violation signal), and (iii) the role of any human reviewer.

Groups and delegated moderation. Each Group on the Platform may be operated by a Group Owner and one or more Group Moderators ("Group Staff"). Group Staff act under our Community Guidelines and these Terms but are not employees, agents, or contractors of SierraNova Labs LLC; their decisions within a Group reflect their independent judgment. SierraNova Labs's decision not to select, train, supervise, or compensate Group Staff is itself an exercise of editorial and operational discretion by an interactive computer service under 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1) and is not a basis for any claim of negligent undertaking, negligent entrustment, or negligent failure to train; SierraNova Labs assumes no duty to Group members or third parties to staff, train, or supervise Group Staff, and expressly disclaims any such duty under Cal. Civ. Code § 1714 and Restatement (Second) of Torts § 324A. Group Staff act for the Group and its members, not for SierraNova Labs LLC. SierraNova Labs does not select, train, supervise, compensate, schedule, or direct Group Staff; does not control the means or manner of their moderation within a Group; and does not ratify their decisions. Group Staff do not have authority to bind SierraNova Labs, to make representations on its behalf, or to access user data beyond what any Group member can see. The "Group Moderator" and "Group Owner" labels identify a role within the Group only and do not represent that the role-holder speaks for, or acts on behalf of, SierraNova Labs. You acknowledge that Group Staff are independent volunteers, that any communication you have with Group Staff is between you and that individual, and that SierraNova Labs is not liable for Group Staff conduct except where its own conduct (failure to act on a properly-filed platform report under §14) is independently tortious. Platform-level moderation, appeals, and account termination remain with SierraNova Labs, and you may appeal any Group Staff action at /appeals. Disputes between a user and a Group Owner or Group Moderator arising from their conduct on the Platform are not Disputes between the user and CarCareTruth within the meaning of §24. To the extent a user names CarCareTruth in such a dispute, the user's claims against CarCareTruth remain subject to §24, and the Group Staff member may invoke §24 as a third-party beneficiary at their election. Group privacy commitments. A Group's visibility setting is either public or private. Once a Group is set to private, it cannot later be changed back to public, because members posted with a reasonable expectation that the audience would not later be expanded. A public Group may be changed to private; existing members are notified.

Effect of termination. Upon termination, your right to access the Platform ends immediately. We may, in our discretion, remove or anonymize content you posted. The following sections survive termination: §13 (Your Content license for content posted before termination), §16 (DMCA — notices, counter-notices, repeat-infringer policy), §19 (Intellectual Property), §20 (Privacy, to the extent legally required for data-subject rights and retention obligations), §21 (Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability), §22 (Indemnification), §24 (Dispute Resolution, including the arbitration agreement, class-action waiver, McGill carve-out, mass-arbitration protocol, and CarCareTruth's IP and anti-abuse equitable-relief carve-out in §24.5a), §25 (Severability), §26 (No Waiver; Entire Agreement; Assignment), §27 (Changes to These Terms), §27b (Government and Law-Enforcement Requests), and this §18.

19. Intellectual Property — Our Content

Our content. CarCareTruth owns, or has the rights to use, everything we put on the Platform that is not yours — including the CarCareTruth name and logo, the "CarCareTruth Score" and "Health Score" branding, all editorial reviews, scoring rubrics, methodology, photography we commissioned, software, and the look-and-feel of the site. All such content is protected by copyright, trademark, trade-secret, and other intellectual-property laws. Nothing in these Terms transfers any ownership interest in our content to you.

Your content. You retain ownership of the content you post (see §13).

Feedback. If you send us suggestions, ideas, or feedback about the Platform, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free license to use it without obligation of confidentiality or compensation. We will not, however, attribute feedback to you publicly without your consent.

Third-party product data (Amazon Product Advertising API, Rainforest API, and similar). Product data, images, prices, ratings, review counts, and brand assets displayed on CarCareTruth that are sourced from third-party APIs — including the Amazon Product Advertising API and the Rainforest API — are licensed to CarCareTruth under separate agreements and are not sublicensed to you. Your license under §4 to view this content on the Platform does not include any right to scrape, cache, extract, redistribute, or commercially exploit the third-party product data, and CarCareTruth makes no representation that it has authority to sublicense any third-party product data to you. Prices and ratings displayed are as of the time CarCareTruth last refreshed them from the source API and may be out of date; the current values on the retailer's site control.

