sherafy.com is an independent research and publishing website that produces journalism, investigations, explainers, analysis, datasets, calculators, software tools, reference material, and other public-interest work.

This page explains the basic rules governing use of sherafy.com, how information associated with the site may be handled, and the commercial and technical services that help operate the publication.

We have intentionally written these policies around how sherafy.com actually operates rather than making broad promises about practices, certifications, or regulatory programs that may not apply.

Who operates sherafy.com

sherafy.com is operated by Sherafgan Khan.

SFK Inc. provides technical infrastructure and related operational support.

Fabled Sky Community Projects supports research activities through research tools, data, volunteers, research assistants, and contributors.

Approved editors, research assistants, contributors, and technical personnel may therefore participate in operating portions of the site or its editorial systems.

These relationships do not change sherafy.com’s editorial standards. Commercial, technical, research, or organizational relationships do not purchase a particular editorial conclusion.

For more information, see:

Privacy

Information you provide to us

We may receive information when you voluntarily interact with sherafy.com.

Depending on the interaction, this can include:

your name;
email address;
telephone number;
organization or professional affiliation;
information included in a contact or research request;
contributor application information;
contributor profile and account information;
drafts, source materials, documents, links, or other research materials you submit;
consulting inquiries and project information;
correspondence with sherafy.com;
newsletter or notification subscription information, if such services are offered;
payment and transaction information associated with consulting or other paid services; and
any other information you choose to provide.

Forms submitted through sherafy.com may be stored within site systems and may also be transmitted by email or through services used to process the submission.

Please do not send passwords, private keys, API secrets, authentication tokens, MFA recovery codes, or other highly sensitive credentials through ordinary sherafy.com contact forms or email.

If technical access is genuinely required for a consulting engagement, an appropriate access method should be arranged after the engagement has been accepted.

Contributor accounts

Ordinary readers cannot create sherafy.com accounts.

Accounts are generally limited to approved contributors, editors, researchers, and people who need access for publication or site operations.

Account information may include a name, email address, username, profile information, login records, editorial activity, and material submitted through the publishing system.

Approved contributors are also subject to the separate Contributor Terms.

Information collected automatically

Like most websites, sherafy.com and the services supporting it may automatically receive technical information when a visitor accesses the site.

Depending on the technology being used, this may include:

IP address;
date and time of access;
requested pages or URLs;
referring page or website;
browser type;
device and operating-system information;
approximate geographic information derived from network data;
language or timezone;
page views and navigation paths;
performance and loading information;
links or site features used;
advertising or campaign information;
cookies, local-storage values, or similar identifiers; and
information used to distinguish legitimate visitors from automated or abusive traffic.

Not every service collects every category of information, and technical configurations can change over time.

Analytics, advertising, and visitor-measurement services

sherafy.com uses third-party services to understand readership, measure site performance, protect the site, display advertising, administer privacy choices, and understand how people use the publication.

Services currently used or integrated with the site may include:

Google advertising and measurement services

Google technologies may be used for advertising, traffic measurement, tag management, and related site functions.

These can include services associated with Google advertising, Google Tag, and Google’s privacy and consent-management systems.

Depending on a visitor’s region, settings, consent choices, and Google’s configuration, advertising may be personalized or non-personalized.

More information is available through Google’s:

Google Funding Choices / consent management

sherafy.com may use Google’s consent and privacy-messaging systems to present privacy choices in jurisdictions or circumstances where those controls are appropriate.

The options displayed can differ based on location and the technologies active on the page.

Happierleads

sherafy.com may use Happierleads for website analytics, business-visitor intelligence, and related audience measurement.

Happierleads describes technology capable of using network information, cookies or similar identifiers, browsing activity, and business-information sources to identify organizations visiting a website and, in some regions or configurations, business contacts associated with visits.

The availability and operation of particular features can vary by region and configuration.

Visitors can review Happierleads’ own privacy information and available opt-out mechanisms through Happierleads.

Visitor Tracking

A visitor-tracking integration may be used to understand traffic, site usage, visitor activity, and related readership patterns.

The precise information processed depends on the configuration in use.

Grain / GrainQL

sherafy.com may use GrainQL or related Grain analytics technology to measure page views, events, referrals, devices, navigation patterns, and other site-usage information.

Grain provides additional information in its Privacy Policy.

Cloudflare

Cloudflare provides infrastructure, performance, security, and analytics functions associated with sherafy.com.

Cloudflare services may process network and request information necessary to deliver, protect, measure, or troubleshoot the site.

Google reCAPTCHA

Certain forms or site functions may use Google reCAPTCHA or similar systems to detect spam, bots, automated abuse, and malicious submissions.

Use of reCAPTCHA may result in information being processed by Google under Google’s applicable terms and privacy policies.

