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Website Monitor

Acceptable Use Policy

Last updated

Website Monitor sends automated requests to addresses you give it. That power must not be used to harm others. This policy applies to everyone who uses the service, including the free uptime checker, and forms part of the Terms of Service.

The principle

Use monitoring to watch systems you are responsible for, at a pace those systems can comfortably handle.

Monitor only what you may

Add a URL only if you own it or have the owner's permission. Choose check intervals and timeouts that the target can reasonably serve. If the owner of a site asks you to stop monitoring it, stop.

What is not allowed

  • Monitoring infrastructure or websites you are not authorized to monitor.
  • Using monitors, many monitors or short intervals to generate excessive automated traffic against a target, including load testing or denial-of-service.
  • Using the service as a proxy or relay to attack, scan or probe other systems, or to hide the origin of a request.
  • Trying to reach localhost, private networks, internal hostnames or cloud-metadata endpoints, or trying to get around our restrictions on outbound requests (server-side request forgery), for example with crafted URLs, redirects or DNS tricks.
  • Port scanning, vulnerability scanning or exploiting the systems you point a monitor at.
  • Attempting to bypass access controls, authentication, rate limits, plan limits or any other safeguard.
  • Creating accounts or free checks in bulk to avoid limits, or using the free checker to scan lists of hosts.
  • Publishing status pages that impersonate another organization or give knowingly false information about service health.
  • Using the service for anything unlawful, or to store or send unlawful, harmful or infringing content.
  • Attacking, overloading or interfering with Website Monitor itself. Good-faith security research is covered by the disclosure policy.

How we prevent abuse

The service checks the destination of every monitor and every free check before it is contacted, refuses private and internal addresses, validates redirects, limits response size and time, identifies itself with a clear user agent (see about our crawler) and rate-limits sign-ups, sign-ins and the free checker. Attempts to get around these controls are a violation of this policy even if they fail.

Enforcement

If we believe this policy has been broken we may remove a monitor, pause checks, suspend or close the account and, where required or appropriate, report the activity to the affected party or the authorities. We do not need to give notice first when the risk is immediate.

Report abuse

If requests from Website Monitor are hitting your server and you did not expect them, or you believe someone is misusing the service, contact (this deployment has not configured a contact address yet). Include the address being requested, the times you saw the traffic and the user agent from your logs.