Safety Data Sheets and manufacturer documentation — fair use. Quotations and excerpts from third-party Safety Data Sheets, product labels, and manufacturer documentation are used on CarCareTruth for transformative purposes of news reporting, comment, criticism, and consumer-protection commentary, accompanied by editorial analysis that does not substitute for the original SDS, in reliance on 17 U.S.C. § 107 (fair use). Where a manufacturer or rights-holder believes a specific use exceeds fair use as to a specific page, the §16 DMCA procedure applies.

Trademark complaints. Trademarks on CarCareTruth fall into two categories: (a) marks owned or licensed by SierraNova Labs LLC (including the "CarCareTruth," "CarCareTruth Score," and "Health Score" marks); and (b) third-party marks identifying the products we review (Amazon, Meguiar's, Chemical Guys, and other product/brand names and logos). Third-party marks are used only for identification and commentary in the nominative-fair-use sense and do not imply affiliation with or endorsement by the trademark owner. Amazon, the Amazon logo, and related marks are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates; their use on the Platform is for nominative fair use only. If you are a trademark owner who believes a use on the Platform infringes your mark or creates consumer confusion, send a written complaint to legal@sierranovalabs.com identifying (1) the mark and the registration (if any), (2) the specific page URL where the alleged infringement appears, (3) the basis for the complaint, and (4) your contact information. Trademark complaints are reviewed on the merits and are handled separately from the DMCA copyright procedure in §16; CarCareTruth is not obligated to act within DMCA timelines on trademark complaints and will review on a commercially reasonable schedule.

20. Privacy

The full Privacy Policy is published at /privacy and is incorporated into these Terms by reference. The summary below is provided so you can understand the key facts before agreeing to these Terms; it does not replace the Privacy Policy.

20.1 What we collect

When you create and use a CarCareTruth account, we collect:

Account data: your email address, username, year of birth (used to confirm you are 18 or older), and any profile information you choose to add (bio, avatar, location, password — passwords are stored only as a hashed value, never in plain text). For users who sign in with Google, we also receive the Google account identifier and the email Google asserts, used solely to authenticate you.
Content data: the posts, comments, reactions, votes, follows, blocks, group memberships, garage entries (vehicle profiles), storage-cabinet entries (consumables), accessory-kit entries (durables and wishlist items), product ratings, and FAQ submissions you create on the Platform.
Technical data: your IP address (used only for moderation, rate limiting, and fraud detection — never sold), your device and browser type, and the session cookies and authentication tokens we need to keep you signed in.
Communications preferences: your email and notification settings, and any data-subject-access requests (DSARs) you submit.

We do not collect precise geolocation, device identifiers beyond what your browser sends with normal requests, browsing history outside CarCareTruth, contact lists, or biometric, health, or financial information.

20.2 What we do with it, and what we never do

We use this data to operate the site, keep your account secure, moderate the community, send you the emails you have asked for, and attribute affiliate clicks for revenue purposes.

We do not sell your personal information to third parties. We do not share it for any third party's direct marketing.

We share data only with the service providers we need to run the Platform — hosting and database (Supabase, Vercel), email delivery (Resend), child-safety image scanning (Azure Content Safety), staff email (Google Workspace), and analytics/error monitoring (Plausible, plus PostHog and Sentry when active — PostHog is gated on EU/UK consent and is switch-ready, not enabled at MVP). Each of these providers is bound by a standard Data Processing Agreement (DPA). The full list, and what each one receives, is in the Privacy Policy.

We use cookies only for the things you would expect: keeping you signed in, remembering your recent searches and draft posts, and — only after consent for EU and UK visitors — running analytics. We do not run advertising cookies. The Privacy Policy lists every cookie.

20.3 Your rights

You can change your profile, your email preferences, and your notification settings at any time from your account settings.

California residents have rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (as amended by the CPRA), including: the right to know what we have collected and the categories of sources and third parties involved; the right to correct inaccurate personal information we maintain about you; the right to delete personal information; the right to limit the use and disclosure of sensitive personal information; the right to non-discrimination for exercising any of these rights; and the right to opt out of any "sale" or "sharing" of personal information as those terms are defined under the CPRA. We do not sell your personal information, do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and do not engage in any data activity that meets the CPRA definition of "sale" or "share" — so the opt-out is not operative for us, but the right is preserved. California residents may also submit a "Shine the Light" request (Civil Code § 1798.83) by emailing privacy@carcaretruth.com. See the Privacy Policy for the full process and for the canonical list of personal information categories we collect, sources, recipients, retention periods, and the procedures for exercising each right.

