INBULK Electronic Evidence and Retention Policy

1. Purpose and status

1.1. This Policy determines the principles for the creation, classification, retention, verification and export of the electronic evidence of the Platform.

1.2. This Policy does not determine in advance the evidentiary weight to be given in a particular court or arbitration. The final assessment is made in accordance with the applicable procedural law.

1.3. In the event of a conflict, the Accession Agreement and the immutable edition of the terms of the particular transaction prevail.

2. Matters to be evidenced

2.1. The following may be subject to evidence:

• the person, the company, the role and the Rights at the moment of the action;
• the content and edition of an Order, a Service Request, a Service Order, a Business, a Contract or a document;
• the fact, the method, the date and the time of Signing or Acceptance;
• the source, the content and the time of an external or automated event;
• creation, transmission, receipt, viewing, refusal, error or cancellation;
• the status of performance, payment, logistics, security, insurance or financing;
• the history of changes, notifications, claims and security measures.

3. Classification of evidence

3.1. Evidence is classified by level of confirmation:

3.2. A general status of “verified” without indication of the object, the scope, the source and the date must not be used as evidence of a particular circumstance.

4. Sources

4.1. The sources of electronic evidence are:

• the system logs of the Platform;
• immutable snapshots of an Order, a Service Request, a Service Order and the legal bundle;
• signed documents and the Signing Evidence Record;
• API requests, webhooks, idempotency keys and response logs;
• banking, payment, TSP, KYC/KYB, telematics, warehouse, laboratory and other integrations;
• uploaded originals, electronic documents, copies, photographs and scans;
• email, messages, chats and support records;
• acts, certificates, transport, weight, customs and insurance documents.

5. Operational status and legal fact

5.1. An operational status, GPS, a photograph, a manually entered weight, a driver’s message, a file or a scan do not in themselves confirm final performance, quantity, quality, title, risk or payment, save in a case expressly determined by the terms of the transaction and by the corresponding integration.

5.2. An automatically recorded event, or information received from a warehouse, a surveyor, a laboratory, a bank or another third-party provider, may be decisive for a particular transaction only where the source of that information is properly identified, the relevant integration is provided for by the terms of the transaction, the data received has successfully passed the established check, and the consequences of that event or information are expressly established by the terms of the relevant transaction.

5.3. A draft or an automatically generated document is not a duly executed document until Signing or such other execution as is provided for.

6. Editions and immutability

6.1. Every legally significant edition has a unique identifier, a time, an author or source, a link to the previous edition and, where available, a hash.

6.2. A change to material terms creates a new edition. The previous edition is not deleted and cannot be substituted in the evidence package.

6.3. A Business Confirmation or a Service Order must refer to the specific edition of the Order or Service Request and to the system event which created the transaction.

7. Time and sequence of events

7.1. System events are stored in UTC; the interface may display local time. The source of time and, where applied, the electronic time stamp are recorded.

7.2. System time confirms the time of a system event but is not called a qualified time stamp in the absence of the corresponding service.

7.3. A repeated submission of the same request with the same idempotency key does not create a repeated transaction. The history of repeated attempts to perform such a request is recorded and retained in the system logs.

8. Electronic evidence package

8.1. To confirm a legally significant action or event, the Platform may compile a package of electronic evidence which, depending on the type of transaction, may contain:

• the identifiers of the transaction and the document, its edition and cryptographic hash;
• details of the parties, the Signatory or Authorised User and their authority at the moment the action was performed;
• the final terms of the transaction and the editions of the documents accepted by the User;
• the method of authentication and electronic signing, and the results of the relevant checks;
• the date and time of the event and the necessary technical data;
• the history of acceptance, signing, delivery and status changes;
• electronic certificates, time stamps and confirmations from third-party providers, where these were used;
• other system records necessary to confirm the action or event.

8.2. The composition of the package is determined by the nature of the transaction, the means of authentication and signing applied and the data actually recorded.

8.3. The package must not contain assertions that a fact has been checked or confirmed where such a check was not in fact carried out or its result was not properly recorded.

9. Retention

9.1. The period is determined by the type of document, by the contract, by the law, by the limitation period, by tax and accounting requirements, by claims, by insurance and by risk.

9.2. Signed Contracts, Business Confirmations, Service Orders, payment and security evidence are retained at least for the period of the outstanding obligations and potential claims.

9.3. Backup copies are retained and deleted in accordance with the established backup cycle and retention periods. Where data is subject to an obligation to preserve it for the purposes of a dispute, an investigation, an audit or compliance with the law (legal hold), its deletion is suspended for the duration of that obligation. Data restored from a backup copy is thereafter processed in accordance with the applicable retention and deletion rules.

10. Retention of data in connection with legal requirements (legal hold)

10.1. A temporary suspension of the ordinary deletion of data may be applied in connection with a claim, court or arbitration proceedings, an internal or external investigation, a suspicion of fraud or an information security incident, a sanctions check, an insurance claim or a lawful request from a competent authority.

10.2. Such retention applies only to data relevant to the case or check concerned. Access to it is restricted, and the beginning and the end of that regime are documented.

11. Export and access

11.1. The User is provided with the available documents and system confirmations relating to its transactions. Disclosure of the other party’s data is limited by contract, by confidentiality and by law.

11.2. Export preserves the format, the hash or another means of verification where supported. A converted copy must be marked as a copy.

11.3. Before an Account is closed, the User is given a reasonable opportunity to download the available documents, unless otherwise required by law or by security.

12. Correction of errors

12.1. An erroneous event is not deleted without trace. It is reversed or corrected by a new event with a reference, a reason, an author and a time.

12.2. An administrator has no right to change retroactively the content of an Accepted Order, of a signed document or of the electronic evidence related to them without preserving the full history of such changes.

13. Incidents and chain of custody

13.1. In the event of an incident, the Operator preserves the logs, files, system data and access information necessary for its investigation.

13.2. The transfer of electronic evidence for expert examination, investigation or judicial proceedings is documented, preserving information about its origin, integrity and transfer.

14. Changes

14.1. The edition of this Policy recorded by the relevant legal bundle or by the terms applies to each transaction. Material changes have no retroactive effect.

15. Contacts

15.1. Questions concerning this Policy — [email protected].

16. Final provisions

16.1. This Policy is a standalone public document of INBULK.COM and applies to electronic evidence and data generated or stored during the use of the Platform.

16.2. Where the law of a particular jurisdiction establishes special requirements for electronic evidence or for the periods of its retention, the mandatory requirements of that jurisdiction apply.

Version history