• Frequently Asked Questions
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• What does PAGE PATROL do?
• What doesn't PAGE PATROL do?
• How does PAGE PATROL alert me?
• What should I do when I get an alert?
• How does it work?
• What if we update our web page?
• What about things that change on my web page, like dates?
• Can I stop patrols while our server is down for maintenance?
• Which pages should be patrolled?
• How can I tell PAGE PATROL is checking my page?
• How do I modify alert addresses and other settings?
• I've forgotten my password.
• What if PAGE PATROL gets hacked?
• But what I really need is...

The PAGE PATROL service regularly checks that your web page is available and has not been defaced. You can choose between hourly, half-hourly, quarter-hourly, ten-minute or five-minute intervals between patrols, depending on how critical your web site is to your business.

Our defacement detection system is extremely sensitive. If a hacker changes a single character, PAGE PATROL will raise the alarm.

PAGE PATROL accesses your web page over the internet exactly as your customers do, so we can detect the failure of your web server, domain name server, internet connection or your ISP.

Each time we patrol your site, we log how long it took to load the page. This information gives you valuable feedback about the performance of your web server as experienced by your customers.

PAGE PATROL does not prevent your page being hacked - but we can warn you in time to minimize the damage. Secure systems, a culture of vigilance and contingency planning will reduce your exposure to intrusions - but no system can be guaranteed totally secure.

When it detects a problem, PAGE PATROL sends a message describing the problem to a set of email addresses specified by you. There is no limit to the number of addresses, and by using your mobile phone or paging company's email gateway, you and your staff can be immediately alerted wherever you are. When your site is back to normal, PAGE PATROL sends another message to let you know everything is OK.

For each alert address, you can choose normal or short alert messages. Normal alert messages provide a detailed analysis of the problem, including suggested action. Short alert messages are designed for delivery to pagers and phones, and read as follows:

• DEFACED WWW.YOURSITE.COM
• DNS ERR WWW.YOURSITE.COM
• NO CONN WWW.YOURSITE.COM
• REFUSED WWW.YOURSITE.COM
• NO RESP WWW.YOURSITE.COM
• ERR xxx WWW.YOURSITE.COM
• REDIRCT WWW.YOURSITE.COM
• OK WWW.YOURSITE.COM

• DEFACED: Your web site has been defaced or changed in some way. If it has been hacked, restore your original page - you should have backup copies readily available and a practised restoration process to minimise the outage. If PAGE PATROL has detected a valid change, log on to your control page and update the checksum. If there is no discernable change, view the source of your page - there may be differences inside tags that are causing false alarms. See also What about things that change on my web page, like dates?.
• DNS ERR: PAGE PATROL could not resolve your domain name. Check your domain name servers are working correctly, your domain name subscription is up to date, and that your TLD (top level domain) settings have not been changed.
• NO CONN: Could not make a TCP/IP connection to your server. Check your server hardware, operating system and internet connection.
• REFUSED: The server refused a connection. This is a symptom of overloading or a denial-of-service attack.
• NO RESP: We could connect to your server, but the there was no response to our HTTP request. This is likely to be a problem with the web server software rather than hardware or operating system, and may be a symptom of overloading or a denial-of-service attack.
• ERR xxx: The web server returned error code xxx. Check your web server.
• REDIRCT: Your page has been redirected to another location. Find out why, and if neccessary log on to PAGE PATROL and change the page address to the new location.

The PAGE PATROL service is built around a series of automated systems that we call patrolbots, which do exactly what your customers do - browse your web page.

However, there the similarity ends. A patrolbot is far more discerning than a human visitor - it will detect any change to the HTML on your web page, including the addition, deletion or modification of a single character. And a patrolbot is relentless - it will patrol your page like clockwork day and night every day of the week.

The patrolbots also time how long your web page takes to load each time they patrol. If this exceeds the time you specified on your control page, you are alerted to the potential server crash, network outage or denial-of-service attack.

Once you have logged into your control page, you can update the reference checksum for any of your pages. You also have the option of halting patrols for each page.

So if you wanted to take your server down over a weekend to revamp your web site, you could stop patrolling on Friday evening, then start patrolling and update the reference checksum on Monday morning.

