Terms of service
1. What this service is
AJ Forensics provides confidential forensic science guidance in writing, in response to queries posted by registered users. It is meant for investigating officers, practising lawyers and prosecutors, media professionals, victims and their relatives, and forensic science students.
2. What this service is not
Guidance given here is advisory. It is not a laboratory examination, not a report admissible in its own right, and not a substitute for an expert opinion tendered before a court. No opinion given here creates any obligation to appear as a witness.
This site is not monitored continuously and must not be used for anything urgent. If evidence is at risk, follow your own department's standing procedure and contact your laboratory directly.
3. Registration and accuracy
You must register with your own name and a working email address, and keep them current. You are responsible for everything done through your account, so keep your password to yourself and sign out of shared machines.
4. What you may post
Post only what is necessary to describe the forensic problem. Do not post material you are not entitled to share.
- Do not identify victims, the accused, or witnesses by name where the question can be asked without them. Describe roles rather than people.
- Do not post material whose disclosure would prejudice an ongoing investigation or breach an order of a court.
- Do not use this service to seek help in defeating a lawful investigation.
You may attach photographs and video of exhibits, marks or scenes where they are needed to answer the question, and only where you are entitled to share them. Keep the frame to the exhibit: crop or leave out faces, identifying marks, documents and anything else that names a person, unless that detail is itself the question. Do not attach material whose disclosure a court has restricted. Files are stored exactly as you send them, including the camera data inside them, because that data is frequently part of what is being asked about — so treat a photograph as carrying everything the camera recorded, including where it was taken.
5. Confidentiality
Your queries, the replies to them, and any files attached to either are visible to you and to the consulting team only. They are not published, not shown to other users, and not passed to third parties, except where disclosure is required by law.
6. Information we hold
The site stores your name, username, email address, a one-way hash of your password, and the queries and messages you write, together with the times of those actions. Confirmation codes and links are stored hashed and expire, though a copy of the message carrying one is held for the administrator until it is delivered, and for no more than 24 hours. The site also records the time of your last sign-in, a log of actions on your account, and your connection's address for a short period in order to limit abuse.
Where you attach a photograph or a video, the site stores the file as you sent it, along with its name, its size, and the time it was added. Attachments are held on our own server, are served only to you and to the consulting team, and are included in the backups taken of the site. You can remove a file you attached for as long as the query is open; the consulting team can remove any file at any time. Removing a file deletes it, though a copy may remain in a backup until that backup is rotated out, within a week. Nothing is used for advertising and nothing is sold. Write to annamma.john@ajforensics.com from your registered email address to have your account and its threads deleted.
7. Fees
No charge is made through this website. Where a matter needs a meeting, a formal examination, or evidence in court, that is arranged separately and agreed in advance.
8. Meeting
Although this site is meant for answering queries online, it is often not possible to elicit the full details of a context without face-to-face interaction. In such situations a meeting is advised.
9. Availability and changes
The service is offered as it stands, without a guaranteed response time. These terms may be updated; the version on this page at the time you post a query is the one that applies to it.
10. Contact
Questions about these terms can be sent to annamma.john@ajforensics.com, from the address you registered with if you have an account.