Fact-Checking Policy: Sources, Dates and Corrections
TycoonZone verifies every regulatory claim against primary sources — the FCA Register, ORIAS, BaFin, Companies House and other official registries — and stamps each check with an as-of date. Platform statements stay labeled as claims, Trustpilot and Reddit count as opinions, and registry screenshots are kept as evidence. When we find an error, we fix it, refresh the updatedAt date, and mark factual corrections visibly, while minor clarifications are made quietly. This page details our sources, dating rules, consistency checks and correction workflow.
Every review we publish — browse them all in our reviews section — makes dozens of claims that can be checked against an external source: a broker holds a license from a named regulator, a company was registered on a specific date, an exchange segregates client funds, a fee schedule starts at a stated percentage. This page documents how we verify those claims before publication, what evidence we keep, and what happens when we get something wrong. The short version: official registries first, a dated check behind every fact, and visible corrections when an error survives our process.
The Source Hierarchy: Registries Before Opinions
We rank every source into one of three tiers, and the tier determines how a statement may be worded in a review.
Tier 1 — primary official sources. For anything regulatory or corporate, we go to the register itself: the FCA Register and Companies House in the United Kingdom; the CNMV and the Registro Mercantil in Spain; ORIAS in Switzerland; BaFin and the German commercial register (Handelsregister) in Germany; the AFM and the KvK in the Netherlands; CIRO in Canada, with the Ontario Business Registry for Ontario-registered companies; the FSA in Japan; and the AMF in France. A claim counts as verified only when we have seen it in one of these registers ourselves, and every lookup is recorded together with its access date. In the October 2026 batch of reviews, for instance, all registry checks are dated 14 October 2026 — three days before publication.
Tier 2 — the platforms themselves. Press releases, fee pages, help centers, terms and conditions, statements from support staff. These sources are necessary — only the platform knows its own roadmap — but they are self-interested, so they are worded with an explicit marker: the platform claims. “The platform claims average withdrawal processing of 24 hours” stays a claim unless an independent source can confirm it. When Tier 1 and Tier 2 disagree, Tier 1 wins, and the review says so explicitly.
Tier 3 — secondary sources. Trustpilot, Reddit, app store reviews, forums. These tell us what users experience and feel, which is real information — but it is opinion, not fact. A Reddit thread reporting two-week withdrawal delays does not make the delays true; in a review it can only appear as “users on Reddit report delays of up to two weeks.” We never let Tier 3 graduate into an unqualified statement.
Every Claim Carries an “As Of” Date
An undated fact quietly rots. Registers change daily: licenses are suspended, companies re-register under new names, authorization numbers are reissued, firms collapse. So every verifiable claim in our reviews carries an “as of” date — for example, “regulated by the FCA, FRN 987654, as of 14 October 2026” — and that date is the day our check ran, not the day the claim became true.
Internally, the dates in a review must follow a strict order, which we call the check-date legend:
- company registration date — the earliest date in the legend;
- license or authorization date — when the regulator granted the permission;
- our audit date — when we ran the registry checks;
- publication date;
- update dates, if the review has been refreshed since.
Registration precedes licensing, licensing precedes our audit, our audit precedes publication, and updates come last. If any pair falls out of order — a platform marketing itself since 2019 while the register dates its license to 2023, or a company registered after its supposed launch — we treat it as a discrepancy that must be resolved or reported in the review, not smoothed over. The audit date stays visible in the text even after later updates, so you can always see how fresh the core verification is.
Numeric Consistency: Checking Our Own Arithmetic
Errors are not always about the outside world; a review can contradict itself. Before publication, every article passes a set of internal cross-checks:
- Sums. If our methodology says we compared 27 CFD brokers and 14 crypto exchanges, then every mention of the total must say 41 — not 39, not “more than 40.” A total is recomputed from its parts, not copied from memory.
- Ranges. If a comparison table shows minimum deposits running from €100 to €5,000, the FAQ answer about deposits must repeat that exact range — not “from €100” or “a few hundred euros.” FAQ ranges must cover the values in the tables they summarize.
- Recomputation. Fee examples are recalculated from the published percentages; a “0.1% maker fee on a $10,000 order” must produce the $10 figure shown next to it.
- Timeline order. Dates in the company-history section must run in ascending order and agree with the registry extracts cited.
A number that drifts between sections is treated as an error even when each instance came from a good source.
