Some SelfBadge profiles are created by us, not by the person they are about, from public information on Wikidataand in reports filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC EDGAR): the insider reports of officers and directors of US public companies, and the Form D notices of companies raising money. We also create profiles of active researchers from OpenAlex and the public part of their ORCID record. This page explains which people, what we take, why, and how you can claim, correct or remove a profile about you. We publish this here because we do not contact the people these sources describe.
Who is responsible
Buzz Dealer (Cyprus) Ltd, Agias Filaxeos 122A, Limassol 3087, Cyprus, operates SelfBadge and is the controller of this information. Contact: [email protected].
Which people we create profiles for
Living people who are publicly active in business, investment, research, writing, journalism, the professions (such as engineering, law, design and consulting) or public life, and who are on Wikidata with an English name and an English description (without one, a profile could not tell them apart from namesakes), and either:
- a Crunchbase person ID,
- an occupation among businessperson, entrepreneur, business executive, chief executive officer, investor, banker, philanthropist, diplomat, civil servant, academic, researcher, university teacher, author, writer, journalist, engineer, lawyer, designer and consultant, or
- a position among chairperson, chief executive officer, mayor and ambassador.
Business, investment and executive roles come first: at least 60% of the profiles we create each day from Wikidata are found through a Crunchbase person ID or a business, investment or executive occupation or position. The other occupations share the rest.
From SEC EDGAR, we also create profiles for officers and directors of US public companies, from the reports they file with the SEC when they become, or act as, an insider of a listed company (Forms 3, 4 and 5). We leave out people who are only large shareholders, companies, funds and trusts, companies without a stock ticker, anyone whose most recent filing is more than 24 months old, and anyone whose name in the filing we cannot read with confidence. If the person also has a Wikidata entry, the rules above apply to them too, and the profile is created from Wikidata with the SEC roles added. We create at most a set number of these profiles each day, separately from the Wikidata ones.
From SEC EDGAR we also create profiles for the executive officers, directors and promoters a company names in its Form D (or Form D/A), the notice a company files when it raises money without registering the offering. We take only people, never companies, funds or trusts named there; we leave out investment funds as issuers, filings more than 24 months old, and names the filing does not split into a first and a last name we can rely on. These have their own daily limit too.
From OpenAlex and ORCID we create profiles for living, active researchers: people with an ORCID iD, a current institution, at least 5 published works and a work in the last 3 years. Business and applied fields come first (economics, management, computer science, engineering and medicine), then others. We leave out names given only as initials, and anyone who already has a SelfBadge profile with the same ORCID iD. These have their own daily limit too. The role shown is the job title from the person's public ORCID record; when there is none, the profile says "Researcher" at their current institution, because that is what the published works show, and nothing more. Many of these researchers work in the European Union; the same rules, notice and rights apply to everyone.
A profile we create is shown to the public only when it says enough to tell the person apart: a name, a role (a job title, their role at an organization, or an occupation), and either an organization where they work or worked or a short description. Until then it waits, unpublished and not indexed, and it is published by itself if a later public source adds what was missing.
We prefer people with few Wikipedia articles (0 to 5 Wikipedia and other Wikimedia pages): professionals who are often confused with namesakes, rather than celebrities.
We never create profiles of:
- people Wikidata records as deceased;
- people born before 1940, who may have died without Wikidata recording it. We read the birth year only for this check; we never keep or show it;
- people whose Wikidata description presents them as politicians (for example "British politician" or "Premier of ..."). The only public offices we include are mayor and ambassador, and only for people found through those offices;
- people whose Wikidata description presents a religious role (for example pastor, priest, rabbi, imam, missionary or bishop), since that would reveal their religion;
- people whose description presents them mainly as athletes, astrologers or entertainers, unless it also names a business role: they are outside what SelfBadge is for;
- entries without both a first and a last name;
- anyone who asked us to remove their profile.
Where the information comes from
SEC EDGAR is the US Securities and Exchange Commission's public database of the reports companies and their insiders must file. Officers and directors file these reports themselves, under US law, and the SEC publishes them for anyone to read. A role from a filing shows "as of" the filing's date (for example "Director, Example Corp., as of Mar 2026"), says "from SEC EDGAR" and links to the filing on sec.gov, because a filing proves the role on that date, not before or after it. A Form D is filed by the company and names its related persons; a role from it says "from SEC EDGAR (Form D)" and links to that filing the same way.
OpenAlex is a free index of the world's research (works, authors and institutions) run by the nonprofit OurResearch; its data is published under CC0. ORCID is the registry where researchers keep their own record and their persistent identifier, the ORCID iD; ORCID publishes the public parts of each record under CC0 too, and each researcher decides which parts are public. A fact from OpenAlex says "from OpenAlex" and links to the author's OpenAlex page; the name and job title from ORCID say "from ORCID" and link to the person's ORCID record.
