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Frequently Asked Questions |
FAQ |
Aleph is not a whistleblowing platform. Please check out OCCRP’s Becoming a Whistleblower page if you have documents that you want to share with our reporters.
This varies from dataset to dataset. While some sources are static, we run more than 200 scrapers to update official datasets on a weekly or monthly basis. Datasets that are updated automatically will show the update frequency in the dataset description.
If you are granted access to Aleph as a journalist, you’re welcome to upload documents, or to create an investigation with your persons of interest. Aleph helps you to systematize your own research, share it with colleagues and cross-reference lists of people with our archive. You can also use Aleph as an text recognition (OCR) tool for scanned documents.
The data you upload will be visible to some members of OCCRP’s data team, but no other editorial staff. In some cases, the data team may offer to introduce you to journalists who are developing related stories.
If you are an open data activist and have collected datasets that should be included in Aleph, please contact us so that we can work together to import the data. Contributing your data will put it at the fingertips of hundreds of investigative reporters.
We welcome suggestions for scrapers that should be added to Aleph. We prioritize resources that would help our reporters track organized crime and corruption in their investigations. In particular, this includes databases of beneficial ownership of companies, real estate, and financial payments by governments to the private sector.
Please file a request with OCCRP ID to suggest a dataset.
Yes! Much of the software we’re building at OCCRP is open source, and we invest a lot of time in making sure other organizations can benefit from this technology as well.
Please visit the Aleph software documentation page for information on how to install and operate the software.
Aleph provides an extensive REST API that can be used to query its knowledge graph. This is available to the public, but rate limits apply for non-registered users.
The API, like the rest of our platform, is intended to be used by journalists. We reserve the option to terminate any use that puts an undue burden on our infrastructure.
Using the Aleph API is not a valid approach to “know your customer” (KYC) checks required for regulated industries, and it does not mean that your customers are “vetted by OCCRP.” Our reporting has repeatedly shown the need for KYC to be done responsibly, and we reserve the right to contact a financial regulator if we find API clients doing this.
We publish a selection of open datasets as part of the Aleph project. We’re also happy to work with other journalists or media organizations to provide bulk exports for specific datasets for your data project.
It is our policy not to provide bulk exports to non-journalists. This specifically includes banks, due diligence firms, and machine learning researchers.