Cookies and similar technologies

sherafy.com and its service providers may use cookies, local storage, pixels, scripts, or similar technologies.

These can be used to:

remember preferences;
administer privacy choices;
measure traffic;
understand site usage;
prevent spam or abuse;
support advertising;
measure advertising performance;
distinguish repeat visits; and
maintain authenticated contributor sessions.

You can generally control or delete cookies through your browser.

Where sherafy.com presents a consent or privacy-choice interface, you may also use the options provided through that interface.

Browser-based Do Not Track signals are not a universally standardized privacy-control mechanism and may not result in a particular response.

Some jurisdictions recognize other signals, such as Global Privacy Control, for certain privacy rights. Where applicable law requires a recognized opt-out preference signal to be honored, sherafy.com intends to configure covered processing accordingly.

If you believe a privacy preference has not been respected, contact us at [email protected].

Advertising and data sharing

sherafy.com does not sell personal information for money as a standalone business activity.

However, advertising, analytics, attribution, visitor-identification, and similar technologies can involve transmitting or making information available to third-party service providers.

Some privacy laws use specialized definitions of terms such as sale, sharing, or targeted advertising that can include certain advertising or cross-site data practices even when no one literally purchases a person’s information for cash.

For that reason, we do not make the broader claim that information is “never shared.”

Where applicable law gives a visitor a right to opt out of particular advertising, sale, sharing, profiling, or similar processing, sherafy.com will make reasonable efforts to provide or honor the required choice.

How we use information

Information associated with sherafy.com may be used to:

operate and maintain the site;
publish and manage content;
evaluate contributor applications;
communicate with readers, sources, applicants, contributors, and clients;
review research requests or corrections;
administer contributor accounts;
understand readership and site performance;
improve articles, tools, navigation, and site design;
protect the site from spam, fraud, abuse, or security threats;
investigate technical problems;
administer advertising and affiliate relationships;
process consulting inquiries and accepted engagements;
maintain business, financial, and editorial records;
respond to disputes or legal requests;
enforce site policies; and
comply with applicable law.

We may also use aggregated or de-identified information to understand readership or improve the publication.

Who may receive information

Information may be processed or accessed by people and organizations reasonably involved in operating sherafy.com, including:

Sherafgan Khan;
SFK Inc.;
personnel supporting sherafy.com through Fabled Sky Community Projects;
approved editors, research assistants, and contributors where access is relevant to their role;
hosting, infrastructure, security, email, form-processing, analytics, advertising, and software providers;
payment processors used for consulting or other paid services;
professional advisers where necessary;
authorities or other parties where disclosure is required by law or reasonably necessary to protect legal rights, safety, security, or the integrity of the site; and
another operator in connection with a legitimate organizational transfer, restructuring, or similar event.

We may also disclose information at your direction or with your permission.

Retention

sherafy.com does not currently maintain a single fixed retention schedule covering every type of information.

Information may be retained for as long as reasonably useful or necessary for purposes such as:

correspondence;
editorial administration;
contributor management;
source and research records;
accounting or payment records;
security and abuse prevention;
dispute resolution;
maintaining the integrity of published work;
legal compliance; and
ordinary backup and disaster-recovery processes.

Different systems and vendors may use different retention periods.

Information may remain in backups, logs, email archives, publication records, or historical editorial systems after it is no longer actively used.

We do not promise that every copy of information will disappear immediately following a deletion request.

Your privacy requests

Regardless of whether a particular privacy statute technically applies to sherafy.com in a particular situation, you may contact us to request reasonable assistance with personal information you have provided to us.

Depending on the circumstances, you may request that we:

tell you whether we maintain personal information associated with you;
provide access to information reasonably identifiable as yours;
correct inaccurate information;
delete information you previously submitted;
stop certain communications; or
address an applicable advertising or privacy-choice request.

Send privacy requests to:

[email protected]

We may need enough information to reasonably verify that the person making a request is the person to whom the information relates.

Requests may be limited or declined where necessary to protect:

another person’s rights or privacy;
security or fraud-prevention interests;
confidential editorial or source information;
legally required records;
legitimate disputes;
freedom of expression or journalistic activity;
public records;
the integrity of published research;
backups that cannot reasonably be modified individually; or
another interest recognized by applicable law.

Privacy requests and published journalism

A privacy request does not automatically require removal of accurate published reporting, public records, citations, research findings, historical archives, or other editorial material.

Requests involving published material are evaluated separately under applicable law and sherafy.com’s editorial standards.

If you believe an article contains a factual error, use the correction process described in our Editorial Standards or contact us with the evidence supporting the requested correction.

International visitors

sherafy.com is operated from the United States and uses service providers that may process information in the United States, the European Union, or other jurisdictions.

