Resolve abuse
Kiss My UpTime is a fully automated uptime monitoring service. During its design, minimizing the potential for abuse was a top priority. However, if such incidents occur, there are options available to resolve issues without the delays caused by email round-trips.
Before proceeding further, it is important to understand that there are two types of requests that may be performed on an IP address:
Target verification. Before an account holder creates a check, the target hostname or IP address must be verified by serving a kmut.txt file over HTTP from the relevant servers, containing the account's unique identifier. In the case of a hostname, each resolved IP address is verified individually.
Check execution. Involves user-defined, more frequent custom requests and is only permitted for IP addresses that have been successfully verified.
Below, you will find instructions on how to initiate enforced target verifications, block or unblock outgoing connections to specific IP addresses, and contact technical support.
Initiate enforced target verifications
During initial verification, each node confirms that the kmut.txt file is present and contains the account identifier, either at the specified IP address or, in the case of a hostname, at all resolved IP addresses. Any IP address that fails verification is omitted from the node's check executions until successful verification is achieved.
This method ensures that the account holder had write access to the server at least once before any checks are executed on the associated IP address.
The kmut.txt file is accessed every 12 hours for a given IP address. If verification was successful but later fails, related check executions will be omitted after 3 days, and verification attempts will stop after 7 days. After this period, verification must be manually initiated through the interface.
Here, you can initiate an enforced target verification, which will immediately halt related check executions and further verification attempts on IP addresses where verification fails, all before the specified periods. Just follow these steps:
Locate and delete all kmut.txt files from the root of public web directories or modify any scripts that might respond with valid 32-character account identifiers for GET /kmut.txt requests.
Provide the 43-character secret identifier of a target, which can be retrieved from HTTP access logs or similar sources. This identifier is appended to every kmut.txt request as a "secret" query parameter, known only to the server operators.
Verification can still be manually initiated through the interface. If the account owner retains write access to the server and re-enables the serving of the kmut.txt file with the correct account identifier, successful verification may be achieved again.
Secret identifier
A 43-character string.
Human verification
Provide the secret identifier and verify that you are human.
Block or unblock IP addresses
Before performing any target verification or check execution on an IP address, a blocklist is queried. If a match is found, the outbound connection is blocked.
With administrator access to the relevant server, you can add or remove an IP address from this list as follows:
Set up a forward-confirmed reverse DNS (PTR) record for the IP address and create a TXT record for the associated hostname. To simplify management of multiple IP addresses, the TXT record for the domain portion of the hostname is also retrieved. If TXT records exist for both, the one associated with the full hostname takes priority.
Set the TXT record value to "kmut=block" to add the IP address to the blocklist, or "kmut=allow" to remove it.
Provide the IP address to retrieve its DNS information and update the listing accordingly.
Once the addition or removal is successful, any changes made can be reverted.
To query when and why a specific IP address was blocked, simply provide it without making any changes to the DNS records.
The addition or removal of IP ranges is not supported. Contact technical support for such requests.
IP address
A valid IPv4 or IPv6 address.
Human verification
Provide the IP address and verify that you are human.
Contact technical support
If none of the above options resolve your issues, contact abuse@kissmyuptime.com for technical support. Response times may take up to 72 hours.