Acceptable Use Policy

1. Purpose

In plain English: PingStuff sends real network requests to the sites you ask it to check. That power must only ever be pointed at sites you are allowed to test. This policy draws that line and explains what happens when it is crossed.

This Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”) is part of our Terms of Service and applies to everyone who uses PingStuff — including anonymous users of the free instant check. Capitalized terms have the meanings given in the Terms.

2. Only monitor what is yours to monitor

In plain English: check your own sites, or sites whose owner has clearly said you may.

You may only check or monitor websites, domains, servers, and other systems that you own or that you are expressly authorized to monitor by their owner. Running checks against someone else’s system without permission — even “harmless” ones — is a violation of this policy and may be illegal. For ongoing monitors, you must verify control of the domain within 72 hours of adding the monitor, or the monitor is automatically paused until verification succeeds.

3. Prohibited uses

In plain English: PingStuff is a health checker, not an attack tool, a scanner, or a data-mining feed.

You must not use the Service to, or attempt to:

• Probe, scan, penetration-test, overload, or attack any system, or interfere with any system’s normal operation — whether or not you control it. PingStuff is not a load-testing or security-testing tool.
• Direct checks at third parties’ systems without authorization, including to harass a site operator or to gather intelligence about infrastructure you have no rights to.
• Reach private, internal, or reserved network addresses (for example internal corporate networks, localhost, or cloud metadata services) through the checker.
• Bypass, defeat, or probe our rate limits, quotas, or other technical controls — including by rotating IP addresses, accounts, or automation designed to evade them.
• Access, or attempt to access, another customer’s data, account, monitors, or reports.
• Monitor or promote sites that host or distribute illegal content, or use the Service in connection with any activity that violates applicable law.
• Scrape the Service, harvest its output in bulk by automation, or resell, white-label, or otherwise redistribute the Service or its results as your own offering without our written agreement.

4. Safeguards we enforce

In plain English: these rules are not just words — the product is built to enforce them.

The Service includes technical safeguards:

• A request guard automatically blocks checks aimed at private, internal, and reserved network addresses, and re-validates every redirect hop.
• Anonymous free checks are automatically rate-limited per IP address.
• An abuse pipeline automatically detects and records sources that show abusive patterns (for example repeated rate-limit violations or brute-force attempts); the decision to throttle or block a recorded source is made by a human administrator who reviews that record.
• Monitors require domain verification within 72 hours, or they are automatically paused (section 2).
• Customer data is isolated per organization, enforced on the server side.

Safeguards are not a licence to test their edges: attempting to defeat them is itself a violation of this policy.

5. Enforcement

In plain English: we respond in proportion to the problem — usually slowing things down first, blocking if it continues, and suspending accounts for serious or repeated abuse.

When we detect a violation, our response escalates with its severity and persistence:

• Throttle — abusive traffic is slowed (tighter rate limits) while the rest of the Service is unaffected.
• Block — we may block a persistently abusive source outright. Automatic block enforcement currently applies to the anonymous free-check endpoint.
• Suspend — serious or repeated violations can lead to suspension or termination of an account, as described in the Terms of Service.

We may skip steps for severe abuse (for example attacks on third parties), and we may report unlawful activity to the appropriate authorities where required or permitted by law.

6. Appeals and reporting abuse

In plain English: if we got it wrong — or you see someone abusing PingStuff — tell us.

If you believe you were throttled, blocked, or suspended in error, contact us and we will review it. To appeal an enforcement action or to report abuse of the Service, email support@pingstuff.com (for security issues, security@pingstuff.com). Because our email forwarding is still being set up, the most reliable way to reach us is the contact form at pingstuff.com/contact.