Governance and safe use
How IF Digital is meant to be used, what it keeps out, and how its material is written and reviewed.
What IF Digital is for, and what it is not
IF Digital supports investigative understanding and learning. It helps you understand what a digital record shows, where it came from and which enquiry might follow.
It does not replace authorised investigative procedures, specialist advice, legal advice or your organisation's policies. Where your force, bank or provider has a rule or process for a situation, follow it.
Keep case and personal information out
IF Digital does not need and does not ask for case information. Please do not enter, paste or share personal data, sensitive material, case details, live identifiers or other restricted information anywhere on this site. Use fictional, sanitised or suitably anonymised examples when you work through the guidance.
The first time you visit, the site asks you to acknowledge this. That acknowledgement is stored only in your browser. It is not linked to your identity and is not sent to IF Digital.
Every learning case is fictional
Learning cases, interactive investigations and practical activities use invented people, organisations, places and devices. Any addresses are invented and are not real private residences. Characters who recur across the site appear in separate scenarios, and the suspect in an investigation is kept deliberately separate from any offender-perspective character.
Understanding offending without teaching it
Some scenarios follow an offender's choices so you can see what the technology actually did, what systems recorded and how an enquiry adapts. They are not guides to concealment, offending or evasion. Any humour is aimed at the offender's overconfidence, never at victims.
How evidence is described
- Pages state what a record establishes and what remains open.
- Infrastructure, connection, account, device, user and suspect are treated as separate propositions. An IP address, for example, is not a person.
- Where evidence supports a line of enquiry, the page says so plainly. It does not claim more than the evidence supports.
Written to work across jurisdictions
General guidance is written to work across jurisdictions. Pages that describe UK decision-making are labelled as UK decision support. Nothing on this site is legal advice.
Reviewed before it is treated as final
New learner-facing material is published to a review site first and is treated as final only after the editor has approved it. Where a factual claim depends on authoritative or public material, the source is recorded.
Questions about governance, security or data handling?
Raise them as part of any licence discussion.
