Acceptable Use Policy

01General principle

Use BidHound for its intended purpose: identifying, analysing, and managing your responses to UK public-sector procurement opportunities. Don't use it for anything else.

This Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”) sets out the rules that apply to your use of the BidHound service operated by Philip Lee, trading as BidHound. It forms part of your contract with us under the Terms of Service. By using BidHound you agree to follow this AUP.

We may update this AUP from time to time. Material updates will be notified by email or in-product notice.

02You must not

2.1  Misuse the BidHound service itself

You must not:

• scrape, crawl, harvest, or mass-extract content from the BidHound service by automated means;
• access the service other than via the user interface and properly authenticated APIs we provide;
• attempt to reverse-engineer, decompile, or extract our software, scoring methodology, model prompts, or internal classification rules;
• circumvent or attempt to circumvent rate limits, paywalls, authentication, or other technical access controls;
• interfere with, overload, or disrupt the service or the infrastructure it runs on;
• probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the service without our prior written authorisation;
• introduce malware, viruses, or other harmful code to the service;
• share, transfer, or sell access to your account without our written consent;
• create accounts by automated means or under false identity.

2.2  Upload content you are not authorised to upload

When using the Analyse feature you must not upload:

• any document you do not have a clear legal right to access;
• any document obtained by circumventing a procurement portal's access controls, terms of use, or registration requirements;
• any document covered by a non-disclosure agreement, confidentiality obligation, or supplier declaration that prohibits sharing it with a third-party AI service;
• any document containing classified, security-sensitive, or otherwise restricted government information that is not lawfully in the public domain;
• any document containing special category personal data (UK GDPR Art. 9) — including health, biometric, criminal-record, or similar data — unless you have a clear lawful basis to share it for the stated purpose;
• any document containing material in breach of third-party intellectual property rights;
• malware, viruses, executable code disguised as documents, or files containing macros designed to be malicious.

You must complete the per-upload authorisation confirmation truthfully each time you upload a document. The warranties in clause 7 of the Terms of Service apply to every upload.

2.3  Use BidHound outputs unlawfully

You must not use BidHound outputs:

• to bid for a contract in a way that breaches procurement law or the procurement rules for the specific tender;
• to make false declarations to a contracting authority;
• to undertake collusive tendering or any practice prohibited by competition law;
• in connection with fraud, bribery, money laundering, sanctions evasion, or modern slavery;
• to harass, defame, or unlawfully target individuals (including procurement officers whose names appear in notice data).

2.4  Misrepresent BidHound

You must not:

• represent BidHound as an official UK government service, an official partner of any contracting authority, or as endorsed by any public-sector body;
• republish BidHound's analysis or scoring as if it were official procurement guidance;
• use BidHound's name, logo, or branding in your own marketing without our prior written consent.

2.5  Re-sell or systematically redistribute

You must not, without our prior written consent:

• resell, sublicense, or rent access to BidHound;
• systematically extract BidHound outputs (such as scoring data) for incorporation into a competing product or service;
• build a derivative product or service substantially based on BidHound outputs.

03Content from public sources

BidHound surfaces information aggregated from publicly available official sources under the Open Government Licence v3.0 and similar permissions. Where you re-use this information outside BidHound, you must comply with the terms of the original source licence. For Open Government Licence content, that includes providing the standard attribution and not implying official endorsement.

04Personal data

If you process personal data through BidHound (for example, by uploading documents containing buyer or supplier personnel data), you must:

• ensure you have a lawful basis under UK GDPR for that processing;
• not use BidHound to create or maintain a marketing list of procurement officers or other individuals from notice data;
• comply with your obligations under the Data Processing Addendum that forms part of your contract with us.

05Consequences of breach

If we reasonably believe you have breached this AUP we may, depending on severity:

• contact you to discuss the issue;
• suspend specific features (for example, Analyse uploads) pending investigation;
• suspend or terminate your account;
• delete content uploaded in breach of this AUP;
• report unlawful activity to the relevant authorities;
• pursue any other remedies available to us under the Terms of Service or by law.

We will act proportionately. Minor or first-time breaches will normally be addressed by contact and warning before stronger action.

06Reporting a breach

If you believe another user is misusing BidHound, or that BidHound itself is being used in a way that breaches this AUP, contact us at legal@bidhound.co.uk. We treat such reports confidentially where reasonably possible.

07Security disclosure

08Contact

Questions about this policy? Email phil@bidhound.co.uk.