The YoPingMe probe

You are probably here because you found this in an access log. Here is what it is and how to control it.

What is requesting my site?

An uptime check. Someone with a YoPingMe account, almost certainly whoever runs the site, asked us to watch it and tell them when it goes down. The requests identify themselves:

YoPingMe-Probe/v1.1.0 (+https://yoping.me/probe)

The version number changes when we ship a new probe build, so match on theYoPingMe-Probe/ prefix rather than the whole string.

How often, and from where?

Each monitored URL is requested once every 5 minutes from each of the regions its owner selected, and each monitor uses two regions. That works out to roughly 576 requests a day per monitored URL. We request the exact URL configured, we do not crawl, and we do not follow links to discover new pages.

Checks run from probes in these locations:

The probes run on Amazon Lightsail, so the source addresses are AWS ones and reverse DNS resolves to *.compute.amazonaws.com rather than to us. The user agent above is the reliable way to identify our traffic.

Does it read the whole page?

No. We read only the first part of the response body, and only far enough to check the status code and, if the monitor is a keyword check, whether an expected word is present. We store the status code, the response time, and whether the check passed. We do not store your page content, and we do not execute JavaScript.

How do I stop it?

The direct route is to ask whoever set up the monitor to remove it, since it is their account and their check. If that is you, delete the monitor in the dashboard and the requests stop within one interval.

Doing the opposite - the monitor is yours and your own firewall is blocking it - is covered in allowlisting the probe.

If you do not know who set it up, you can block the user agent at your edge or web server and the checks will start failing for whoever owns them. We would rather hear from you first, though, so we can help sort it out: emailabuse@yoping.me with a log line or two and we will trace it.

Is this monitoring you, or is it abuse?

It is monitoring. Two requests every 5 minutes is a rounding error next to normal traffic, and it never touches anything a normal visitor would not. But we take misuse seriously: if someone points a monitor at a site that is not theirs to watch, write to abuse@yoping.me and we will act on it.

Want checks of your own?

YoPingMe is free for 10 monitors: five kinds of check every 5 minutes, alerts only after a second region agrees, no card.