Legal

Fair Use Policy

Last updated: June 2026

1. Overview

Proofpoints is a customer storytelling platform. Every feature on the platform exists to help you interview advocates, create authentic customer stories, and publish them. This Fair Use Policy explains the rules that apply to all users – whether you are on a free trial, a paid plan, or a managed service arrangement.

This policy is incorporated into and supplements our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. This policy governs day-to-day acceptable use, content standards, and the operational rules for credits. The binding commercial and legal matters – billing, refunds, intellectual property, warranties, and liability – are set out in the Terms of Service. If this policy and the Terms of Service conflict on a binding commercial or legal matter, the Terms of Service prevail.

2. Intended use

Proofpoints is designed for in-house marketing, advocacy, and content teams creating customer stories about their own products and services. Every credit-consuming activity on the platform – story generation, transcription, translation, image creation, brand scoring, and content rework – is intended to support that workflow. Using these capabilities as standalone, general-purpose tools, disconnected from a genuine customer story, is not an intended use.

Proofpoints reserves the right to monitor usage patterns and to suspend or restrict access to any workspace whose activity is inconsistent with customer storytelling.

3. Story integrity

Each story on the platform represents a single piece of customer content about a specific advocate and their experience with your product or service. Stories are the billing unit for content generation: when you generate a story, the credit charge covers the creation of that content for that advocate.

Takes. A "Take" is a derivative asset created from a finished story you have already paid for – for example an executive brief, a press release, a translation, or a blog post spun from an existing customer story. A Take must derive from a genuine story already created on your workspace. Creating a Take does not entitle you to regenerate or replace the underlying story without a new story charge.

The following practices undermine story integrity and are prohibited:

Story recycling – deleting or replacing the content of an existing story, changing the advocate or company name, and regenerating new content in the same story record to avoid creating (and paying for) a new story. Each customer story must be created as a new story.
Content harvesting – generating story content where there is no genuine customer story behind it – that is, using the platform's generation features primarily to extract AI output for unrelated purposes, rather than to create an authentic story about a real advocate. (Publishing your finished story on your own website or channels, rather than on proofpoints.com, is entirely legitimate and is not content harvesting.)
Fabricated stories – creating stories about fictitious advocates, companies, or events. Customer stories should represent genuine customer relationships and real experiences.

Proofpoints may audit story metadata (creation dates, advocate changes, generation history) and may suspend credit-consuming features on any workspace where story recycling or fabrication is detected.

4. Responsible use of platform resources

Certain platform features consume shared infrastructure resources (processing time, storage, and third-party API capacity) even when they do not directly debit credits. To ensure a fair experience for all users, the following guidelines apply:

Transcription – audio and video transcription is provided to support interview-based storytelling. Transcribing large volumes of audio unrelated to customer stories, or transcribing content you do not intend to use for story creation, is not permitted.
Translation – translation is intended for localising customer stories into additional languages. Bulk translation of non-story content is not an intended use.
Image generation – image creation is intended for hero images, social assets, and illustrations that accompany a customer story. Generating images unrelated to any story on the platform is not permitted.
Story creation – adding stories to your workspace is free, but each story is expected to progress through the storytelling workflow. Creating large numbers of empty or abandoned stories with no associated content, interviews, or generation activity may be treated as misuse.

Proofpoints may introduce usage thresholds, rate limits, or per-workspace caps on resource-intensive features at any time. Where possible, we will notify affected workspaces before changes take effect.

5. Content standards

All content created on the platform – including AI-generated text, images, and translations – must comply with the following standards. These apply to all users regardless of plan or credit balance.

