What happens to a report you send us — what we publish, what we take out, and how to have yours removed.
ViaMondo can check what a manufacturer files with a regulator. We cannot check what a device does on your wrist at four in the afternoon, or what your bill actually came to, or whether anyone was told when something went wrong.
That is the gap reader reports fill, and it is why we ask for specifics rather than opinions. These are the terms under which we accept and publish them.
We read it. Every report is reviewed by a person before anything appears. There is no automatic publication, which means there is a delay — usually a day or two.
We may edit lightly. Typos, formatting, and trimming for length. We do not change your meaning. If a report needs more than that, we will normally ask you rather than rewrite you.
We may add a reply. Where a report contradicts something we have published, or raises something worth explaining, we add a short ViaMondo response underneath it. We do not delete reports for disagreeing with us — that is the most useful kind.
We may use it in the device index. If you tell us a real battery figure or a real monthly cost, that may inform what we record about a device — clearly marked as reader-reported, not verified, and never presented as a manufacturer figure or a measurement of our own.
Only the name you type into the name box, and the role you select. That is the whole list.
Put whatever name you want in that box. A first name, initials, “a nurse in Ohio” — all fine. We would rather have an honest report under a made-up name than no report.
Your email is never published, never sold, never added to a mailing list, and never shared. We use it only to ask you a follow-up question, and only if you ticked that box.
We record a one-way hash of your IP address to stop spam floods. We cannot turn it back into an address, and we do not use it for anything else.
This is the part we want to be most explicit about, because of who our subjects are.
Anything identifying a child or a vulnerable adult. Names, schools, home areas, routines, diagnoses, photographs. You can consent for yourself. You cannot consent on behalf of the person being tracked, and a five-year-old or someone with advanced dementia cannot consent at all. If your report needs those details to make sense, we will contact you and find a way to publish it without them.
It would be a poor look for a publication that audits how companies handle family data to be careless with yours.
Requests for medical advice. We are not clinicians and we will not publish a thread that reads like one. If you are deciding whether a device is right for a specific person’s condition, that is a conversation for their doctor.
Unverifiable allegations against a named company. “The battery died in four hours” is your experience and we will publish it. “This company knowingly ships defective units” is a claim about intent that neither of us can stand up, and publishing it helps nobody.
Marketing. If you work for a manufacturer, retailer or carrier, say so in the report. We will publish it with that disclosure. We will not publish it pretending to be a customer.
The ordinary list. Abuse, harassment, spam, links to unrelated products, anything unlawful.
A report is not a way to reach anyone quickly. Nobody monitors submissions around the clock, and we cannot help in an emergency. If someone is at risk right now, contact emergency services.
If you are struggling with caring for someone, that is worth saying to a person rather than a form — your doctor, a carers’ organization, or a helpline in your country.
Email us and it comes down. You do not have to explain why, and we will not ask you to justify it. This applies to reports we have already published, and to anything of yours quoted in an article.
If you gave us an email address, you can also ask what we hold about you and we will tell you.
We want this one understood clearly, because the whole site rests on the distinction.
When ViaMondo states a figure in an article or the device index, we have taken it from a manufacturer’s published data or a public regulatory filing, and cited it. When a reader reports something, it is one person’s account of one device in one household. Both are useful. They are not the same kind of thing, and we display them separately so you can tell which you are reading.
We do not test detection accuracy, we do not measure SAR, and a reader report does not change that. If enough reports point the same direction, what it earns is our attention — a reason to go and check something properly, and publish what we find.
These terms apply to reports submitted through forms on ViaMondo. See also our privacy policy and how we work. Questions, corrections and removal requests: contact us.