EU, EEA, and UK residents have rights under the GDPR and UK GDPR — including access, rectification, erasure, portability, restriction, and objection — and the right to lodge a complaint with your national data-protection authority. CarCareTruth is operated from the United States and primarily targets U.S. users, but we honor these rights for any EU/EEA/UK resident who reaches the Platform. We also meet the relevant baseline obligations of the EU Digital Services Act, including per-decision statements of reasons (see §18). The Privacy Policy covers the full GDPR / UK-GDPR / DSA detail and how to exercise each right.

20.4 Deletion and retention

You can delete your account at any time from /settings/account. When you do:

Your username is anonymized immediately (replaced with a generic placeholder).
Your profile data, posts, comments, and other personal content are deleted or anonymized within 30 days.
Backups containing your data age out within the configured Supabase backup-retention window (typically 7–14 days of daily snapshots, with point-in-time recovery within the configured PITR window where enabled). See Privacy Policy §4.6 and §8.3.
A narrow set of records is retained where the law requires it — most notably, any content reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) is retained as required by 18 U.S.C. § 2258B, regardless of any deletion request; certain financial and tax records are retained for up to seven years.

Full retention periods for every data category are in the Privacy Policy.

21. Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability

21.1 No Warranty — "AS IS"

The Platform, all editorial content (including reviews, ratings, scores, rubrics, Health Score data, PPE recommendations, and ingredient flags), and all user-generated content are provided "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE," without warranty of any kind, express or implied. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranties arising from course of dealing or usage of trade.

We do not warrant that the Platform will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, or that any content (including product safety information) is complete, current, or accurate. Product reviews are editorial opinion, not professional advice. Always read the manufacturer's label and Safety Data Sheet before using any chemical product (see §6).

21.2 No Liability for User Content

We are not the author of, and do not endorse, user-generated content. Users post at their own risk. CarCareTruth is an interactive computer service under 47 U.S.C. § 230(f)(2). With respect to information provided by another information content provider, CarCareTruth is not treated as the publisher or speaker of that information under § 230(c)(1). Nothing in these Terms — including our exercise of editorial discretion under §18, our moderation under the Community Guidelines, our content-screening under §15, or our DMCA procedures under §16 — shall be construed as an undertaking, voluntary or otherwise, to monitor, edit, or assume publisher responsibility for user content. We recognize that §230 does not extend to federal intellectual-property claims, federal criminal law, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or sex-trafficking claims under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1591 and 2421A (FOSTA-SESTA), and we comply with those laws. CarCareTruth's first-party editorial content is independently protected under the First Amendment and the law of opinion (see §5 and §7); §230's user-content immunity is in addition to, not in lieu of, those protections.

21.3 Liability Cap

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, CarCareTruth's total liability to you for any and all claims arising out of or relating to these Terms or your use of the Platform is limited to the greater of (a) one hundred U.S. dollars (US$100) or (b) the total amount you paid us, if any, in the twelve (12) months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

We are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages — including lost profits, lost data, loss of goodwill, or business interruption — even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages. The cap in this §21.3 does not apply to liability that cannot lawfully be capped under California law, including the categories enumerated in §21.4 (fraud, willful injury, gross negligence, violation of law).

21.4 California Civil Code §1668 Carve-Out

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes our liability for: (a) fraud or intentional misrepresentation; (b) willful injury to the person or property of another; (c) gross negligence, as that doctrine is recognized in California (see City of Santa Barbara v. Superior Court, 41 Cal. 4th 747 (2007)); (d) violation of law, whether willful or negligent; or (e) any other liability that, under California Civil Code §1668 or other applicable law, cannot lawfully be limited or excluded. The disclaimers and liability cap in this §21 apply only to the maximum extent permitted by law.

22. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless CarCareTruth, SierraNova Labs LLC, and our officers, employees, contractors, and agents from and against third-party claims for damages, liabilities, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) brought by a third party and arising out of or relating to:

Content you posted, uploaded, or transmitted through the Platform — including any third-party claim that your content infringes intellectual-property rights, violates publicity or privacy rights, defames a third party, or otherwise breaches the rights of others;
Your material breach of these Terms or the Community Guidelines that exposes us to a third-party claim;
Your fraudulent, willful, or knowingly unlawful conduct directed at the Platform or another user that exposes us to a third-party claim.

Carve-outs (this §22 does not apply to):

Any claim arising from CarCareTruth's own negligence, gross negligence, willful misconduct, fraud, or violation of law;
Any claim that would, under California Civil Code §1668 or other applicable law, be void if shifted to you;
Direct claims between you and CarCareTruth (this is a third-party-claim indemnity only);
Any claim arising from CarCareTruth's handling of DMCA notices or counter-notices under §16.

Cap on your indemnification obligation. Your total liability under this §22 for any matter or series of related matters is capped at the greater of (a) one thousand U.S. dollars (US$1,000) or (b) the total amount you paid us in the twelve (12) months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim. This cap does not apply to claims arising from your fraud, willful misconduct, or violation of criminal law.

You have no duty to defend CarCareTruth. CarCareTruth controls its own defense at its own expense and may seek reimbursement only of reasonable defense costs actually incurred, subject to the §22 cap. We may, at our own expense, assume the exclusive defense and control of any matter otherwise subject to reimbursement by you, and you agree to cooperate reasonably with our defense. You may not settle any claim affecting our rights without our prior written consent, which will not be unreasonably withheld. For clarity, CarCareTruth's right to seek equitable relief under §24.5a is independent of and not limited by this §22; nothing in this §22 waives CarCareTruth's right to bring or recover in such actions, and CarCareTruth's pursuit of relief under §24.5a does not itself trigger any indemnification obligation under this §22.

23. Force Majeure

We are not liable for any failure or delay in performance caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including acts of God, natural disasters, fire, flood, earthquake, pandemic or public-health emergency, war, terrorism, civil unrest, labor disputes, government action, internet or telecommunications failure, third-party service outages (including cloud, hosting, payment-processor, or email-provider outages), cyber-attacks, or denial-of-service events. If a force-majeure event prevents us from performing for more than 60 days, either party may terminate the affected portion of these Terms without liability.

24. Dispute Resolution; Arbitration; Class-Action Waiver

READ THIS SECTION CAREFULLY. IT REQUIRES YOU TO ARBITRATE MOST DISPUTES INDIVIDUALLY AND WAIVES YOUR RIGHT TO A JURY TRIAL AND TO PARTICIPATE IN A CLASS ACTION, EXCEPT AS DESCRIBED BELOW.

24.1 Informal Resolution First

Before filing a formal proceeding, you agree to first contact us at legal@sierranovalabs.com and describe the dispute in writing. We will try to resolve the dispute informally within 60 days of receipt. Most disputes can be resolved this way. All applicable statutes of limitations applicable to either party's claims are tolled during the 60-day informal-resolution period, so this section does not shorten either party's time to file.

24.2 Binding Arbitration

If informal resolution fails, you and CarCareTruth agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms, the Privacy Policy, the Community Guidelines, or your use of the Platform (a "Dispute") will be resolved by final and binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association ("AAA") under its Consumer Arbitration Rules then in effect, and, where applicable, AAA's Mass Arbitration Supplementary Rules and Mass Arbitration Fee Schedule then in effect. If AAA declines to administer the dispute, the parties will agree on a substitute administrator (JAMS is acceptable to CarCareTruth), or a court may appoint one under 9 U.S.C. § 5.