Visitors outside the United States should understand that information associated with their use of the site may therefore be processed in jurisdictions different from their own.

sherafy.com does not claim participation in any particular international data-transfer certification program unless we expressly state that participation and have actually completed the applicable requirements.

Children

sherafy.com is a general-audience publication and is not directed to children under 13.

We do not knowingly solicit personal information directly from children under 13 through ordinary site functions.

If you believe a child has submitted personal information that should not be retained, contact [email protected].

Participation in the sherafy.com contributor program is limited to adults age 18 or older unless sherafy.com expressly establishes a separately supervised arrangement.

Security

We use reasonable technical and administrative measures appropriate to a small online publication to operate and protect sherafy.com.

No website, server, email system, third-party service, or method of internet transmission can be guaranteed completely secure.

For that reason:

do not send passwords or authentication secrets through ordinary forms;
do not disable MFA merely to provide sherafy.com access;
use temporary, limited-permission credentials when technical access is necessary; and
remove temporary access after it is no longer required.

A public contact form or ordinary email should also not be assumed to provide a secure channel for highly sensitive source communications.

Advertising, affiliates, sponsorships, and commercial relationships

sherafy.com may earn revenue through advertising, affiliate relationships, consulting, sponsorships, supported research, or other commercial arrangements.

Revenue helps support the publication but does not purchase a factual conclusion.

Our approach to commercial influence is explained in our Editorial Independence, Funding & Conflicts of Interest policy.

Display advertising

sherafy.com currently uses Google advertising services and may use other advertising providers in the future.

The presence of an advertisement does not constitute endorsement of the advertiser or its claims.

Advertising systems may select or measure advertisements using information described in the Privacy section above.

Affiliate links

Some sherafy.com pages contain affiliate links.

If a reader makes a purchase after following one of these links, sherafy.com may receive a commission.

A commercial relationship should be disclosed clearly near recommendations or links where it is relevant rather than requiring the reader to discover it only on this policy page.

sherafy.com participates in the Amazon Associates Program.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Affiliate relationships do not determine our conclusions about a product, service, or company.

Terms of Use

Using the site

You may browse, read, cite, and use publicly accessible sherafy.com resources for lawful purposes.

Use of the site does not give you ownership of sherafy.com content, software, branding, datasets, or other intellectual property.

Different resources may carry different licenses.

Our Citation & Attribution Policy explains how sherafy.com material may generally be cited and referenced.

Journalism, analysis, and informational content

sherafy.com publishes information for research, education, journalism, analysis, and general informational purposes.

Articles may discuss subjects involving:

law;
health;
medicine;
finance;
investing;
technology;
engineering;
safety;
public policy;
cybersecurity; and
other specialized fields.

Publication of information does not create an attorney-client, doctor-patient, financial-adviser, fiduciary, engineering-client, consultant-client, or other professional relationship.

Information may also become outdated as facts, laws, scientific evidence, technical standards, prices, or circumstances change.

For decisions carrying material financial, medical, legal, safety, or other consequences, independently verify the relevant information and obtain qualified professional assistance where appropriate.

Calculators, tools, datasets, and software

sherafy.com publishes calculators, datasets, software, reference tools, formulas, and other computational resources.

These resources may depend on:

assumptions;
user-provided values;
formulas;
approximations;
third-party data;
industry conventions;
simplified models; or
information that changes over time.

A result should not be interpreted as a guarantee that the inputs, assumptions, methodology, or output are appropriate for every real-world situation.

Users remain responsible for verifying consequential calculations before relying on them.

Do not use sherafy.com as the sole basis for an emergency, medical treatment decision, legally required engineering calculation, regulated financial determination, or other circumstance where an error could create significant harm.

No guarantee of completeness or availability

We try to make sherafy.com accurate and useful, but we do not guarantee that:

every statement is error-free;
every page is complete;
every link remains active;
every dataset remains current;
every calculator is suitable for a particular use;
the site will always be available; or
a published conclusion will never change as better evidence becomes available.

Our correction and update practices are described in our Editorial Standards.

External websites

sherafy.com links extensively to studies, government records, court documents, businesses, products, news organizations, archives, and other third-party websites.

A link is not automatically an endorsement.

We do not control third-party sites and are not responsible for their availability, security, accuracy, policies, products, or services.

Correspondence and unsolicited submissions

Sending sherafy.com a message does not create a confidential, fiduciary, consulting, attorney-client, or other special professional relationship.

Do not submit information that you are legally prohibited from disclosing.

If you are considering providing sensitive information as a confidential source, first contact us with only the minimum non-sensitive information necessary to discuss whether a more appropriate communication method can be arranged.

Unless sherafy.com expressly agrees otherwise, unsolicited submissions are not automatically treated as confidential.

Submitting material also does not guarantee that sherafy.com will investigate, respond to, publish, or preserve it.

Contributor material

Material submitted by approved contributors is governed by the Contributor Terms in addition to these general terms.

