Contributor and Moderation Policy

HowToReport.org may invite readers to share reporting experiences, corrections, or examples that help other visitors understand how reporting processes work. Submissions are reviewed before publication and are not guaranteed to appear on the site.

Review and redaction

We may edit submissions for clarity, length, formatting, relevance, and safety. We may remove or redact names, addresses, phone numbers, account numbers, case numbers, medical details, financial details, and other personal information before publication.

Prohibited sensitive data

Do not submit Social Security numbers, bank or credit card numbers, passwords, medical records, immigration documents, full dates of birth, private addresses, or confidential legal documents. Do not submit false, defamatory, threatening, discriminatory, retaliatory, or unlawful content.

Removal requests

If you submitted a report or believe published content includes personal information that should be removed, contact us through the contact page. We will review reasonable removal, correction, or anonymization requests.

Defamation, privacy, and safety rules for submissions

Submissions must describe the contributor’s own experience or clearly identified public information. Do not submit accusations about a private person unless they are factual, relevant, and supported by documentation. We may reject or remove claims that appear defamatory, retaliatory, harassing, discriminatory, threatening, speculative, or impossible to verify.

Before publication, we may redact names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, account numbers, case numbers, medical details, financial details, employer identifiers, exact locations, and other information that could identify or harm a private person. We may also generalize dates, locations, dollar amounts, and agency names when needed to reduce privacy or retaliation risk.

We do not publish doxxing, revenge posts, threats, allegations about minors, confidential legal or medical records, private financial records, immigration documents, Social Security numbers, or screenshots that expose private contact details. If a submission creates legal, safety, or privacy concerns, we may decline it entirely even if parts of it are useful.

People named or identifiable in a published submission may request review, correction, anonymization, or removal through the contact page. We will evaluate these requests against privacy, safety, documentation, public-interest, and abuse-prevention considerations.