From your control page, you can tell PAGE PATROL to ignore:

• Day and month names and abbreviations (like "Monday" and "Sep")
• All digits
• All tag contents
• Everything

A second solution is to wrap frequently changing sections in PAGE PATROL's special "ignore" tags, like this:

<!--ppi--> This is ignored <!--/ppi-->

Note that using ignore tags does introduce a small risk of undetected defacement, because a smart hacker could place his message in the ignored section. The tags are intentionally cryptic to reduce this threat. Also the ignore tags themselves are part of the MD5 checksum so a defacement inside ignore tags on a page that previously had none will be detected.

Yes - from your control page you can schedule set times when PAGE PATROL will not patrol your site. So if you regularly take down your web server each day or each week, it is easy to prevent false alarms.

Because it is the focus of your site, hackers usually deface your home page. Automated worms like Code Red also attack your home page, but for a different reason - it is the only page they can be sure will exist.

So although we are glad to patrol as many individual pages on your site as you want, we suggest that the home page for each site is the most important.

Many new customers find the web page they entered causes REDIRECT alerts. This happens because some webservers handle the translation from "www.yoursite.com" to "www.yoursite.com/index.html" by redirecting the browser. To check if this will affect you, type your address into your browser and see if it changes when you hit "Enter". If so, give PAGE PATROL the second (redirected) address.

Also please note that the patrolbots cannot process frames. They will only detect defacements of the main (frameset) page - to protect the frame contents you should give PAGE PATROL the direct address of the frame content page.

The easiest way is to view the patrol log from your control page (see an example). This shows you when your site was patrolled, what we found, and how long the page took to download. The log is also available in comma-seperated-value format, so you can analyze it in a spreadsheet or database.

You can double-check the patrol log with your server logs - each time a patrolbot visits your site, it leaves an entry in your server log.

You may also notice an effect on your web site's traffic statistics. If you choose five minute patrols for instance, you will receive 288 extra visits every day.

• View the patrolled pages with details of the last visit and last alert
• Change your account details
• Add new pages
• Update a page's reference checksum
• Stop and start patrolling each page
• View the patrol log
• Download patrol data for analysis

• Change the interval between patrols
• Add, change and delete alert email addresses
• Schedule regular outages to prevent false alarms
• Choose what should be ignored when computing the reference checksum

No problem - just click on the "Hint" button on the home page, type in your PAGE PATROL user ID or your email address. PAGE PATROL will search our database for your details, and if it finds them it will email you the password hint you supplied when you signed up.

We take great care to ensure our systems are as secure as possible. However, we recognise that no system is 100% secure, and have designed PAGE PATROL so that even if our systems were completely penetrated, a hacker would find nothing that could compromise our customer's servers. Your login password is processed and stored as an MD5 hash, and all other information (page and email addresses etc.) is either public knowledge or relatively innocuous.

Every person and every organisation is different, so it may be that our standard services are not what you need. Perhaps you need patrolling more frequently, a more complex escalation procedure, or voice alerts. Whatever your need, please contact us so we can tailor a solution just for you.

Just click here for a ten day free trial.

After filling in a short application form, you get a fully functional account that will patrol one page every fifteen minutes for ten days. You can change settings, view and download the patrol log, and receive alerts exactly as if you had paid.

Once you are happy with the service, click on the "Subscribe" menu item on your control page. We will arrange an invoice and on-going service.

If you have not paid after nine days, we will send you an email to remind you that patrols will stop the next day. One further email will tell you the account has expired, but you can still log in up to three months after the free trial has expired.

PAGE PATROL's charges vary according to the patrol frequency. The table below shows the cost for each patrolled page, including unlimited alert addresses. There are no other charges - no setup fees, alert charges or any other hidden costs.

Patrol Frequency	Cost/Month	Cost/Patrol
Every 5 minutes	$60.00	0.68c
Every 10 minutes	$36.00	0.82c
Every 15 minutes	$28.00	0.96c
Every 30 minutes	$16.00	1.10c
Every 60 minutes	$9.00	1.23c

All charges are in US dollars, payable one, three, six or twelve months in advance upon presentation of our invoice.