Terms & Conditions
These terms cover your use of iptools.net.au. They are short because the site is simple: free tools, no account, no payment. By using the site you agree to them. If you do not, please stop using it.
On this page
1. What the service is
iptools.net.au provides free online utilities for networking, DNS, email, TLS, security and web development. Some run entirely in your browser; others ask a server — sometimes ours, sometimes a third party's — to look something up. No account is needed, nothing is installed, and there is no fee. The site is funded by advertising.
We are not a hosting company, a domain registrar or a security vendor, and nothing here is a substitute for professional advice about your own systems.
2. What you may do
- Use every tool for personal or commercial work, at no cost.
- Use, copy and publish the results a tool gives you, including in paid work and documentation. No attribution is required.
- Link to any page, and cite the reference and cheat-sheet pages in your own notes or support documents.
3. What you must not do
- Use the site for anything unlawful, or to break the law of the country you are in.
- Attack, scan, probe or load-test a system you do not own or have written permission to test, using any of the server-side tools. See section 4.
- Automate the tools with scripts or crawlers beyond the published rate limits, or work around those limits — rotating addresses, parallel sessions, or similar.
- Interfere with the site or its server: overload it, probe it for vulnerabilities without permission, or attempt to reach anything behind it.
- Mirror, frame or resell the tools as your own service, or re-publish the reference pages wholesale.
- Use the tools to send spam, to harass anyone, or to distribute malware.
Requests that look like the last two often match a shared blocklist, and are refused before they reach the page.
4. Testing other people's systems
This is the clause that matters. The tools that fetch a URL, check TLS, read headers or test XML-RPC make a request from our server to the host you name. That host sees a request from us, and it is your request.
You may only point those tools at systems you own, or that you have permission to check. A handful of header or TLS lookups against a site you are already working on is normal. Running a list of hosts through the checkers is not. You are responsible for the targets you submit, and you agree to indemnify us for any claim that comes from checking a system you had no right to check.
5. Accuracy and no warranty
The tools are offered "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose. Output can be wrong for reasons that are nothing to do with the tool: DNS answers are cached and differ by resolver, geolocation databases are approximate, registration records lag behind reality, and a header check sees only what a server chose to send us at that moment.
Use the results as a starting point and verify anything you are going to act on — especially before changing a live DNS record, a TLS configuration or a mail policy. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for decisions made on the strength of a tool's output.
6. Your input and your secrets
Everything you type is your responsibility. Some inputs are forwarded to third parties to do their job — a domain name to public resolvers, an IP address to a geolocation database, a URL to the host it points at — and the Privacy Policy lists exactly which tool sends what and where.
Do not put confidential material — customer data, internal hostnames, passwords, private keys — into a tool that sends it somewhere. The tools that run in the browser (hashing, Base64, JWT, QR codes, the password and htpasswd generators, the IMAP sync command builder) keep your input on your machine.
7. Rate limits and availability
Tools that make requests for you are rate limited per IP address, so no single visitor can use the server as a proxy and everyone else still gets an answer. The usual ceiling is 30 lookups a minute for the fetch tools, and 10 per ten minutes for the YouTube tool. Exceeding a limit returns a refusal rather than a result.
There is no service level agreement. The site may be unavailable for maintenance, may change, and individual tools may be modified or withdrawn without notice. We will keep the useful ones running as long as they are useful.
8. Intellectual property
The site's code, design, written guides and reference tables belong to the site owner and are protected by copyright. Using a tool does not transfer any of that to you. What you may do freely is use the output: the DNS records, hashes, headers, QR codes and command strings a tool produces are yours to use however you like.
9. Advertising and third-party links
The site carries advertising served by Google AdSense, and links to other sites. We do not control those advertisers or sites, do not endorse them, and are not responsible for their content, products or privacy practices. Clicking an ad takes you to a site with its own terms. Cookies and the choices available to you are described in the Privacy Policy.
10. Liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any loss or damage arising from your use of, or inability to use, this site — including lost profits, lost data, business interruption, or damage caused by acting on a result a tool produced. Because the service is free, our total liability to you for any claim connected with the site is limited to the amount you have paid us for it, which is nil.
Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any right or guarantee you have under the Australian Consumer Law, or any other law that cannot lawfully be excluded. Where such a guarantee applies and cannot be excluded, our liability is limited, at our option, to re-supplying the service or paying the cost of having it re-supplied.
11. Indemnity
You agree to indemnify the site owner against any claim, loss or cost (including reasonable legal costs) arising from your breach of these terms — in particular from using the tools against a system you were not entitled to test, or from publishing material you obtained from the site in breach of section 8.
12. Privacy
What the site collects, what the tools send to third parties, and how to control cookies is set out in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms.
13. Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of Australia. You and we both submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the Australian courts, which means you can still enforce your rights in the country you live in.
14. Changes
These terms may be updated as the site changes. The version published on this page, with the date at the top, is the one that applies. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the updated terms.
15. Contact
Questions about these terms, or about permission to use the site in a way they do not cover, go to info@iptools.net.au.