Delegation. You and CarCareTruth agree that the arbitrator, and not any court, has exclusive authority to decide all threshold questions concerning the existence, scope, validity, interpretation, applicability, enforceability, formation, or unconscionability of this arbitration agreement, except the following issues, each of which is expressly reserved to a court of competent jurisdiction: (a) enforceability of the class-action waiver in §24.3; (b) whether a particular request qualifies as "public injunctive relief" under §24.4; (c) whether the consumer timely exercised the §24.7 opt-out (a question of contract formation); (d) whether this delegation clause itself was formed between the parties and applies to the dispute at hand (Coinbase v. Suski, 602 U.S. 143 (2024)); and (e) whether these Terms as a whole were formed between the parties (Granite Rock Co. v. Int'l Bhd. of Teamsters, 561 U.S. 287 (2010)). This delegation is severable from the rest of §24.
Venue. Arbitration will be held remotely (by video, telephone, or document submission), or in the county of the consumer's residence at the consumer's election. The arbitrator may conduct proceedings by document submission where appropriate. CarCareTruth will not insist on in-person appearance.
Arbitrator and process — Armendariz factors. The arbitrator will (a) be neutral; (b) permit discovery adequate to vindicate the claims asserted; (c) issue a written award stating the essential findings and conclusions on which the award is based; (d) have authority to award any remedy the claimant could obtain in court, including statutory damages, punitive damages, attorneys' fees where the underlying claim provides for them, and individual injunctive relief; and (e) impose no costs on the consumer beyond those permitted under California law and the AAA Consumer Due Process Protocol.
Costs. CarCareTruth pays all AAA filing, administrative, initiation, per-case, process-arbitrator, and arbitrator-compensation fees in excess of the consumer's filing fee under the AAA Consumer Arbitration Rules and the AAA Mass Arbitration Fee Schedule then in effect, regardless of the number of demands filed. If a substitute administrator (e.g., JAMS) is appointed under 9 U.S.C. § 5, CarCareTruth pays all administrator and arbitrator fees in excess of what the consumer would pay to file in California superior court.
Award. The arbitrator's decision is final and binding and may be entered as a judgment in any court of competent jurisdiction.

24.3 Class-Action Waiver

To the maximum extent permitted by law, all Disputes must be brought in your individual capacity only, not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person's claims and may not preside over any form of class or representative proceeding. If this class-action waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular Dispute, that Dispute (and only that Dispute) will be resolved in court, but the remainder of this §24 will remain in effect.

24.4 Public Injunctive Relief Carve-Out (McGill)

Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in this §24, claims for public injunctive relief under California law are not subject to arbitration and may be brought in a court of competent jurisdiction (see McGill v. Citibank, N.A., 2 Cal. 5th 945 (2017); Blair v. Rent-A-Center, 928 F.3d 819 (9th Cir. 2019)). A court decides whether a request qualifies as public injunctive relief under California law before any related claim is compelled to arbitration. Where a claim is found to be one for public injunctive relief, that specific claim will be severed and may proceed in court in parallel with arbitration of all other claims, and the remainder of this §24 will remain in effect.

Non-severable provision (McGill poison pill). If this §24.4 itself is held unenforceable, invalid, or void in any respect, the entirety of this §24 is unenforceable as to the claim(s) for which §24.4 was held inoperative, and those claims will proceed in the court designated in §24.6. This is a non-severable provision and may not be reformed.

24.4a Mass-Arbitration Protocol

If 25 or more individual arbitration demands are filed against CarCareTruth that present substantially common questions of law or fact, the demands will be administered under AAA's Mass Arbitration Supplementary Rules and Mass Arbitration Fee Schedule then in effect. If AAA, applying those rules, determines that fewer than 25 demands actually present substantially common questions of law or fact, the affected demands proceed individually under the standard AAA Consumer Rules without invoking this §24.4a. In addition:

Bellwether procedure. The parties will select a representative bellwether of ten (10) demands to proceed to individual hearings or document-submission resolution first. The remaining demands are stayed during the bellwether phase. The "pool" for selection means all then-pending demands within the mass filing, or — if the mass filing exceeds fifty (50) demands — a randomly drawn subset of fifty (50) demands drawn by AAA. Each side selects five (5) bellwether demands from the pool; neither party may strike the other's selections, and no party may submit a "preferred list" to AAA. If a party fails to select within thirty (30) days, AAA fills that party's slots at random from the pool.
Stay has a deadline. Bellwether arbitrators must be appointed within ninety (90) days of the close of bellwether selection; if any bellwether arbitrator is not appointed within that window, the stay lifts as to all then-pending non-bellwether demands. The bellwether phase will otherwise conclude, and the stay on non-bellwether demands will lift, no later than 270 days after the tenth bellwether arbitrator is appointed, regardless of whether all bellwether awards have issued.
Mandatory mediation after bellwether. After the bellwether decisions are issued, the parties will participate in good-faith global mediation with the AAA-appointed mediator before any additional demands proceed.
Fee allocation is unconditional. CarCareTruth's fee obligations under §24.2 and the AAA Mass Arbitration Fee Schedule apply in full to every demand, including all non-bellwether demands, and are not contingent on the bellwether outcome or on global resolution.
Individual right preserved. No claimant is bound by any bellwether outcome. Any claimant whose demand is not resolved in the bellwether or by voluntary post-bellwether settlement retains the unqualified right to proceed to individual arbitration on the merits, on the timeline of the AAA Consumer Rules, without further batching, staging, or process limitations beyond those rules.

