1. What you are agreeing to
These terms apply when you use the Benefit Bridge Alpha website or related non-public Alpha materials made available with it. By checking the acknowledgement and selecting “Continue to Alpha,” you confirm that you read the linked notices and agree to use the Alpha under these terms.
The electronic acknowledgement is intended to record informed acceptance. Benefit Bridge does not claim that this mechanism—or any provision below—has been legally established as enforceable in every situation.
2. Experimental Alpha status
Benefit Bridge is experimental Alpha software under active development. It may be interrupted, unavailable, incomplete, outdated, inaccurate, or affected by software and policy-rule errors. Features, calculations, and availability may change without notice.
Results are estimates based on what you enter and the programs and rules currently modeled. They are not official eligibility or benefit determinations. A missing program or unknown value must not be read as a $0 benefit. Government agencies and program administrators make official decisions.
3. Educational planning information—not professional advice
Benefit Bridge provides educational estimates and planning information. It does not provide legal, tax, financial, medical, or individualized government-eligibility advice. Verify important decisions with the relevant agency or a qualified professional who can consider your complete circumstances.
4. Independent project; no government affiliation
Benefit Bridge is currently an independent project. It is not represented as a corporation, nonprofit organization, government partner, or government service. Future organizational plans do not create a present legal entity or relationship.
Unless a real relationship is later established and clearly disclosed, Benefit Bridge is not endorsed, sponsored, approved, certified, or operated by the State of Hawaiʻi, Hawaiʻi Department of Human Services, Hawaiʻi Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, the federal government, IRS, USDA, SSA, CMS, or any other government agency.
5. Enter only information you are authorized to use
Do not enter another person’s confidential information without authorization.
Medical, social-service, government, employer, business, and other professional testers must not enter patient, client, employee, applicant, customer, or other third-party confidential information unless they have lawful authority and appropriate consent.
Do not enter Social Security numbers, passwords, bank credentials, benefit account or case numbers, medical records, tax documents, authentication credentials, or unnecessary identifying information. Approximate or fictional financial information is preferred for Alpha testing.
6. Your responsibilities
You remain responsible for the information you enter, checking important calculations, completing official applications, meeting reporting duties and deadlines, and deciding whether to act on an Alpha estimate. A displayed estimate does not change any legal duty to report income, assets, household members, employment, or other required facts accurately to an agency.
Benefit Bridge will not advise you to conceal facts, falsify an application, miss a deadline, or ignore an official notice. If an Alpha result conflicts with an agency notice or official rule, contact the agency or a qualified professional.
7. Lawful use
Do not use the Alpha to:
- commit fraud or intentionally submit false information to a government agency;
- impersonate another person or access their confidential information without authorization;
- interfere with, overload, probe, attack, or bypass safeguards protecting the service;
- misuse non-public Alpha materials or confidential technical information; or
- violate applicable law or another person’s rights.
An ordinary input error, misunderstanding, or good-faith calculation test is not by itself a violation.
8. Benefit Bridge’s purpose
Benefit Bridge exists to help households understand lawful economic choices, identify lawful support that may be available, and pursue greater prosperity without hiding a potential loss of resources. It does not encourage benefit fraud, hidden income, manipulation of official applications, intentional unemployment solely to preserve benefits, or abandonment of support a household legitimately needs.
The product should show estimated economic consequences honestly and leave lawful decisions with the household.
9. Privacy
The Alpha Privacy Notice explains what currently happens to calculation inputs and technical information. The native estimate is designed to run in your browser. A separate PolicyEngine comparison is optional and, when selected and available, sends the disclosed calculation fields to the site’s calculation endpoint. Do not assume that an internet service is perfectly secure.
10. Limited Alpha use and intellectual property
Benefit Bridge uses or may use both Benefit Bridge-created material and third-party/open-source components. Those categories have different rights:
- Benefit Bridge-created proprietary Alpha material. To the extent material is owned by the project’s current owner, legally protectable, and not released under an open-source license, it remains proprietary. You receive a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable permission to use it for lawful personal evaluation and Alpha testing.
- Third-party and open-source material. Its own license controls. These terms do not claim ownership of it or remove rights granted by its license.
- Future open-source releases. Benefit Bridge material becomes open source only when the authorized owner intentionally releases it under a stated license. That license will control the released material.
For proprietary Alpha material only, and except where applicable law or an applicable open-source license permits otherwise, you may not copy or redistribute it, commercially exploit it, extract it for an unauthorized commercial product, create an unauthorized derivative commercial product, or bypass access controls to obtain non-public source code or confidential technical materials.
Publicly accessible website content and browser-delivered code are not confidential merely because they are part of an Alpha. Required third-party notices and license rights must be preserved. See Third-Party and Open-Source Notices.
11. Reasonable confidentiality for genuinely non-public material
If Benefit Bridge intentionally provides you material that is non-public and clearly identified as confidential, use reasonable care to protect it and use it only for the stated Alpha-evaluation purpose. This does not cover information that is public, already known to you without a confidentiality duty, independently developed, or lawfully obtained from another source. A legally required disclosure is not prohibited, although advance notice should be provided when lawful and practical.
This section is not presented as an airtight standalone nondisclosure agreement. Public website content is not made confidential by this section.
12. Third-party services and rules
The Alpha may depend on hosting, open-source software, policy data, or comparison tools supplied by others. Their availability, accuracy, and separate terms are outside Benefit Bridge’s control. Reference to a government rule or third-party tool does not imply endorsement or affiliation.
13. Disclaimer of warranties
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the Alpha is provided on an experimental, “as available” and “as is” basis. Benefit Bridge does not promise uninterrupted operation, complete or current rules, error-free calculations, eligibility, benefit amounts, tax outcomes, security, suitability for a particular decision, or that any identified program will accept an application.
Nothing here excludes a warranty or right that applicable law does not allow to be excluded.
14. Proposed limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Benefit Bridge’s current owner, maintainers, and contributors will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages arising from the Alpha, including loss caused by reliance on an estimate, missed benefits, reporting issues, lost data, or interrupted access.
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, their proposed total aggregate liability arising from or related to the Alpha or these terms is limited to US $1.
This is a proposed contractual limitation, not a guaranteed maximum settlement or a statement that a court will enforce it. It does not apply to the extent applicable law prohibits a limitation or exclusion, including any rights or liabilities that legally cannot be waived.
15. Suspending access and changing the Alpha
Access may be limited or stopped to protect users, investigate misuse, fix errors, or end the Alpha. Material changes to these terms should be shown with a new version and a renewed acknowledgement rather than silently treated as accepted.
16. Governing law and disputes are not finalized
No final governing-law, venue, arbitration, jury-waiver, or class-action-waiver provision has been adopted in this Alpha draft. Benefit Bridge does not invent those terms merely to make this page look complete.
17. Present project status and contact
Benefit Bridge is presently described only as an independent founder-led project. It is not represented here as a corporation, nonprofit organization, or government partner. Intellectual property has not been assigned by these terms to a future entity.
Until a public contact address is established, use the contact method that accompanied your Alpha invitation. Do not send sensitive household records.
18. Attorney-review checklist
Professional review is specifically recommended for electronic acceptance, present ownership and licensing authority, the proprietary/open-source boundary, confidentiality, warranty disclaimer, $1 liability limitation, governing law, venue, dispute resolution, and all interaction with open-source license obligations.