Gold Standard Safe Harbor supports the protection of organizations and hackers engaged in Good Faith Security Research. “Good Faith Security Research” is accessing a computer solely for purposes of good-faith testing, investigation, and/or correction of a security flaw or vulnerability, where such activity is carried out in a manner designed to avoid any harm to individuals or the public, and where the information derived from the activity is used primarily to promote the security or safety of the class of devices, machines, or online services to which the accessed computer belongs or those who use such devices, machines, or online services.
We consider Good Faith Security Research to be authorized activity that is protected from adversarial legal action by us. We waive any relevant restriction in our Terms of Service (“TOS”) and/or Acceptable Use Policies (“AUP”) that conflicts with the standard for Good Faith Security Research outlined here.
This means that for Good Faith Security Research conducted with a good faith effort to comply with our program policy and while this program is active, we:
Will not bring legal action against you or report you, including for bypassing technological measures we use to protect the applications in scope; and,
Will take steps to make known that you conducted Good Faith Security Research if someone else brings legal action against you.
You should contact us for clarification before engaging in conduct that you think may be inconsistent with Good Faith Security Research or unaddressed by our policy.
Keep in mind that we are not able to authorize security research on third-party infrastructure, and a third party is not bound by this safe harbor statement.