24.5 Small-Claims Exception

Either party may bring an individual action in small-claims court in the county of the consumer's residence if the claim qualifies under that court's jurisdictional limits and is brought in an individual capacity. CarCareTruth may, at its own election, also bring such an action in Los Angeles County, California.

24.5a CarCareTruth IP and anti-abuse carve-out

Notwithstanding §24.2, CarCareTruth may seek injunctive, declaratory, or other equitable relief in a court of competent jurisdiction for actual or threatened (a) infringement, misappropriation, or unauthorized use of CarCareTruth's or its licensors' intellectual property, including violations of §4 (scraping, bots, reverse engineering), §14 (commercial data extraction), or the Amazon Product Advertising API License Agreement; (b) violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions (17 U.S.C. § 1201), or analogous state law; or (c) breach of confidentiality obligations. For mutuality, a user may likewise seek injunctive or declaratory relief in court to prevent (i) infringement, misappropriation, or unauthorized use by CarCareTruth of the user's intellectual property, (ii) unauthorized public disclosure of their account credentials or private personal data by CarCareTruth, or (iii) imminent irreparable harm where arbitration cannot provide adequate interim relief; nothing in this §24.5a expands either party's substantive rights or remedies. The parties acknowledge that each side faces categorically different irreparable-harm risks (CarCareTruth: IP and platform-integrity; users: privacy, credential exposure, and the user's own IP) and that this §24.5a is reciprocal in substance as applied to those respective risks. A user's affirmative claims arising from CarCareTruth's enforcement actions remain subject to §24.

24.6 Governing Law and Forum for Non-Arbitrable Matters

These Terms and any Dispute are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. The Federal Arbitration Act governs the interpretation and enforcement of the arbitration provisions in this §24; if the Federal Arbitration Act is held inapplicable for any reason, the California Arbitration Act (Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 1280 et seq.) governs in its place. For any matter not subject to arbitration (including a court action to compel arbitration or to seek public injunctive relief), the parties consent to the jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in the county of the consumer's residence, or, at the consumer's election, in Los Angeles County, California.

24.7 30-Day Opt-Out

You may opt out of this arbitration agreement (§§24.2–24.4a) by sending written notice within 30 days of (a) your initial acceptance of these Terms, or (b) the effective date of any material modification to this §24, whichever is later, either by email to legal@sierranovalabs.com (with "opt out of arbitration" in the subject line or body) or by mail to the address listed in §29 with "Arbitration Opt-Out" written on the envelope. For users with accounts as of the effective date of these Terms, the initial 30-day opt-out window runs from that effective date. Your notice must include your username, the email associated with your account, and a clear statement that you opt out of arbitration. Your opt-out is effective on the date the notice is sent (email send date, or postmark date for mailed notice), not the date we receive it. CarCareTruth will acknowledge receipt of your opt-out notice within five (5) business days.

Scope of this arbitration agreement. The arbitration agreement in this §24 applies only to Disputes arising on or after the effective date of these Terms; pre-existing Disputes are governed by the agreement (if any) in effect when they arose.

Reopening on material arbitration changes. Each time CarCareTruth materially modifies §24 (Dispute Resolution; Arbitration; Class-Action Waiver), a new 30-day opt-out window opens for the modified arbitration terms. A "material modification" to §24 includes any change to the scope of Disputes covered, the class-action waiver, the McGill carve-out, the mass-arbitration protocol, venue, fee allocation, the delegation clause, the opt-out mechanism, or the choice of administrator; CarCareTruth will treat any reasonably close case as material. The new window runs from the effective date of the amendment. If you do not affirmatively re-acknowledge the amended §24 via the in-app prompt described in §27, the version of §24 in effect immediately before the amendment's effective date remains the binding arbitration agreement between you and CarCareTruth and is hereby incorporated by reference into the then-current Terms for that purpose, regardless of when a Dispute arises, until you re-acknowledge. For clarity, the prior §24 (including its arbitration agreement, class-action waiver, McGill carve-out, and mass-arbitration protocol) is preserved as a standalone, independently enforceable arbitration agreement between you and CarCareTruth from the date of your original acceptance (or last re-acknowledgement), and survives the effective date of any amendment to the Terms until you affirmatively accept a replacement §24, whether or not the broader Terms have been amended; the absence of re-acknowledgement does not void arbitration, it only freezes the version that applies. Notice of the change and the new opt-out window will be provided through the §27 material-change notice mechanism.