No explicit or harmful content. You may not use the platform to generate sexually explicit, violent, hateful, defamatory, or otherwise harmful content. This includes attempting to circumvent the safety filters built into the AI models used by the platform.
No discriminatory content. You may not use the platform to generate content that discriminates against, demeans, or stereotypes any person or group on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, or any other protected characteristic. This applies to generated text, images, and any other platform output.
No religious or politically inflammatory content. The platform is a B2B storytelling tool. You may not use it to generate religious imagery, blasphemous content, politically inflammatory material, or any content designed to provoke, offend, or divide along religious, cultural, or political lines.
No copyright infringement. You may not use image generation or any other platform feature to reproduce, imitate, or create derivatives of copyrighted works, trademarks, logos, or other protected intellectual property belonging to third parties without appropriate rights or permissions.
No misleading content. Stories should accurately represent the advocate's experience. You may not use the platform to fabricate testimonials, endorsements, or case study results.
Consent for recordings. You may only upload audio or video recordings to the platform where all participants have given their informed consent to be recorded. This includes advocate interviews, stakeholder calls, and any other recording used for transcription or story creation. You are solely responsible for obtaining and retaining proof of consent in accordance with the laws of your jurisdiction and the jurisdiction of the person being recorded. Proofpoints does not verify consent and accepts no liability for recordings uploaded without it.
No prompt injection or adversarial input. You may not craft prompts, interview transcripts, brand guidelines, or any other platform input with the intent of manipulating, bypassing, or exploiting the behaviour of the AI models used by the platform. This includes attempts to extract system prompts, override safety instructions, or cause the models to produce content they are designed to refuse.
No malicious file uploads. Files uploaded to the platform (including SVG images, audio, video, documents, and avatars) must not contain executable code, embedded scripts, malware, or any content designed to exploit the platform, its infrastructure, or other users' browsers. Proofpoints may scan, sanitise, or reject uploaded files at its discretion.
No illegal use. You may not use the platform for any purpose that violates applicable law, including but not limited to data protection, consumer protection, and advertising standards legislation in your jurisdiction.

Human review is required before publishing. All content produced by the platform is generated by large language models, which can and do produce inaccurate, incomplete, or fabricated information ("hallucination"). AI-generated content must never be published, shared, or treated as factual without human review. The workspace owner (or the designated story owner) is solely responsible for reviewing, fact-checking, and approving all content before it is published or distributed. The full allocation of responsibility and liability for AI-generated content, and the confirmation you give at the point of publishing, are set out in section 8 of the Terms of Service.

6. Free credits: eligibility and approval

New Proofpoints workspaces are eligible for 1,000 free credits to explore the platform. Free credits are subject to approval and are not issued automatically. When you request a workspace, you will be asked to provide your company name, work email, role, and a brief description of your intended use. Credits are issued at Proofpoints' sole discretion following a short review.

Proofpoints reserves the right to decline free credit requests without stating a reason. In particular, requests from organisations that operate competing customer advocacy, customer marketing, or AI storytelling platforms will not be approved. Proofpoints defines "competing" at its sole discretion.

You may use the platform before your free credits are approved. Campaigns, advocate management, publishing, and editorial tools are available to all users at no cost. Only credit-consuming activities (story generation, translation, image creation, etc.) require an approved credit balance.

7. What free credits cover

Free credits may be used for any AI-powered activity on the platform, including story generation, Takes, brand scoring, content rework, image generation, transcription, and translation. These are the same capabilities available to paid credits – there is no feature gating.

8. What is always free

The following activities are free for all users, regardless of credit balance, and will never consume credits:

Campaigns – creating and running campaigns, collecting advocate responses (text, video, audio), and managing participants.
Publishing – publishing finished stories to your branded story gallery, including SEO metadata and public story pages.
Collaboration – the story editor, track changes, inline comments, stakeholder review, and advocate approval workflows.
Workspace management – contacts, companies, brands, asset type configuration, team roles, and audit trail.

9. What free credits do not cover

Free credits cannot be used for activities that require a human professional. Specifically:

QA Reviewer – accuracy and brand compliance checking by a dedicated reviewer.
Editor – professional editorial services including structure, flow, voice, and narrative polish.
Interviewer – a professional interviewer who conducts the advocate interview on your behalf.
Story Manager – professional oversight of the story through the workflow.

Human add-ons require purchased credits. They will not debit from your free credit balance and cannot be selected while your workspace holds only free credits.

10. Contact enrichment

Contact and company enrichment (firmographic data, professional profiles, and industry classification) is subject to a separate monthly allowance. Active workspaces receive up to 100 free enrichments per calendar month. Enrichments beyond this limit are charged at the standard rate of 1 credit per contact.

