Terms of use

Using CarKnown means accepting these terms. The most important one is the first: a vehicle record tells you what has been reported and recorded, not everything that ever happened to a vehicle.

CarKnown shows two kinds of information, and never blends them. Reported information comes from an outside source such as NHTSA; we preserve what that source said and identify it, and we do not independently confirm it. Shop records are records a repair shop created about work it performed, published through its shop-management platform and sealed by CarKnown. The platform confirms the shop is the business it says it is; neither it nor CarKnown assesses the shop or the work.

A sealed record means the record has not been altered since it was sealed. It does not mean CarKnown watched the work happen or inspected the vehicle. Mileage that raises no conflict means no conflict was detected among the readings on file — not that a reading is true.

The absence of a record is not evidence that nothing happened. A vehicle may have been serviced, damaged or retitled without any of it reaching a source available to CarKnown. Always have a vehicle independently inspected before you buy it. CarKnown is one input to that decision and is not a substitute for an inspection.

Look up whatever vehicles you like. Do not scrape the site in bulk, attempt to overwhelm it, try to defeat its rate limits or access controls, or use it to harass anyone. We may block access that does any of those.

If you submit records through the API, you are responsible for their accuracy and for having your customer's agreement to share the work. Submit only records for work actually performed, on the vehicle identified. State provenance honestly: use captured only when your system recorded the work as it happened.

Keep your API key secret. You are responsible for what is submitted with it. If a key is exposed, tell us and we will revoke it — revoking stops further writes, and records already sealed remain on the vehicle's history because they document real work.

Submitting records you know to be false is grounds for immediate revocation. Because the ledger is the product, we treat deliberately falsified history as the most serious possible misuse of it.

A sealed record will not be edited or withdrawn, by a shop or by us — including at the request of the shop that submitted it, or of the customer whose vehicle it describes. The only exception is a legal demand: a record's contents are then removed and its seal is kept, so the removal itself stays visible. Mistakes are fixed by issuing a correction, which is sealed alongside the original with both left visible. A record sent in error — against the wrong vehicle, as a duplicate, or as test data — is marked as published in error by the shop that sent it: it stays sealed and visible, and no longer counts as part of the vehicle's history. See the developer page and the publishing rules.

If you believe a record is wrong, write to privacy@carknown.com. CarKnown investigates with the shop that published it; the outcome is a correction, a mark of published in error, or the record standing as published.

Outside a legal demand, there is no unpublish. A history that can be withdrawn when it becomes inconvenient is worth nothing to the person it was meant to protect, which is the buyer. The consequence is that consent belongs before publication, not after: a shop must have its customer's agreement to publish a record before sending it, because afterwards there is nothing to undo. CarKnown's side of that bargain is to refuse anything personal at the door — prices, customer identity, the individual technician's name, and the customer's own reported words — so that a permanent record has nothing in it that anyone would need to withdraw.

CarKnown is provided as-is, without warranty. We do not guarantee the site will be available or uninterrupted, and we do not guarantee that information from outside sources is complete or accurate. To the fullest extent the law allows, CarKnown is not liable for losses arising from decisions made using the site — including the purchase or sale of a vehicle.

If these terms change materially we will update the date at the top of this page. Questions go to partners@carknown.com.

These terms are written in plain language to describe how CarKnown actually operates. They are not legal advice and have not been reviewed by counsel — before relying on the liability and warranty sections in particular, have a lawyer review them for your jurisdiction. Privacy →