Opting out does not affect any other part of these Terms.

25. Severability

If any provision of these Terms is held invalid, illegal, or unenforceable by a court or arbitrator of competent jurisdiction, that provision will be enforced to the maximum extent permissible, and the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect. The class-action waiver in §24.3 is severable as described in that section. Notwithstanding the foregoing, §24.4 (Public Injunctive Relief Carve-Out, including its non-severable McGill poison-pill provision) is expressly non-severable and may not be blue-penciled, reformed, or saved by this §25; if §24.4 is held invalid as to a claim, §24 falls as to that claim per its own terms.

26. No Waiver; Entire Agreement; Assignment

No waiver. Our failure to enforce any right or provision of these Terms is not a waiver of that right or provision. No waiver is effective unless made in writing and signed by an authorized representative of CarCareTruth. A waiver of a breach is not a waiver of any subsequent breach.

Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy (/privacy), the Community Guidelines (/community-guidelines), the Disclaimer (/disclaimer), and the Affiliate Disclosure (/disclosure), constitute the entire agreement between you and CarCareTruth concerning your use of the Platform and supersede all prior or contemporaneous agreements, communications, and proposals, whether oral or written. In the event of conflict, these Terms control unless the other document expressly states otherwise.

Assignment. You may not assign, transfer, or delegate any of your rights or obligations under these Terms without our prior written consent. Any attempted assignment in violation of this section is void. We may assign or transfer these Terms, in whole or in part, without restriction, including in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization, sale of assets, or by operation of law.

27. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time.

Material changes. For material changes (for example, changes to arbitration, liability, license, or the categories of data we collect), we will give you at least 30 days' advance notice by (a) email to the address associated with your account and (b) a persistent in-app banner shown until you acknowledge it.
Non-material changes. For typos, clarifications, and formatting, we may update the Terms without advance notice.
Acceptance. Continued use of the Platform after the notice period means you accept the updated Terms — except for material changes to §24 (Dispute Resolution), which require affirmative re-acknowledgement via an in-app prompt before the amended §24 binds you. The re-acknowledgement prompt is presented in a modal dialog requiring an affirmative click, with the changed terms visible above the assent control, and is not dismissible by clicking outside the modal. Without that affirmative re-acknowledgement, the prior §24 continues to govern Disputes against you regardless of when they arise, until you re-acknowledge. Continued use during the notice period or after the effective date of a §24 amendment does not constitute acceptance of the amended §24.
Decline path. If you do not want to accept the updated Terms, you may decline within the notice window. Declining places your account in a 30-day read-only grace period: you can read your content and export your data, but you cannot post, comment, or react. After 30 days without acceptance, your account is suspended (not deleted) — you can still log in to export data or to accept the Terms at any time and resume full access. You may also delete your account at any time during or after the grace period. Declining a material change limited to §24 (Dispute Resolution) does not, by itself, trigger the read-only grace period or suspension under this §27; the prior §24 continues to govern Disputes against the declining user, the rest of the updated Terms still apply (unless the user also declines a non-§24 material change), and the user's account remains in good standing for non-arbitration purposes. In that case, the user takes no decline action; non-acknowledgement of the §24 amendment alone preserves the prior §24 under §24.7, with no other effect on the account. For changes outside §24, a user must affirmatively decline in writing via the in-app prompt or the email channel in §29 to invoke the read-only grace period; mere continued use during the notice window is acceptance.
Version tracking. Each version of the Terms has a version string. We store the version you accepted and the timestamp of acceptance on your account record.

