Executive Summary
CHEQ (cheq.ai) positions itself as "The Global Leader in Go-to-Market Security," offering bot detection, click fraud prevention, and compliance tools. However, BLACKOUT runtime analysis reveals CHEQ operates exactly the surveillance infrastructure they market protection against. Their own website exhibits an 88.3% pre-consent tracking rate across 103 detections, with 18 vendors firing before consent and tracking persisting after consent rejection. This represents a textbook case of compliance theater: SOC2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and CCPA badges displayed alongside systematic privacy violations including undisclosed Clearbit B2B de-anonymization and Hotjar session recording. The irony is foundational: CHEQ sells tools to detect the exact behaviors they deploy against their own visitors.
Revenue Threat Profile
4 COLLAPSE VECTORSHow this vendor creates financial exposure. Each score (0-100) reflects observed runtime behavior and documented business practices.
CAC Subsidization
CHEQ corrupts measurement by operating undisclosed Clearbit B2B de-anonymization and ZoomInfo identity resolution on their own site while selling tools that claim to detect similar surveillance. Companies evaluating CHEQ for bot detection may be unknowingly submitting their visitors to the same identification techniques they seek protection from. Attribution data from CHEQ-monitored properties may be influenced by CHEQ's own data collection agenda.
Signal Corruption
CHEQ owns Deduce (identity resolution), ClickCease, and Ensighten - creating a surveillance conglomerate with visibility across thousands of customer websites. Clearbit integration on cheq.ai actively de-anonymizes business visitors, potentially feeding intelligence about competitor prospects. With 15,000+ customer deployments, CHEQ has unprecedented access to cross-site visitor behavior that could inform their own go-to-market activities.
Legal Tail Risk
CHEQ deploys obfuscated tracking infrastructure (takingbackjuly.com CNAME cloaking) that mirrors botnet evasion techniques they claim to detect. Hotjar session recording on a security vendor site creates attack surface for session replay attacks. The 29 cookies set pre-consent include persistent device IDs that could be exploited if CHEQ infrastructure is compromised.
GTM Attack Surface
CHEQ displays GDPR, CCPA, SOC2, and ISO 27001 compliance badges while maintaining 88.3% pre-consent tracking - a direct violation of GDPR Article 6 and 7. After consent rejection, all tracking cookies persist (documented in forensic analysis). This consent theater creates regulatory liability for any organization citing CHEQ's compliance claims in their own vendor assessments. The gap between displayed certifications and runtime behavior is the largest we have documented in the GTM security space.