Activity requirement: free enrichments are only available to workspaces that have generated at least one story within the last 30 days. If no story has been generated recently, every enrichment is charged at the standard rate until the next story is created.

This rule exists because enrichment is designed to support the storytelling workflow, not as a standalone data service. Proofpoints reserves the right to apply a hard cap on enrichment for any workspace that appears to be using the platform primarily for data enrichment rather than customer storytelling.

11. Credit balance, expiry, and value

The commercial terms for credits – including how credits are purchased, taxes, refunds, pricing changes, and what happens to credits on termination – are set out in section 5 and section 11 of the Terms of Service. The operational rules below supplement those terms.

11.1 Free credits. Free credits are issued once per workspace, at our discretion. They are non-transferable, have no cash value, and are non-refundable in all circumstances. They cannot be re-issued after use or converted to currency. Free credits do not expire; they remain on your workspace balance until used.

11.2 Purchased credits. Purchased credits have no cash value and cannot be sold, transferred, or converted to currency. Purchased credits do not expire. Refunds for purchased credits are governed by the Terms of Service.

11.3 No monetary value. Credits (whether free or purchased) are a unit of account within the Proofpoints platform. They have no cash value and cannot be redeemed, refunded (save as set out in the Terms of Service), exchanged, sold, or converted into any form of currency, cryptocurrency, voucher, or credit with any other service. Credits exist solely to meter usage of AI-powered features on the platform.

11.4 Continued access. Once your credits are depleted, your workspace continues to function – campaigns, publishing, advocate management, and editorial tools remain available regardless of your credit balance. You simply need to purchase additional credits to generate new content.

12. Prohibited conduct

In addition to the restrictions above, the following uses are prohibited and may result in credit revocation, feature restriction, or account suspension:

Creating multiple workspaces or accounts to obtain additional free credits.
Misrepresenting your identity, company, or intended use during the approval process.
Using the platform to evaluate, benchmark, reverse-engineer, or replicate Proofpoints' features, workflows, prompts, or user experience for a competing product.
Automated or scripted usage designed to consume credits or platform resources at scale.
Reselling, sublicensing, or redistributing content generated on the platform on behalf of a third party without a commercial relationship with Proofpoints.
Deliberately circumventing billing by recycling stories, manipulating metadata, or exploiting platform mechanics to avoid legitimate charges.
Attempting to bypass AI safety filters, content policies, or rate limits through prompt manipulation or any other technique.
Uploading files containing executable code, embedded scripts, or malicious payloads, including SVG files with JavaScript, XML external entity attacks, or any form of code injection.
Using prompt injection techniques to manipulate AI model behaviour, extract system instructions, or cause the platform to generate content it is designed to refuse.

13. Enforcement

Proofpoints may take any of the following actions in response to a breach of this policy, at its sole discretion and without prior notice:

Issue a written warning requesting that the behaviour be corrected.
Temporarily or permanently restrict access to specific credit-consuming features (story generation, transcription, translation, image creation).
Revoke free credits and/or adjust the credit balance to reflect actual usage.
Suspend or terminate the workspace entirely.

Where possible, Proofpoints will attempt to contact the workspace owner before taking enforcement action. However, in cases of severe or clearly intentional abuse, action may be taken immediately.

14. Intellectual property

The Proofpoints platform – including its workflows, prompt engineering, user interface, the EEC framework, the brand scoring methodology, and editorial processes – constitutes proprietary intellectual property of Proofpoints Customer Advocacy Limited. The full intellectual-property terms are set out in section 7 of the Terms of Service. Access to the platform does not grant any licence to reproduce, adapt, or create derivative works based on these systems.

Content you create using the platform is yours, subject to the intellectual property terms in our Terms of Service. The platform itself is not.

15. Changes to this policy

Proofpoints may update this Fair Use Policy at any time. Material changes will be communicated via the email address associated with your workspace. Continued use of the platform after a policy change constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.

Questions about this policy? Contact us at hello@proofpoints.com