Terms of Use

Effective date: January 1, 2026
Last updated: October 2026

These terms govern your use of whistleblowerawardcalc.com (the “Site”). The Site is operated by The Click Lab Agency LLC, a California limited liability company (“The Click Lab,” “we,” “us”). By using the Site you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Site.

The disclaimer is part of these terms. It states, in short, that the Site is not legal advice, that using it does not create an attorney-client relationship, and that calculator results are estimates only.

What the Site is

The Site publishes an educational calculator and guides about four federal whistleblower programs: the SEC program under 15 U.S.C. §78u-6, the CFTC program under 7 U.S.C. §26, the IRS program under 26 U.S.C. §7623, and False Claims Act qui tam suits under 31 U.S.C. §3730. It also describes the FinCEN program under 31 U.S.C. §5323 at a shorter length.

The Click Lab is not a law firm, not a government agency, and not a whistleblower office. The Site does not file tips, does not file lawsuits, and does not refer cases to attorneys. Filings go to the SEC, the CFTC, the IRS, FinCEN, or a federal court, as the Where to get help section on the homepage describes.

Not legal, tax, or financial advice

Guides, tables, worked examples, the FAQ, and the methodology page are general explanations of public statutes, rules, and agency practices. They are not advice about your facts. They are not a prediction that an agency will open a case, that the Department of Justice will intervene in a qui tam suit, or that any award will be paid. Award law changes. If a page and the statute it cites disagree, the statute controls, and we want the correction: see the editorial standards.

No professional relationship

Using the Site, reading a guide, running the calculator, or emailing us does not create an attorney-client relationship, a fiduciary relationship, or any other professional relationship with The Click Lab or anyone who works on the Site. Do not send us confidential allegations. We are not your lawyer, and an email to us is not a privileged communication. We do not agree to keep the contents of an unsolicited case narrative confidential, because we do not want that narrative in the first place.

The calculator is an estimate

The calculator applies a statutory percentage band to a dollar amount you type, then shifts inside that band based on the contribution and cooperation choices you select. The formulas, thresholds, and adjustments are written out on the methodology page. You should read these limits before you rely on a number:

• The amount you enter is the amount you believe the government will collect. The tool does not estimate the chance that a judgment goes unpaid, and it does not reduce the number you typed.
• It assumes a successful case. Most tips never produce an award, because most never produce a collected sanction.
• For the SEC and CFTC, a mandatory award requires monetary sanctions over $1 million. For the IRS mandatory band, the amount in dispute must exceed $2 million (and, if the taxpayer is an individual, gross income must exceed $200,000). Below the IRS threshold the tool shows the discretionary §7623(a) range instead of the mandatory band. The False Claims Act has no dollar floor; the band depends on whether the government intervenes.
• The tool does not apply culpability reductions, unreasonable-delay findings, a split among several whistleblowers, the public-disclosure bar, the first-to-file bar, related-action sanctions, state false claims acts, attorney’s fees, or income tax on the award.

You may not present a calculator result to an agency, a court, an employer, or another person as an official determination or as The Click Lab’s evaluation of a real claim. It is not either of those things.

Acceptable use

You may use the Site to learn how the programs work, to compare a set of assumptions against the published bands, and to follow links to the statutes and the agencies. You may link to any page.

You may not:

• present the Site, the calculator, or a result as the SEC, the CFTC, the IRS, FinCEN, the Department of Justice, or a law firm;
• use the Site to collect allegations from other people, or to hold yourself out as able to file a tip for them through us;
• send us another person’s personal information or the substance of someone else’s potential claim;
• attempt to probe, disrupt, or overload the Site, or to interfere with anyone else’s use of it;
• copy the Site in a way that suggests you are the publisher, or scrape it in order to republish the guides as your own.

Ordinary browsing, quoting a short passage with credit, and linking to a page are allowed, including by journalists and researchers. The Site is a static educational publication. We do not offer an account, a dashboard, or an upload feature.

Your email

If you email us, you are responsible for what you include. Corrections are most useful when they name the page, the sentence, and the statute or agency page that shows the error. We may decline messages that ask us to evaluate a claim. We do not promise a reply to every suggestion for a new guide. The contact page describes what we do answer.

Intellectual property

The guides, the explanatory text around the calculator, the worked examples, the selection and arrangement of the pages, and the site design are owned by The Click Lab, except where a page quotes or links to a government source. Statutes, regulations, court opinions, and agency pages belong to their authors or are public law. Linking to them, or quoting a short statutory phrase, does not transfer any government work to us.

You may quote a brief excerpt from a guide, with a link back to the page and, where the point is a legal rule, a link to the statute. You may not copy a full guide, mirror the Site, or reuse the calculator’s explanatory copy as the text of another site without written permission. To ask, email hey@theclicklab.agency.

The names WhistleblowerAwardCalc and The Click Lab are used to identify the publisher. Do not register a confusingly similar name for a tip-intake or referral service.

Advertising and other people’s services

The Site displays ads through Google AdSense, publisher ID ca-pub-6434377544325972, and measures traffic with Google Analytics 4, measurement ID G-XB1TWVB8JG. Google’s tools may set cookies. What those tools collect is described in the privacy policy. We do not control which ad Google shows. An advertisement for a lawyer, a tax preparer, or anyone else is not our recommendation, is not a paid placement in the editorial text, and is not a statement that the advertiser handles whistleblower cases.

No law firm pays The Click Lab for a mention in a guide or for a referral from this Site. Links to sec.gov, irs.gov, cftc.gov, whistleblower.gov, justice.gov, fincen.gov, congress.gov, govinfo.gov, law.cornell.edu, and similar sources are citations so you can read the primary material. They are not endorsements, and those sites have their own terms. We are not responsible for their content or for changes they make after we link to them.

Disclaimer of warranties

The Site is provided “as is” and “as available.” We work from the statutes, rules, and agency publications cited on each page, and we correct errors we can verify, but we do not warrant that a page is complete, current, or fit for your particular decision. Award percentages in a real case are set by the agency or the court on a record we do not have. Statutory text on a linked site can be updated after we last read it.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, The Click Lab and its members, employees, and contractors are not liable for any loss arising out of your use of the Site or your reliance on it. That includes a decision to file or not to file a tip or a qui tam complaint, a missed deadline, a disclosure that affects anonymity or a seal, a difference between an estimate and an award that is later paid or denied, and any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages.

Some states do not allow certain limitations. Those limits apply only to the extent the law permits. Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot legally be excluded, and nothing here limits a non-waivable right you have under the consumer-protection law of your state.

Indemnity

If you use the Site to impersonate The Click Lab, a government agency, or a law firm, or if you collect other people’s allegations while claiming this Site will file or refer them, you will indemnify The Click Lab against claims, losses, and reasonable attorneys’ fees arising out of that misuse. This indemnity does not apply to a claim that a page of ours is inaccurate. Send those to the corrections address.

Governing law and where a dispute is heard

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict-of-law rules that would apply another state’s law. Subject to the sentence in the liability section about non-waivable consumer rights, exclusive venue for a dispute arising out of the Site lies in the state or federal courts located in San Diego County, California, where The Click Lab is based. You and The Click Lab consent to personal jurisdiction there.

Changes, severance, and the whole agreement

We may update these terms. The “Last updated” date will change when we do. Continued use of the Site after the new date is acceptance of the updated terms. If a court holds one provision unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. These terms, together with the disclaimer and the privacy policy, are the entire agreement between you and The Click Lab about use of the Site. They do not change any agreement you may have with a lawyer, an agency, or an employer.

Contact

Questions about these terms: hey@theclicklab.agency.