Your rights as an applicant

Gram is a service that employers and admissions offices use to check the claims on a resume or application. When an organization asks us to check yours, we read the document you submitted, look for public evidence of what it says (a paper in a scholarly index, a repository on a code-hosting site, a company's own page, a news story), and send the organization a report that restates each claim at the level the evidence supports. We do not collect anything from you beyond what you already sent them, we do not contact your references or employers, and we do not make the decision — the organization does.

Because that report is about you and is used to make a decision about you, United States law treats Gram as a consumer reporting agency and the report as a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. That law gives you the rights on this page, and it is the reason you received an email from us rather than only from the organization.

When the report is for employment, the organization must tell you in writing that a report may be obtained about you, and must have your written permission, before we run the check. If the organization asked us to handle that, you received an email with a short disclosure and a link. Opening the link shows you the disclosure by itself first, then asks you to authorize or decline.

You may decline. If you do, we run no check and tell the organization only that you declined. The application material already supplied to Gram stays unprocessed and follows the organization's configured review-retention period; the record of your choice is kept separately as a compliance record. Declining may affect your application; that is between you and the organization. If you do not respond, the request expires without a check; the organization may send a new request or separately record authorization it obtained from you. If you are under 18, a parent or guardian should give the authorization, and the form asks for their name.

If the organization told us they had already given you the disclosure and obtained your permission themselves, you will not have received the request from us, and the rest of this page still applies.

[COUNSEL: confirm that the standalone disclosure step and the authorization text satisfy §604(b)(2), that a guardian's name and relationship are sufficient authorization for a minor, and that the authorization scope covers reruns of the same document during the same application.]

When the report is for an admissions decision, the law does not require your permission first, but you are still entitled to know a report was made and to everything else on this page. If the organization gave us your address, you received a notice saying a report was requested and, once it was sent, a second notice saying it was delivered and to whom.

You can always have a free copy of what we reported about you. Every notice we send includes a link to your file, which shows the report as the organization received it, who received it and when, and any dispute or adverse-action status. If you tick “send me a copy” when you authorize, we also attach the report to the delivery notice. If a link has expired, or you never got one, write to disputes@nolarping.com from the address the organization has for you and we will send a fresh one.

If anything in the report is inaccurate or incomplete — a claim scored lower than the evidence supports, a source that is about a different person with your name, a publication or project we failed to find — you can dispute it, and we must reinvestigate.

How: email disputes@nolarping.com from the address the organization has for you, or use the dispute form on your file page when your notice offers one. Say which item you dispute and why. Anything that helps us verify (a link to the paper, the repository, the company page; a document) is welcome but not required — we will rerun the search regardless.

What happens: we confirm receipt, tell the organization a dispute is open and mark the report as disputed while it is, rerun the verification of the disputed items with your information in hand, and correct or remove anything we cannot verify. We finish within 30 days (45 if you send more material during the first 30) and send you the result: what changed, what did not and why, and a corrected copy if anything changed. The organization receives the corrected report too. If nothing changed, you may ask us to add a brief statement of your dispute to the report, and to send the corrected or annotated report to anyone who received it in the last two years for employment purposes.

[COUNSEL: confirm the frivolous-or-irrelevant standard and the five-business- day notice for declining a reinvestigation under §611(a)(3), and whether the file page plus the delivery email satisfy §609 and §612 disclosure in full.]

If the organization intends to turn you down, withdraw an offer, or otherwise decide against you based even in part on the report, you are entitled to a copy of the report and a summary of your rights beforethat decision is final, with time to respond — to dispute an item, or to explain it to the organization directly. Gram sends that pre-adverse notice on the organization's behalf and the organization waits before acting; in most cases the wait is at least seven days.

If the decision goes ahead, you are entitled to a notice saying so, with our name and contact details, a statement that we did not make the decision and cannot tell you why it was made, and a reminder of your right to a free copy of the report within 60 days and to dispute it. That notice comes from us too. Neither notice means the decision was correct; both exist so that you can act.

[COUNSEL: confirm the pre-adverse waiting period by jurisdiction, in particular NYC Fair Chance timing, and the address and telephone number a §615(a)(2) notice must carry for Gram; add them here.]

Your file page stays open for 60 days after each message we send you. If you would like to keep the report longer — with its sources and the result of any dispute — under your own email address and your own control, the file page may offer that after the report. It is optional. Nothing about the report, the organization's decision, or anything else on this page changes if you skip it, and we record nothing about a no.

If you say yes, we email you a link to your record. The link works for seven days; you can ask for a new one at any time at the record sign-in page, using only the email address we wrote to. There is no account and no password. From your record you can read every report we have furnished about you and kept at your request, see what a dispute changed, and delete the whole record in one step. Deleting is immediate and permanent; it does not remove the records the law requires us to keep (that you were told, what you authorized, what you disputed) or the organization's own copy. A record you have not opened or added to for two years is deleted automatically.

We show your record to no one. Using it to speed up a future application — by directing us, in writing, to share it with an organization you choose — is something we may offer later, and would require your fresh permission each time.

Some states give you more. In California, you may ask for a copy of any report about you at the time it is requested (the “send me a copy” option does this) and may inspect your file. In New York, you are entitled to a copy of Article 23-A of the Correction Law with any report used for employment, and New York City applies additional timing rules before an adverse decision. Other states have similar rules, and the organization that requested the report is responsible for following the ones that apply where you live and where you applied. If you believe a state right of yours has not been honored, write to us and we will help you raise it.

[COUNSEL: verify the California ICRAA and New York statements above, and list any other state whose notice must be reproduced here.]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau publishes the official summary of your rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. We attach it to every pre-adverse notice, and you can read it at any time at the official CFPB summary (PDF). Nothing on this page limits the rights in that summary.

For a copy of your report, a dispute, or any question about what we did with your application: disputes@nolarping.com. Please write from the email address the organization has for you so that we can match you to your file without asking for anything else; if you no longer have access to it, say so and we will find another way to verify you. We reply within two business days and never charge for any of this.

How we handle your data more generally is on the privacy page.