Acceptable Use Policy

This policy applies to everyone who uses yCAPTCHA, whether you are a site owner embedding the widget, a publisher sharing an image set to the Gallery, or an end user solving a challenge. By using the service you agree to these rules. See also the Privacy Policy.

You may not use yCAPTCHA, nor allow your users or any third party to use yCAPTCHA:

For any unlawful purpose, including but not limited to:

• Fraud, deceptive practices, or other scams;
• Impersonation, phishing, or misrepresenting authorization to act on behalf of others or yCAPTCHA;
• The sale of illegal goods or services;
• Hate speech;
• The sharing or threat of sharing of nonconsensual intimate imagery, or the like, including the use of synthetic media and/or deepfakes.

Further, you may not use yCAPTCHA:

• To violate the rights of others, including but not limited to harassment, or infringing or misappropriating intellectual property;
• To threaten, promote, or enable violence, terrorism, or other serious harm;
• For any content or activity that promotes or enables child sexual exploitation or abuse;
• To enable the sending or creation of unsolicited mass messages — also known as ‘spam’ — or spammy, ‘clickbait, ’ or ‘clickfraud’ content or schemes;
• To create an undue burden on yCAPTCHA’s websites, infrastructure, or the networks or services connected to our systems;
• To scrape, proxy, act as a VPN, or host media for hot-linking;
• To engage in any name-squatting behavior within yCAPTCHA-related namespaces (including site keys and account handles), or to attempt to resell, barter, trade, or inactively hold namespace entities for future use;
• To rent, lease, loan, or sell access to, or otherwise attempt to transfer or make the service available to any third party;
• To produce multiple accounts on yCAPTCHA or to circumvent any rules, limits, or rate-limited features imposed by our usage guidelines;
• To undermine the security or integrity of computing systems or networks of yCAPTCHA, its partners, or any other person, or to attempt to gain unauthorized access to the service or its related systems or network;
• To use automation to interact with yCAPTCHA’s website for unintended purposes such as creating multiple accounts, running automated searches, submitting requests or queries, or extracting content or data from the site;
• To farm CAPTCHA solutions, resell verification tokens, or build a service whose purpose is to defeat yCAPTCHA challenges on sites you do not own;
• To use the service for any other objectionable purpose.

You may conduct benchmark tests of the service. If you publicly disclose the results of any benchmark tests performed by you, or by a third party on your behalf, the results must include all necessary information for others to replicate the tests.

Every image you upload — whether used only on your own site or published to the Gallery — must comply with these rules. You are responsible for the content you upload.

Do not upload:

• Content you do not have the right to use. This includes copyrighted material you did not create or licence, trademarked logos used in a way that implies endorsement, and material that violates someone’s right of publicity.
• Personally identifiable information (PII) of any kind — real names tied to addresses, government IDs, financial records, health records, private contact details.
• Faces of private individuals who have not consented to being used as CAPTCHA content.
• Any imagery of minors, clothed or otherwise, in any context.
• Nudity, sexual content, or sexually suggestive content.
• Graphic violence, gore, or content depicting real-world harm to people or animals.
• Hate symbols, content that harasses a protected group, or content that promotes terrorism or extremist violence.
• Malware, phishing material, deceptive content, or content that impersonates a real person or brand to mislead viewers.

The Gallery is a shared, public pool of image sets that any yCAPTCHA user can reuse. Publishing is irreversible in practice: once a gallery item exists, anyone can view it, copy it, or embed it in their own CAPTCHA puzzles. By publishing an image set you represent and agree that:

• You own the images, or you otherwise have the right to share them for this purpose.
• You grant yCAPTCHA and any other user of the Gallery a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to display, copy, cache, redistribute, and embed the images as part of a CAPTCHA challenge.
• You understand that the images will be publicly visible and downloadable, that search engines and third parties may index them, and that they cannot be made private after the fact.
• You will not publish content that violates Section 2 above.
• Frozen-snapshot rule: deleting or editing the source image set on your dashboard does not change what is already public in the Gallery. A takedown must be requested separately.

• Do not configure puzzles that require end users to identify real people, identify minors, or classify content listed in Section 2.
• Do not use the CAPTCHA interaction to collect end-user input beyond image selection, or to fingerprint end users beyond what the widget documents.
• The origin value submitted by the widget is advisory site-context, not a security claim. Your real security boundary is the siteverify endpoint called with your private secretKey. Keep your secret key secret.

If a Gallery item infringes your rights, violates this policy, or otherwise needs to come down, email ycaptcha@xyspg.moe with:

• A link to the specific Gallery item.
• The reason for the takedown (rights claim, policy category, safety concern).
• Proof of your claim where applicable (e.g. for copyright claims, evidence of ownership).

We will review and act at our discretion. We can remove any Gallery item, suspend any account, and revoke any site key at any time for violations of this policy.

Violations of this policy may result in removal of content, suspension of your account, revocation of API keys, and where warranted, referral to law enforcement. We may enforce this policy without prior notice.

We may update this policy as the service evolves. The “Last updated” date at the top of the page reflects the current version. Continued use of yCAPTCHA after a change constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.