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Hello all...
When a script/program is designed to check the status of a particular page(s) for any updates, what interval of time in which it regularily checks is acceptable or even legal?
For example, would you consider a remotely hosted script that checks a page for updates every 30 secs within a period of 24 hours legal? How about every 1, 5, or 10 minutes?
Thank you for your help!
Legal? It might be considered improper to check anymore than 5 minutes if you are checking 24/7.
The question really comes down to permission....
If it's your page or you pay someone to maintain that page for you then you can check it a million times a minute if you want.
OTOH, and the more likely situation, you are trying to determine if a page you are interested in has new information for you... That's a different situation and one that would vary depending upon the situation. Technically it isn't illegal to visit a web page as often as you like, and we could be talking milliseonds, but that might be considered an attempt at a Denial of Service.
The question you need to ask yourself is "How often is reasonable for the site I want the information from"? If it's EBay.... I would be careful if you want less than 1 second information, though what you are doing isn't illegal it might get you blocked.
The situation is more important than the act.... Can you give more detail?
Sure, I can give you more details...
I'm trying to re-gain ownership of a domain name that I forgot to renew. So therefore, I need to use some software to watch the status of the domain name I'm trying to backorder. I would use one of those backordering services, but I just can't afford it. :(
So, I'd like to check the status of my domain name on a regular basis, and then register it once it becomes available. Is this legal?
Thanks!
Whens the domain name suppose to expire?
You can get a Domain Monitoring / Backorder service from godaddy that will continuously monitor your domain and if it expires it will instantly grab it and register it for you.
I think its about $20 and that includes the domain registration fee.
Might be safer and a bit more legal doing it that way than checking a website with a script every few seconds.