Terms of Service

Last updated 2026-09-14 · applies to everyone using the service

1. Who this is with

The service at abusescore.com (“AbuseScore”, “the Service”) is operated by AESHA Technology Services Limited, company number 210193, registered at 1032 Office House of Francis Ilu de Port, Mahe, Seychelles (“we”, “us”). “You” is whoever holds the account: a company if you signed up on its behalf, otherwise you personally.

Creating an account or sending a request with an API key means you accept these terms. If you are agreeing on behalf of an organisation, you confirm you are allowed to bind it.

2. What the Service does

AbuseScore accepts an IP address and returns information about the network it belongs to: country and continent, the operating network (ASN), network classification, anonymity flags such as VPN, Tor, public proxy, hosting and privacy relay, known abuse history, and a risk score from 0 to 100 with the reason codes that produced it. Which fields you receive depends on your plan.

It is an information service. It does not block anyone, approve anyone or make decisions. What you do with a score is your decision and your responsibility.

2a. Browser fingerprinting

The Service also includes a script you may embed on your own website, which recognises a returning browser and reports what it can tell you about it. If you use it, this section applies and it places obligations on you that the rest of these terms do not.

• You are the controller for your visitors; we are your processor. You decide to run it, on your site, for your purposes. We act on your instructions, which are the calls your website makes.
• Getting a lawful basis is your job. Recognising a browser is regulated in the EU and the UK whether or not it uses a cookie. Obtain consent where the law requires it, before the script runs, and describe what you are doing in your own privacy notice.
• Erasure requests reach you. One API call deletes an identifier and everything recorded against it, immediately and permanently.
• It is for fraud prevention, security and abuse, and nothing else. Using it for advertising, audience measurement, or building a profile of a person for any purpose unconnected with protecting your service is a breach of these terms and of the Acceptable Use Policy.
• An identifier is not a person and it is not proof. Every answer carries a confidence figure, it is never 100, and it says how much we believe our own result. Treat a low one as the uncertainty it is.

On our side: an identifier is unique to your account, the same browser at another customer is unrelated and cannot be connected to yours, and the raw measurements never leave the visitor's browser. A data processing agreement is available at [email protected].

3. Accounts and API keys

• Give accurate registration details and keep them current.
• An API key authenticates as you. Keep it secret; anything done with it counts as done by you.
• Publishable keys (pk_live_) are the exception and are meant to be visible in your pages. They only work from the website addresses you register against them, so keep that list accurate and remove anything you no longer run. Secret keys (sk_live_) must never appear in a web page, a mobile app, or anything else a user receives.
• Tell us promptly at [email protected] if a key leaks. You can revoke and rotate keys yourself at any time.
• One account per customer. Creating extra accounts to get around free-tier limits is a breach of these terms.
• You must be old enough to enter a contract where you live.

4. Plans, quotas and rate limits

Each plan includes an allowance of lookups per period and a request rate limit, both listed on the pricing section. A bulk request consumes one lookup per address in it, not one for the request.

When an allowance runs out, the behaviour depends on the plan: some stop and return an error, others accrue overage at the published rate. Prepaid credits are consumed when no subscription allowance remains. We never charge overage on a plan that is documented as stopping.

Rate limits protect the service for everybody. Sustained attempts to exceed them, or to spread one subscription across several unrelated products or customers, are a breach.

5. Fees, billing and tax

• Prices are in euro (EUR) and exclusive of any tax that applies where you are. Where we are required to collect tax, it is added at checkout.
• Subscriptions bill in advance and renew automatically each period until cancelled.
• Prepaid packs are charged once. They do not renew and no payment method is kept on file for them.
• Prepaid credits expire 12 months after purchase.
• Card payments are processed by Stripe and crypto payments by CryptoPayr. We never see or store your card number.
• If a payment fails we may suspend API access after a short grace period. Your account and its data are not deleted for non-payment.

Cancellation and refunds are covered in Refunds & Cancellation, which forms part of these terms.

6. Acceptable use

The Acceptable Use Policy forms part of these terms. In short: do not use AbuseScore to harass or profile individuals, to build a competing dataset by bulk extraction, to make automated decisions about people's access to credit, employment, housing or insurance, or to do anything unlawful.

7. What you may do with the results

Subject to your plan, you may use API responses inside your own products and services, including showing results to your own users.

You may not:

• resell, redistribute or publish the raw data as a dataset, or build a substantially similar dataset from it;
• systematically enumerate the address space to reconstruct our database;
• cache results beyond what your plan permits, or share one account's access with third parties.

The Free plan additionally requires visible attribution to AbuseScore wherever results are shown. Paid plans do not.

Some underlying data carries share-alike licensing and therefore never leaves the API as a downloadable file. Where a plan includes a downloadable artifact, that artifact is built only from sources whose licences permit it. See Data Sources & Attribution.

8. Accuracy, and what a score is not

Address assignments change constantly. A residential address today can be a hosting address next month; a VPN provider retires a server and someone else is issued it. We work from published operator data and reputable sources and we age evidence out deliberately, but we do not warrant that any particular result is correct.

A score is an opinion about a network, not a statement about a person. It is not a credit score, a background check, or a consumer report, and it must not be used as one. You are responsible for deciding what action a score justifies, and for any consequence of blocking, challenging or allowing someone on the strength of it.

9. Availability

We aim for high availability and we will keep it that way, but the Service is provided without an availability commitment unless we have signed a separate agreement with you that contains one. We may perform maintenance, and we will avoid doing it at an inconvenient hour where we reasonably can.

10. Changes to the Service and to these terms

We may change the Service. Where a change materially reduces what a paid plan provides, we will give at least 30 days' notice by email to the address on the account, and you may cancel before it takes effect and receive a pro-rata refund of the unused period.

We may update these terms. The date at the top changes, and material changes are announced by email at least 30 days before they apply. Continuing to use the Service after that is acceptance; if you do not accept, cancel.

11. Suspension and termination

You may stop at any time: cancel the subscription, or simply stop sending requests. Closing your account is available in the account area.

We may suspend or terminate an account that breaches these terms or the Acceptable Use Policy, that is used unlawfully, or that threatens the stability or security of the Service. Where the circumstances allow it we will warn you first and give you a chance to put it right. For a serious breach, meaning unlawful use or an attack on the Service, suspension may be immediate.

On termination, API access stops. Unused prepaid credits are refundable on a pro-rata basis unless the termination was for a serious breach by you.

12. Liability

Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

Subject to that: the Service is provided “as is”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, revenue, goodwill or data, or for losses arising from a decision you took on the basis of a score.

Our total liability for all claims in any 12-month period is limited to the amount you paid us in that period. If you are on the Free plan, that amount is zero, and our liability is limited accordingly.

13. Indemnity

You will indemnify us against claims arising from your use of the Service in breach of these terms or of any law, including claims by your own users or customers.

14. Confidentiality and data protection

Each side will protect the other's non-public information. How we handle personal data is set out in the Privacy Policy. Where we process personal data on your behalf, a data processing agreement is available on request from [email protected].

15. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Seychelles, and the courts of the Republic of Seychelles have jurisdiction.

If you are a consumer resident in the European Union, this does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory consumer law in your country of residence, or of the right to bring proceedings in your local courts.

16. General

• These terms, together with the policies they reference, are the whole agreement between us.
• If a clause is unenforceable, the rest stays in force.
• Not enforcing a right immediately does not waive it.
• You may not assign this agreement without our consent. We may assign it as part of a transfer of the business.
• Notices to you go to the email address on the account. Notices to us go to [email protected].