Terms of Service

VaultTrace is a research tool that helps individuals identify potential retirement accounts from past employers. It does this by cross-referencing employer information you provide against publicly available data from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Form 5500 database, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), and state unclaimed property registries.

VaultTrace is an informational tool, not a financial services provider, registered investment adviser, or fiduciary. Nothing on this service constitutes financial, legal, or tax advice.

You agree to use VaultTrace only for lawful purposes and only on your own behalf or on behalf of individuals who have explicitly authorized you to act for them. You must not:

• Upload documents that do not belong to you or that you are not authorized to process.
• Attempt to reverse-engineer, scrape, or abuse the service or its underlying APIs.
• Submit false, misleading, or fabricated information.
• Use the service in any way that violates applicable federal, state, or local law.
• Resell or redistribute your results for commercial purposes without our written consent.

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of any information you submit, including your email address and any optional Social Security Number used for registry lookups.

A match in your results means VaultTrace found a retirement plan filing associated with an employer in the DOL database — it does not confirm that you personally have a balance in that plan, that the plan is still active, or that any funds are owed to you.

Many factors can affect whether an account is found, including employer name variations, plan mergers, EIN changes, terminated plans, and the completeness of government databases. VaultTrace makes no warranty, express or implied, that all eligible accounts will be surfaced or that any match is accurate.

Final confirmation of any account balance or vesting status must come directly from the plan administrator or the relevant government agency. VaultTrace results are a starting point for your own investigation, not a definitive record.

We are committed to handling your data responsibly. In brief:

• Uploaded PDF files are processed in memory and never written to disk or stored.
• Social Security Numbers, if provided, are used for a single registry lookup and never persisted.
• We retain extracted employer names, scan results, and your email address to provide the service and notify you of updates.

For full details on what we collect, how long we keep it, and your rights, see our Privacy Policy.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, VaultTrace and its operators shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages — including lost profits, lost data, or failure to find a retirement account — arising out of or in connection with your use of the service.

Our total liability to you for any claim arising from these terms or your use of VaultTrace shall not exceed the amount you paid us in the twelve months preceding the claim (which, for a free service, is zero).

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain liability exclusions; in those jurisdictions our liability is limited to the greatest extent permitted by law.

The VaultTrace name, logo, interface, and underlying software are owned by us and may not be copied, reproduced, or used without our written permission. Your scan results belong to you.

VaultTrace relies on third-party services including Supabase (data storage), Anthropic (AI document parsing), Resend (transactional email), and government APIs operated by the DOL and PBGC. We are not responsible for the availability, accuracy, or conduct of these third parties.

We may update these terms from time to time. The “Last updated” date at the top of this page will reflect any changes. Continued use of VaultTrace after an update constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.

Questions about these terms? Email us at legal@vaulttrace.org.