Yes, there were some really bad things happening during setup. This included unclear instructions and coding errors. The result was a bad experience for the user.

Thanks to input from new subscribers, this has been markedly improved.

The entire tale of woe can be read on the site blog / development diary

Again, thanks for the kind mention.

The clause mentioned above by Dale is intended to make it clear to subscribers that the service is not a intelligence gathering tool. For example, there have been messages on forums recommending the use of a server monitoring tool, not necessarily basicstate.com, to determine the uptime of a competitor’s site.

This caveat is crafted to give a bonafide site owner the ability to prevent unwanted surveillance of their site. The proposed action would only take place after manual verification and exchange of emails using the published whois email or telephone contact info. Of course, as I write this, the problem of handling domains with registration privacy crops up. In that case we would have to rely on demonstrated control of the site. The site owner would need to prove control over the site by putting up a page at a agreed upon url with a designated pass phrase on it. After verification, the page can be removed. This is similar to two factor authentication in that it involves what you have, control of the website, and what you know, the passphrase.

This is also the reasoning behind the creation of public monitors. If a thousand probes were sent to a supporting ecommerce site, that site would very quickly block the tests. On the other hand, one test probe would probably be seen as benign. Yet, the result from that one probe can be shared amongst all users.

Hope you are happy with the service.

Thanks for mentioning it.

If a complaint or request is received from a verified site owner as determined by published whois information, all historical data will be moved to their account and the associated alerts disabled.”

Dale