# Verified Handles — snapshot of 2026-10-17

The official social-media handles and online identifiers of notable people and organisations listed on Verified Handles: every live, public entry with its handles and identifiers, where each came from, and the descriptions written on Verified Handles itself.

Landing page (the fields, the licence, how often it is updated, how to cite): [https://verifiedhandles.org/data](https://verifiedhandles.org/data)

The site: [Verified Handles](https://verifiedhandles.org/). Each entry’s own page is its `url` field. The live data, entry by entry: the [API and MCP server](https://verifiedhandles.org/developers).

## Licence

CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain dedication): https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/. You may copy, change and use it for any purpose without asking. A link back to [Verified Handles](https://verifiedhandles.org/) is welcome, not required.

Images are the one exception: an entry’s image is listed by its address, licence and credit, and stays under its own licence.

## Descriptions are partial

Most descriptions on the site are taken from Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0, and are left out. A description is included only when it was written on Verified Handles (by an editor, or in a proposal a reviewer approved) and carries no Wikipedia credit.

## What is in it

- 155,480 entries: every live, public entry on 2026-10-17.
- 708,064 handles and identifiers.
- 464 descriptions written on Verified Handles.
- 85,717 entry images (address, licence and credit only).

## What is left out

- Blocked, deleted and merged-away entries.
- Descriptions taken from Wikipedia (most descriptions on the site), and any description not written on Verified Handles.
- Email addresses.
- Restricted and withdrawn images, and every image but the entry’s lead.
- Edit history, hidden revisions and notes.
- Anything about accounts: who edited, proposed, reviewed or claimed an entry, and IP addresses.

## Files

- `verified-handles-2026-10-17.jsonl.gz`: one JSON object per line, one line per entry, its handles in `handles`, its image in `image`.
- `verified-handles-2026-10-17-entries.csv.gz`: one row per entry (RFC 4180, UTF-8, a header row).
- `verified-handles-2026-10-17-handles.csv.gz`: one row per handle, joined to the entries by `vhid`.
- `verified-handles-2026-10-17.croissant.json`: the same description as Croissant (JSON-LD).

The entries and handles files hold exactly what the JSON Lines file holds.

### Entries

| Field | Type | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| `vhid` | text | The entry’s permanent 11-digit Verified Handles ID. |
| `short` | text | The entry’s short name (its friendly URL), if it has one. |
| `url` | url | The entry’s page on Verified Handles. |
| `title` | text | The name the entry is listed under. |
| `subtitle` | text | The one-line description under the name. |
| `type` | text | What the subject is: person, organization, … |
| `kind` | text | A finer kind (musical_group, company, …), if known. |
| `qid` | text | The subject’s Wikidata item (Q-number), if linked. |
| `verified` | boolean | Whether Verified Handles has checked the handles with the subject. |
| `claimed` | boolean | Whether the subject has claimed the entry and looks after it. |
| `created_at` | date-time | When the entry was created (the 2026 import date for older entries). |
| `updated_at` | date-time | When the entry last changed. |
| `description` | text | A description written on Verified Handles, as HTML; empty for most entries (see “Descriptions”). |
| `description_source` | text | Who wrote the description: editor or submission. |
| `image_url` | url | The entry’s image on Verified Handles, if it has a public one. |
| `image_source` | text | Where the image comes from: wikimedia_commons or upload. |
| `image_license` | text | The image’s licence. Images are not CC0: reuse one under its own licence. |
| `image_license_url` | url | The licence’s text. |
| `image_credit` | text | Who to credit for the image. |
| `image_source_page` | url | The image’s file page on Wikimedia Commons. |
| `handle_count` | integer | How many handles and identifiers the entry lists (the handles file’s rows for it). |

### Handles

| Field | Type | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| `vhid` | text | The entry it belongs to. |
| `platform` | text | The platform’s id: twitter, instagram, viaf, … |
| `platform_name` | text | The platform’s name. |
| `category` | text | social, messaging, website or identifier. |
| `value` | text | The handle or identifier, as listed. |
| `display` | text | A label shown instead of the value, if any. |
| `url` | url | Where it links. |
| `verified` | boolean | Whether this handle has been checked with the subject. |
| `source` | text | Where it came from: wikidata, editor (a Verified Handles editor, or the subject on a claimed entry), submission (a proposal a reviewer approved) or legacy (the wiki before 2026). |

## How often

A new snapshot every week. Each is kept at its dated address while it is among the newest four; [verified-handles-latest.jsonl.gz](https://verifiedhandles.org/data/verified-handles-latest.jsonl.gz) is always the newest, with its [Croissant metadata](https://verifiedhandles.org/data/croissant.json).

## Cite this dataset

JEM Media (2026). Verified Handles: official handles and identifiers of notable people and organisations [Data set], snapshot of 2026-10-17. (DOI to be assigned when the dataset is first published on Zenodo)

```bibtex
@dataset{verified_handles_2026_10_17,
  author    = {{JEM Media}},
  title     = {Verified Handles: official handles and identifiers of notable people and organisations},
  year      = {2026},
  version   = {2026-10-17},
  publisher = {JEM Media},
  url       = {https://verifiedhandles.org/data},
  note      = {CC0 1.0},
}
```