Nothing removes a badge except the operator

Every mark is issued with a right to display it, and every right can end. In sample 5 the right ended on day zero, and the badge was still in the footer on day five hundred and eighty - because removing it was the operator’s job, and nobody did it.

Open the partner account Run the four questions

Mark stub

Withdrawn: day 0
Still displayed: day 580 (19 months)
Page views shown: 2,400,000
Issuers publishing a register: 0 of 3

the issuerThe company or body that put the mark there - a testing house, an association, a review platform or a media brand

the scopeWhat the examination covered: a process, a system, a game type, one entity or one market

the recourseWhat the issuer does when the operator fails - the question almost no mark answers

Direct answerA mark is withdrawn by its issuer, but the badge is removed from a page by the operator. Where nobody on the page is watching the certificate, a withdrawn mark can stay up for as long as the site does - and in this sample no examined issuer published a register of withdrawals to check against.

How a mark ends

A right to display an examined mark ends in four ways, and each of them is quiet. None of them produces a notification to a reader, and two of them do not produce a notification to anybody.

It expires

The certificate reaches its date and is not renewed. Nothing changes on the page: the badge is a picture, and a picture does not expire. A reader checking the certificate number would find an expiry in the past.

It is suspended

The issuer finds a failure and suspends the mark pending corrective action. The suspension may last weeks, and the display is still the operator’s to remove - usually after the corrective work is done, when the incentive is weakest.

It is withdrawn

The issuer ends the certification, sometimes after a breach, sometimes after non-payment. Withdrawal is the strongest version and has the weakest notification path: the operator is told, and the reader is not.

It moves entity

The company is renamed, restructured or replaced by a group company. The certificate belongs to the old entity, which may no longer operate anything, while the badge remains on the page of the new one.

The arithmetic of a badge nobody removed

The delay between a mark ending and being removed is the period in which the badge is factually false. It is measurable, and in this sample it is long enough to matter.

Sample 5 - the gap between withdrawal and removalthe right to display ended                        day 0
removed from the footer                          day 580
days the badge was displayed and untrue              580
    that is 580 / 365 = 1.59 years, or 19 months
page views during that period                  2,400,000
visitors shown a claim that was no longer true 2.4 million
examined issuers publishing a withdrawal register  0 of 3
what the issuer does when the mark ends
    it tells the operator, and it removes the mark
    from its own register entry. It does not run
    a public list of badges that have gone.

Why no register exists. An issuer’s register of current marks exists because members want to be listed. A register of withdrawn marks would be a list of former clients, and no business keeps that in public. The reader’s check is therefore the certificate’s own date and a direct question to the issuer.

Five checks on whether a mark is current

Find the expiry on the badge. Examine the mark before reading the caption. If the badge itself carries no date, ask the issuer when it was issued and whether it is current.
Look the number up. Where a certificate number exists, it can usually be looked up in the issuer’s own register in a couple of minutes. A number that cannot be looked up is decoration.
Check the entity on the certificate. A current certificate for a different company is not current for the page you are on, however recently it was issued.
Ask the issuer, not the operator. A question to the issuer about whether a specific company holds a current mark is answerable, has a correct answer, and is the only route where no register is published.
Treat a lapse as information. A withdrawal is a finding about the operator by the only party on the page that examined it. That is exactly the signal the display exists to outweigh and the reader should not let it.