Methodology
How we detect, verify and correct outages
Damn Is It Down is an independent outage tracker run by Big Toy Market LLC. This page explains how every status on this site is produced and how to get a report corrected.
What we measure
- Our own checks. Automated HTTP requests to each service from Cloudflare's network, with extra probes from four regions: US East, US West, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
- User reports. Anonymous “It's down for me” reports, compared with the usual volume for that hour.
- The vendor's status page. When a company publishes a status feed, we read it. Old incidents that were never closed and notices marked as having no impact are ignored.
Status levels
- Operational. Our checks pass and nothing else points to a problem.
- Degraded. Something is off: slow or single failed checks, or user reports a little above normal.
- Vendor-reported issue. Only the company's own status page reports a problem. We attribute it to that page and link to it. We do not call it an outage.
- Outage. Our own checks fail repeatedly, or user reports rise far above normal.
- Major outage. At least two independent sources agree, for example our checks fail and the vendor confirms it, or our checks fail in several regions while user reports spike.
The evidence gate
We only call it a confirmed outage when at least two independent sources agree. A vendor status flag on its own is never enough to publish an outage.
A second opinion
Before an incident is published or escalated, we check the service again from every region and through a second fetch path. If those checks reach the site, we hold the incident instead of publishing it.
Blocked checks
Some sites block or rate-limit automated checks. When our check fails the same way for hours while nobody reports a problem and the vendor is quiet, we treat the check as blocked, not the site as down, and we never open an incident from it.
Confidence
The confidence shown on a page comes from our own evidence: how many of our checks failed, how many regions agreed and how many people reported a problem. The vendor's status page adds a little only when our own evidence agrees. Without our own evidence, confidence stays at 30% or less.
Show our work
Every outage page has an Evidence button. It opens the raw data behind the page: each check time and result, the HTTP status and error code, the regions that failed and when, and the user report curve in 15-minute counts. Download it as JSON or CSV and check it yourself. It contains no personal data.
Corrections and retractions
Every night an automatic self-audit checks open and recent incidents against these rules again. Incidents that no longer hold up are closed or downgraded, and every change is logged. If we published something in error, we retract it: the page stays online with a correction notice, it is removed from search results and reliability statistics, and it is not counted against the company.
See our accuracy scorecard: how often we were right, how fast we were compared with vendor status pages, and every retraction. Accuracy scorecard →
Trusted reporters
Some people report problems before we can confirm them. We keep a private accuracy score for each reporter so their early reports can count a little more. It is not a public ranking, and a trusted report is not proof of an outage.
- We know a reporter only by a random id kept on the device (app) or in a first-party cookie (website). No name, email or IP address.
- A report earns trust when we confirmed an outage on that service with our own evidence within the hour after it.
- Reports on a service that stayed healthy, and reports tied to an outage we later retracted, count against it. Reports filed after we confirmed an outage earn nothing.
- The badge needs at least 10 scored reports and 5 early ones in the last 30 days, with at least 70% early. Recent reports weigh more, and anything older than 30 days drops off.
- Three misses in a row, or a retracted outage you reported, pause the badge.
- A trusted report counts as two reports toward “Users reporting problems”, at most two extra per window, and only when at least two other people reported too. It never counts toward a report spike and never confirms an outage: our checks and the two-source rule decide that.
- Only you can see your status, right after you report. Public reports, the report feed and evidence downloads stay anonymous.
Dispute a report
If you think a report is wrong, whether it is about your own service or any other, use the “Dispute this report” link on the outage or status page. We review every dispute within 24 hours.
Independent checks by DIID
Hosted status pages on Damn Is It Down carry an “Independent checks by DIID” mark. That mark means we run our own probes of the service, separately from anything the company posts on the page. It is not an endorsement, audit, certification, or affiliation with the company. We are not saying the company is trustworthy, and a company cannot turn the mark off or use it to hide a problem our checks are seeing.
Disclaimer
Outage information on this site is provided as is, without warranty, for information only. It may be inaccurate, incomplete or late. Damn Is It Down is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by the companies listed. Company names and trademarks belong to their owners and are used only to identify the services.