Contributor account security

Approved users are responsible for protecting their accounts and authentication methods.

Accounts may not be sold, transferred, shared publicly, or used to provide unauthorized third-party access.

sherafy.com may suspend, restrict, or terminate contributor access when reasonably necessary for security, editorial integrity, abuse prevention, inactivity, or violation of contributor or site policies.

Acceptable use

You may not intentionally use sherafy.com to:

compromise or attempt to compromise site security;
introduce malware or malicious code;
obtain unauthorized access to accounts, systems, or data;
interfere with site availability;
conduct abusive automated requests that materially degrade the service;
impersonate another person for fraudulent purposes;
submit unlawful threats or malicious harassment;
use contributor access to publish unauthorized commercial spam;
evade technical access controls; or
engage in unlawful activity using site systems.

Reasonable indexing, citation, research, archival access, and automated discovery of public material are not prohibited merely because software is involved.

Automated systems should respect reasonable technical controls and should not impair the service.

Copyright and ownership

Copyright in individual sherafy.com works may belong to sherafy.com, Sherafgan Khan, an individual contributor, another identified rights holder, or a combination of those parties depending on the work.

Some datasets, code, images, documents, or other resources may carry their own license.

Do not assume that the entire website is licensed under one blanket open-content license.

Where a resource-specific license is provided, that license controls use of that resource.

Otherwise, quotation, criticism, citation, reporting, linking, and other uses remain subject to applicable copyright law and our Citation & Attribution Policy.

Copyright complaints

If you believe material available through sherafy.com infringes copyright that you own or are authorized to enforce, contact us through the Contact page.

Please provide enough information for us to evaluate the claim, including:

identification of the copyrighted work;
identification and URL of the sherafy.com material at issue;
your name and contact information;
the basis for your claim;
whether you are the copyright owner or authorized to act for the owner; and
any information you believe is necessary to evaluate whether the challenged use may be licensed, authorized, or permitted by law.

We may request additional information before acting.

sherafy.com does not presently represent on this page that it has registered a designated DMCA agent with the U.S. Copyright Office.

If that changes, this section will be updated with the applicable designated-agent information and procedures.

Consulting and advisory services

Sherafgan Khan and/or an identified service provider may occasionally accept technology, advisory, research, troubleshooting, or other consulting engagements originating through sherafy.com.

These engagements can vary substantially and are accepted individually.

Submitting an inquiry does not create a consulting relationship or require us to accept the project.

If a project is accepted, the applicable:

proposal;
statement of work;
written quote;
invoice;
retainer agreement;
confidentiality agreement; or
other written project terms

will control matters such as scope, fees, deliverables, deadlines, intellectual-property rights, confidentiality, refunds, and project-specific liability.

If a specific written project agreement conflicts with these general website terms regarding the consulting engagement, the specific project agreement controls.

Do not provide production-system credentials before an engagement has been accepted and an appropriate access method has been arranged.

Payments

Payments for accepted consulting or other paid services may be handled through third-party payment processors such as Stripe or another provider identified at the time of payment.

Payment processors operate under their own terms and privacy practices.

sherafy.com should not be assumed to directly receive or store complete payment-card numbers merely because a payment is initiated through the site or an invoice.

Disclaimer of warranties

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, sherafy.com and its publicly available content, tools, datasets, and site functions are provided “as is” and “as available.”

We disclaim warranties that cannot reasonably be inferred from our editorial commitment to accuracy, including any implied warranty that the site will be uninterrupted, error-free, fit for every particular purpose, or suitable for a specific professional or regulated use.

Nothing in this section limits a right or warranty that applicable law does not allow to be excluded.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, sherafy.com, its operator, contributors, research personnel, and organizations providing supporting infrastructure or research resources will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or similar damages arising solely from ordinary use of publicly available site material.

Project-specific liability for paid consulting services should be governed by the agreement covering that engagement.

Nothing in these terms excludes liability that applicable law does not permit to be excluded.

Editorial complaints, corrections, and disputes

If you believe sherafy.com has made a factual error, omitted material evidence, incorrectly attributed information, or otherwise published something requiring correction, please provide the specific page, disputed statement, and evidence supporting the correction.

Our standards are explained in:

Disagreement with a conclusion does not by itself establish that a correction is warranted.

Evidence does.

Changes to these policies

sherafy.com may revise these policies as the publication, technology, commercial relationships, contributor program, or applicable legal requirements change.

The date at the top of this page identifies the most recent published revision.

Material changes should be applied prospectively where appropriate and should not be used to retroactively rewrite a specific signed consulting or contributor agreement.

Contact

General questions, editorial correspondence, corrections, copyright complaints, consulting inquiries, and other ordinary communications may be submitted through:

Contact sherafy.com

Privacy requests may be sent to: