Terms of Service

The agreement

This is a legal agreement between you and NTScore ("NTScore," "we," or "us"), based in Hartford, Connecticut, USA. If you are accepting these Terms on behalf of a business or organisation, you confirm that you have authority to bind that entity, and "you" refers to that entity. If you do not have that authority, or you do not accept these Terms, do not use the service.

What NTScore is

NTScore computes a 300–850 trust score for athletes from public Instagram signals, lets an athlete claim and verify their own handle, and displays the profiles of athletes who opt in to a public listing so that local businesses can find them.

NTScore does not currently process payments or handle deals. There is no checkout, no escrow, and no platform fee on this service today. Any arrangement you reach with another user happens entirely outside NTScore and is solely between you and that party. When we introduce paid deals, we will publish the terms that govern them and ask you to accept those terms before you can use the feature.

The product is in active development and may change significantly between releases. Nothing on NTScore is financial, legal, tax, or career advice.

Eligibility

• You must be at least 16 years old to create an account. The NIL rules themselves do not set a minimum age — the NCAA policy, the College Sports Commission process, and state high-school association rules (including Connecticut's, which has permitted high-school NIL since 2022) turn on athlete status rather than age — and we do not exclude younger athletes who are permitted to earn from their name, image, and likeness.
• If you are under 18, a parent or legal guardian must review and accept these Terms with you. Today the service only calculates and displays a score; when we introduce paid deals, a parent or guardian will have to be a party to any deal involving an athlete under 18.
• Athletes must comply with the NIL policy of their school and of the NCAA, their state high-school association, or whichever sports organisation governs them.
• Businesses must be lawfully operating in their jurisdiction and must not fall within the prohibited categories listed below.
• International student athletes on F-1 or other non-immigrant visas are responsible for confirming that NIL activity is permitted under their visa status before signing up.

Accounts & verification

• Provide truthful information when you sign up. Misrepresenting your identity, age, school, or eligibility is a breach of these Terms.
• NTScore has no passwords. You sign in either through a single-use link sent to your email address or through Google. Because of that, whoever controls your email account can sign in as you — keeping that mailbox secure is your responsibility. Notify us immediately if you suspect unauthorised access.
• Athletes claim ownership of an Instagram handle by placing a short verification code in the bio of that account. The claim is exclusive — once a handle is verified, no other account on NTScore can claim it.
• Anyone can look up a score for any public Instagram handle. Running a lookup does not give you any rights over that handle, and only the verified owner can claim it or publish a profile from it.
• We may suspend or remove accounts that fail verification, misrepresent ownership, or otherwise violate these Terms.

Electronic communications. By creating an account you consent to receive communications from NTScore — including these Terms, the Privacy Policy, account notices, and security alerts — in electronic form, by email and within the product. Electronic delivery has the same legal effect as a paper copy. You can withdraw this consent at any time by closing your account, in which case we will no longer be able to provide the service to you.

Athlete responsibilities

NTScore is not your school, your athletic department, your agent, or your tax advisor. As an athlete using the service you are solely responsible for the following:

• Compliance with the NCAA NIL policy (and any successor policy) and with your school's NIL disclosure rules at all times. Nothing you do on NTScore satisfies a school disclosure obligation.
• Reporting deals to the NIL Go clearinghouse where the deal value meets the applicable threshold — currently $600 or higher, within the reporting window set by the College Sports Commission — and to your athletic department's disclosure platform where required.
• If you are a high-school athlete, compliance with your state association's rules. In Connecticut, CIAC rules prohibit using school names, logos, uniforms, mascots, or facilities in NIL activity, prohibit school employees from participating in it, and prohibit NIL being used as an inducement to transfer schools.
• Not promoting, through NTScore, any of the following prohibited categories: alcohol, tobacco, vaping or other nicotine products, gambling or sports betting, cannabis or controlled substances, firearms or weapons, adult entertainment, prescription pharmaceuticals, or performance-enhancing substances banned by your sport.
• Your own taxes. Any money you earn from NIL activity is your income, and you are responsible for the resulting U.S. federal and state filing obligations. NTScore does not pay you, withhold tax, or issue tax forms today; if that changes, we will tell you what is required before you use the feature.
• School trademarks. You may identify yourself by sport and position, but you may not present yourself as an "official" representative of your school or use logos owned by it without that school's licence.

Business responsibilities

• Operate lawfully in your state and do not use NTScore to promote any of the prohibited categories listed above.
• Provide accurate descriptions of yourself, your company, and any opportunity you present to an athlete. Do not misrepresent your relationship to an athlete or to NTScore.
• Honour whatever you agree with an athlete. Because NTScore does not process payments, we are not a party to that agreement and cannot hold, release, or refund funds.
• Respect the athlete's school NIL policy and disclosure obligations. Do not ask an athlete to violate, evade, or conceal those obligations.
• Do not contact an athlete who has not published a public profile, and do not use data taken from the service to build your own list or database.

About the score

The NIL Trust Score is a heuristic estimate, not a credit score and not a guarantee of any business outcome. Its inputs and methodology may change as we learn what works. If live Instagram data cannot be retrieved, the service may fall back to a deterministic estimate derived from the handle, and it is labelled as an estimate where that happens. Do not rely on the score as the sole basis for a financial, legal, or professional decision.

We are not your agent

NTScore is a measurement and discovery tool. We do not represent athletes, we do not negotiate on anyone's behalf, we do not solicit or procure deals, we do not recommend that you accept or decline any opportunity, and we take no share of what an athlete earns.

Nothing in these Terms creates an agency, partnership, joint venture, employment, or fiduciary relationship between you and NTScore. In particular, NTScore is not an "athlete agent" as that term is used in the Connecticut Uniform Athlete Agents Act or in comparable laws of other states, and does not hold itself out as one. If you want representation, retain a licensed athlete agent or an attorney.

No affiliation

NTScore is an independent service. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or otherwise associated with the NCAA, the College Sports Commission, any conference, the University of Connecticut or any other school, any state high-school association, or Instagram or Meta Platforms, Inc. References to any of them are for identification and description only.

Your content

You retain all rights in the content you submit to NTScore — your name, your profile details, the photos you upload, and the public information we cache from Instagram. By submitting that content, you grant NTScore a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, cache, display, and transmit it solely for the purpose of operating and promoting the service. You can revoke this licence for future processing by switching your profile to private or by asking us to delete your account at legal@ntscore.com.

Prohibited uses

You agree not to:

• Use the service for any unlawful purpose.
• Violate the NCAA NIL policy, your school or state association NIL policy, or applicable state law — including Connecticut PA 21-132, PA 22-11, and HB 6446.
• Claim a profile or handle that does not belong to you, or attempt to circumvent the Instagram verification flow.
• Scrape, copy, resell, or otherwise extract the platform's data — including athlete profiles, scores, or listings — for use outside NTScore.
• Reverse engineer, probe for vulnerabilities, or interfere with the operation of the service.
• Harass, defame, or discriminate against other users on the basis of any protected characteristic.
• Upload malware, send spam, or transmit any content that infringes the rights of others.

Intellectual property

The NTScore name, logo, the visual design of the product, the scoring methodology, and the underlying software are owned by NTScore and protected by copyright, trademark, and trade-secret law. These Terms do not grant you any licence to use those marks or that software beyond the use of the product as intended.

Copyright complaints (DMCA)

NTScore respects intellectual-property rights. If you believe content on the service infringes your copyright, send a written notice to legal@ntscore.com that includes:

• Your physical or electronic signature.
• Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to be infringed.
• Identification of the material that you claim is infringing, with enough detail for us to locate it (a direct URL is best).
• Your contact information — name, address, phone, and email.
• A statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
• A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorized to act on behalf of the owner.

We may remove or disable access to the material identified in a valid notice and we may terminate the accounts of users who repeatedly infringe. If you believe content of yours was removed in error, you may submit a counter-notice to the same address with the elements described in 17 U.S.C. § 512(g).

Disclaimers

The service is provided "as is" and "as available." To the maximum extent permitted by law, NTScore disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or that any score or profile shown on the service is accurate. We do not verify the identity, solvency, or good faith of businesses that contact athletes, and we do not guarantee that any deal will materialise or that any athlete will be eligible to accept it.

Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, NTScore and its officers, directors, employees, and contractors will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, or goodwill, arising out of or related to your use of the service. Our aggregate liability for any claim arising from these Terms or the service is capped at the greater of (a) one hundred U.S. dollars ($100) and (b) the amount you paid to NTScore during the twelve months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited under applicable law.

Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless NTScore from any third party claim, loss, or expense (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from (a) your use of the service in breach of these Terms, (b) your violation of any law or third-party right, or (c) any content you submit to the service.

Termination

You can stop using the service at any time. To close your account and have your data deleted, write to legal@ntscore.com from the email address on the account — there is no delete button in the product yet, so we handle closures by hand. We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these Terms, mislead other users, or expose the platform to legal or reputational risk. Sections that by their nature should survive termination — disclaimers, liability cap, indemnification, governing law, and these survival rules — survive.

Governing law & dispute resolution

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Connecticut, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The exclusive venue for any dispute arising out of these Terms or the service is the state and federal courts located in Connecticut, and you submit to the personal jurisdiction of those courts. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. The effective date at the top of this page reflects the latest revision. For material changes — in particular, when we introduce payments — we will email registered users and post a notice in the product before the change takes effect, and we will ask you to accept the revised Terms rather than rely on your silence.

Contact

Questions about these Terms? Write to legal@ntscore.com. Mail can be addressed to NTScore, Hartford, Connecticut, USA.