27a. Modification or Discontinuation of the Platform

CarCareTruth is an active product, and individual features, pages, surfaces, and integrations may change over time. We reserve the right, at our reasonable discretion and at any time, to modify, suspend, or discontinue any feature, content surface, integration, or part of the Platform (a "Service Change") — including removing a feature you currently use — without that change constituting a breach of these Terms. Where a Service Change materially affects your ability to access content you have created (for example, a feature that holds your data is being retired), we will give you reasonable advance notice and a reasonable opportunity to export your data before the change takes effect. Service Changes that materially modify the rights or obligations of users under these Terms are handled as material changes under §27.

27b. Government and Law-Enforcement Requests

Government or law-enforcement requests for user data, content preservation, or content removal must be sent to legal@sierranovalabs.com and must include lawful process (subpoena, court order, warrant, preservation request under 18 U.S.C. § 2703(f), or other applicable instrument). CarCareTruth reviews requests for facial validity, scope, and applicable user-notice requirements, and complies as legally required. Where the law permits, we notify the affected user. CSAM-related preservation and reporting are governed by §15 and 18 U.S.C. §§ 2258A–2258B.

28. Communications and CAN-SPAM

CarCareTruth sends two kinds of email:

Transactional email (password resets, security alerts, sign-in verification, account-deletion confirmations, responses to data-subject requests). You cannot unsubscribe from these — they are required for your account to work — but we send only what is necessary.
Non-transactional email and push notifications. This includes digest summaries, social-event notifications (follows, mentions, replies, comments), deal alerts, re-engagement nudges, newsletters, and any future marketing. Every non-transactional email includes our physical mailing address in the footer and a clearly visible Unsubscribe link. The unsubscribe link either honors your request on receipt or takes you to a notification-preferences page where you can opt out per-category; for signed-in users, equivalent controls are available at /settings/notifications (or the then-current settings route). Push notifications, where enabled, are governed by the same per-category controls and your device-level notification settings.

We honor unsubscribe and category-opt-out requests for email within 10 business days, as required by the CAN-SPAM Act (15 U.S.C. § 7701 et seq.); in practice the preference change takes effect immediately. Push notifications are not "commercial electronic mail messages" under CAN-SPAM (15 U.S.C. § 7702); push-notification opt-outs are honored as promptly as your device's push infrastructure allows. The physical postal address required by 15 U.S.C. § 7704(a)(5)(A)(iii) appears in the footer of every non-transactional email and is the address listed in §29. We do not transfer, sell, or rent any unsubscribed email address to any third party, consistent with 15 U.S.C. § 7704(a)(4)(B).

Newsletter signup at the footer. The CarCareTruth weekly-pick email collects your email address at the point of signup. We may send a confirmation email containing a verification link before adding you to the list; you may unsubscribe at any time via the link in the footer of every non-transactional email.

28a. Accessibility

CarCareTruth designs the Platform to be usable by people with disabilities and works toward conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, level AA. We do not represent that every page meets every WCAG criterion at every moment, and accessibility is an ongoing effort. If you encounter an accessibility barrier on any part of the Platform — including but not limited to keyboard navigation, screen-reader compatibility, color contrast, or alternative-text gaps — please email support@carcaretruth.com with the page URL and a description of the barrier. CarCareTruth will respond within 30 days and work in good faith to resolve verified accessibility issues. This commitment is in addition to any rights you may have under the Americans with Disabilities Act (42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq.), the California Unruh Civil Rights Act (Cal. Civ. Code § 51), or other applicable accessibility laws.

29. Contact

General support and account questions: support@carcaretruth.com Privacy and data-subject requests: privacy@carcaretruth.com DMCA and copyright notices: dmca@carcaretruth.com Legal notices and law-enforcement requests: legal@sierranovalabs.com Single point of contact for EU users and authorities (DSA Art. 11 / 12): support@sierranovalabs.com

Mailing address for legal notices:

SierraNova Labs LLC c/o United States Corporation Agents, Inc. (Registered Agent) 500 N Brand Blvd, Suite 890 Glendale, CA 91203-3398

Legal notices must be in writing and sent by certified mail or recognized overnight courier to the address above. Email notice to legal@sierranovalabs.com is sufficient for routine matters but does not substitute for formal service of process.

California Consumers Legal Remedies Act (CLRA) notice address. Notices required under California Civil Code § 1782 must be sent in writing to the mailing address above with "CLRA Notice" written on the envelope and the subject line of any accompanying email.

Current version: 2026-05-12