Wikidata is a free knowledge base run by the Wikimedia Foundation. Its data is published under CC0 (no rights reserved). Photos come only from Wikimedia Commons, only with a free license, and are shown with their author and license. Every fact on a created profile says "from Wikidata" and links to the Wikidata page it came from, with the date we read it.
What we take, and what we never take
| We take | We never take |
|---|---|
| From Wikidata: name, other names and the short Wikidata description; occupations; employers and positions, with their dates (month and year at most); education and degrees; awards, with the year; official website; identifiers and account links (Wikidata, Crunchbase, ORCID, SEC CIK, LinkedIn and X); a photo only when it is on Wikimedia Commons with a free license.From SEC filings: the name (as filed, written in the usual order), each officer title or directorship with the company's name and the filing's date, the SEC's identifier for the person (CIK), and a short description we write from the role and company only (for example "Chief Financial Officer of Example Corp.").From a Form D: the name as the company filed it, the person's relationship to the company (executive officer, director or promoter) with the company's name and the filing's date, and where the company is based (city and country, shown on the organization's page, never as the person's location).From OpenAlex and ORCID: the name as the person gives it on ORCID (or on OpenAlex when ORCID does not show it publicly), the ORCID iD, the current institution with its ROR identifier, the current job title from the person's ORCID employment when it is public, up to 3 research topics, and links to the ORCID record and the OpenAlex author page. | Date of birth (the year is read only to leave out people born before 1940, and never kept), gender, citizenship, place of birth, home address, phone numbers, family members, and any photo that is not freely licensed. None of the special categories of data under GDPR Article 9: political party membership or political opinions, religion or beliefs, trade union membership, ethnic origin, health, sex life or sexual orientation. We also leave out positions at political parties, trade unions and religious organizations, and occupations that reveal them (such as political activist, trade unionist or clergy).From SEC filings we never take the address in the filing, shareholdings, trades, prices or amounts, signatures, footnotes or anything else the filing holds. From a Form D we never take the people's addresses, the amounts raised or offered, the investors, sales commissions or anything else in the notice.From ORCID we never take email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses, birth dates, biographies, keywords, other names, or anything the person has not made public on their ORCID record: we read only the name and the employment sections, and only their public parts. From OpenAlex we never take citation counts, co-authors or the list of works. |
Why we may do this (lawful basis)
We rely on legitimate interests (GDPR Article 6(1)(f)): helping people, AI assistants and search engines tell professionals apart from namesakes, and connect them correctly to their work, using information that is already public and openly licensed. We weighed this against your interests and limit what we do to protect them:
- only professional facts that are already public (on Wikidata, in SEC filings, on OpenAlex or in the public part of an ORCID record), never the sensitive or private details listed above, and no special-category data;
- no profiles of people presented as politicians (other than the public offices named above) or in a religious role, or of people born before 1940;
- created profiles are public like every other profile, and AI assistants and, for the fullest profiles, search engines may find them (that is how they help tell you apart from people with the same name). They are labelled "Not claimed yet", and every fact on them shows its source and date;
- each fact shows where it came from, and you can claim, correct or remove the profile at any time, without an account;
- a removed profile is never created again.
We do not contact people individually: Wikidata, SEC filings and OpenAlex hold no contact details we may use, we never read the email address an ORCID record may show, and finding contact details elsewhere would mean collecting more information about you, not less. This page is how we inform you instead (GDPR Article 14(5)(b)).
Claim, correct or remove your profile
- Claim it: press "Claim it" on the profile and sign in with LinkedIn or Google (a researcher who connects ORCID in the editor is offered the profile with the same ORCID iD). Once it is yours, you decide what it shows, and whether it is published.
- Correct it: press "Correct or add" on the profile, say what is wrong or missing, and give a source link or a short explanation. A person at SelfBadge checks every suggestion before the profile changes; an accepted one shows as from a public source, never as verified.
- Remove it: press "Remove it" on the profile and enter your email address. We email you a link; when you open it and press "Remove my profile now", an unclaimed profile is removed at once and added to our suppression list, so it is never created again. We keep only what is needed to recognize you in future imports (your Wikidata and other identifiers such as the SEC CIK or ORCID iD, and your name with the organizations on the profile).
- You can also write to [email protected]. We answer within 30 days.
Your rights
You have the rights of access, correction, erasure, restriction and objection described in our Privacy Policy. Because we rely on legitimate interests, you can object at any time, and we will remove the profile. You can also complain to the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection (Cyprus) (www.dataprotection.gov.cy), or to the data protection authority where you live or work.
How long we keep it
A created profile stays until it is claimed or removed. We do not update it from Wikidata, OpenAlex or ORCID after creating it. While it is unclaimed, a later SEC filing can add a role or move a role's "as of" date to the newer filing; we never add facts to a profile someone has claimed. When a person from a filing may already have a profile, a member of our team checks before anything is added; we never merge two people automatically. The suppression record of a removed person is kept for as long as we import from public sources, so that we can keep our promise not to create the profile again.