Evidence: Registry Screenshots With a Capture Date
For every Tier 1 check we keep a screenshot of the registry page, captured with a visible date. The screenshot must show the register entry, the identifier we rely on, the status field, and the capture date. Registry numbers cited in our reviews look like this: FCA firm reference number 987654; CNMV registration No. 412; ORIAS numbers 21004877, 21005342 and 21005914; German commercial register entries HRB 261745 and HRB 262317; KvK number 85377005; and Japanese FSA registrations 金商第3126号 and 金商第3179号.
Screenshots are working evidence, not decoration. When a reader disputes a status — “this broker lost its license last week” — we first reopen the screenshot to see what the register said on the day we checked, then re-check the live register. That sequence distinguishes “we published something wrong” from “the register changed after publication,” and the two cases are handled differently, as described below.
What Happens When We Get Something Wrong
We sort incoming problems into three categories, because they deserve different treatment:
- Factual errors — a wrong number, wrong regulator, wrong license status, wrong founding date. Something we published was not true at the time we published it.
- Outdated information — correct when published, changed since. A license suspended a month after our review is not an error in the review, but it still needs an update.
- Minor issues — typos, formatting, ambiguous phrasing, a broken link.
The correction workflow starts the same way in every case: we verify the report against a Tier 1 source, beginning with our own screenshot and then the live register. If we were wrong, we fix the article. Then:
- the updatedAt field in the article header is refreshed, so the change is visible in metadata;
- minor clarifications are made quietly — a typo fix or a clearer sentence does not need an announcement;
- factual errors are corrected visibly: the figure is fixed and a correction note in the article states what changed and when.
The logic is simple. A reader who compared platforms using the old minimum deposit deserves to see that the number moved; burying a factual correction inside a silent edit treats our comfort as more important than their decision. Visible notes are reserved for factual errors — if every comma fix got an announcement, the notes would stop meaning anything.
To report an error in one of our reviews, use the contact details on the author page linked from every review. Tell us the specific claim, the review it appears in, and — ideally — the source that contradicts it. We check every report against the primary registers. If we are wrong, we fix it and say so. If the platform changed after publication, we update the review with a fresh as-of date. If we were right, we reply with the evidence.
What We Do Not Fact-Check
Some statements cannot be fact-checked, only attributed. Future returns are the clearest case: “up to 12% APY,” “guaranteed monthly profits,” “expected 30% annual growth” are claims about the future, and no register can confirm the future. Our reviews therefore verify that the platform actually makes the promise — with the “the platform claims” marker — and check everything around the promise that is verifiable: the company behind it, its registration, its license, its track record where a register documents one. The promise itself stays a claim, and so does any forward-looking statement about a platform’s growth, upcoming features or future fees.
FAQ
Which sources count as primary for regulatory status?
Official regulators and company registers: the FCA Register and Companies House, the CNMV and the Registro Mercantil, ORIAS, BaFin and the Handelsregister, the AFM and the KvK, CIRO and the Ontario Business Registry, the FSA in Japan, and the AMF. A regulatory claim counts as verified only when confirmed in these, always with an access date. Platform press releases are claims; Trustpilot and Reddit are opinions.
What does “as of 14 October 2026” mean in a review?
It means the register said so on that date, when our check ran. Registers change continuously, so the as-of date tells you how fresh the verification is and exactly what to re-check. In the October 2026 reviews, registry checks ran on 14 October 2026, three days before publication. Later re-checks appear as updates and refresh the updatedAt date.
I found an error in a review. How do I report it?
Use the contact details on the author page linked from the review. Name the claim, the review, and if possible the source that contradicts us. We verify every report against the primary registers and reply with the outcome: a fix, an update, or the evidence that the original claim stands.
What is the difference between a quiet update and a visible correction?
Quiet updates cover minor clarifications: typos, formatting, clearer phrasing. Visible corrections cover factual errors — a wrong number, regulator or license status — and include a note in the article saying what changed and when. Both refresh updatedAt; only factual errors get the note.
Do you fact-check promised returns or APY?
No — future performance cannot be verified, only attributed. We check that the platform makes the promise and mark it as a claim, and we verify the parts a register can confirm: the company, the license, the history. Any “up to X%” figure in our reviews is the platform’s claim, not our finding.
Disclaimer
TycoonZone publishes reviews and guides for informational purposes only; nothing on this page or in our reviews is financial, investment, legal or tax advice. Our fact-checking reduces the risk of error but cannot eliminate it: registers change, platforms change, and a status that was correct on our check date may be different today. Always verify regulatory status directly with the relevant authority before making a financial decision. Registry numbers, dates and screenshots cited here are drawn from our published reviews and were accurate as of the check dates stated alongside them; TycoonZone accepts no liability for decisions made on the basis of this information.