Our fare watcher
If you run a website and found MyFareWatch in its logs, this page is for you. It says what our fare watcher is, what it reads, how often, and how to ask us to stop.
What it is
MyFareWatch's fare watcher is an automated Chrome browser, and it says so.
- Chrome's automation flag is on, so the browser shows that automated software controls it.
navigator.webdriveris true. If it is not, the fare watcher reads nothing.- It is a Chrome we start for each watch, never a person's own browser.
Its user agent is Chrome's own, with this at the end:
MyFareWatch/
Why it visits
People use MyFareWatch to watch fares for their own trips. The fare watcher reads the prices they asked it to watch. Each result links the traveller to the site that sells the fare, to book there.
It only reads. It never books, never signs in and never fills in a form. It does not open sign-in, account, checkout or payment pages. It never solves a CAPTCHA or any other challenge.
One page it answers: Google's consent page. Where Google shows the fare watcher that page before the results, as it does to a browser connecting from London, the fare watcher presses "Accept all" and nothing else. It types nothing there, and it answers no other site's consent page. Every watch starts a fresh Chrome, so the answer holds for that watch alone. If the page has no "Accept all" button, or stays after the press, the fare watcher does not read that list.
We keep the prices it read, with the page's address and the time. We do not keep copies of pages.
What it reads
It reads only the sites listed here. On each, it opens the search results for a traveller's route and dates and reads the fares listed. Where a site lists return flights separately, it opens them for the outbound flights that fit the traveller's rules. Where a site's search needs its home page first, it opens that too.
Australia
- Google Flights www.google.com
- Trip.com AU au.trip.com
- Jettzy AU www.jettzy.com.au
- Jetabroad AU www.jetabroad.com.au
Google Flights is read first, on every watch. There it also opens the booking options, the list of sellers and their prices, for the cheapest fare of each outbound flight it looked at. Each trip's one free watch a day reads nothing but Google Flights.
The other sites are read only on watches a traveller pays for, and only for destinations where Google Flights showed a fare worth pricing or gave no answer.
We do not visit any other site. At most, a traveller gets a link to it. This list comes from the same site lists the fare watcher reads, so a site we stop reading leaves it at once.
How often
Each trip is watched at the interval its traveller chose: every 6, 12, 24 or 36 hours. One watch a day is free, and the traveller pays for the others. A traveller can also ask for one watch at once. The free daily watch pauses when a traveller has not opened the trip for seven days.
Today Australia has one machine for the watches, and two that take a quick look at Google Flights when a traveller sets up a trip, for the airports and dates they named. Every machine reads one watch or one quick look at a time, in one browser, and is switched off in between.
Each watch has a time limit: after 16 minutes for the free watch, and 48 minutes for a watch a traveller pays for, it starts reading nothing new.
If you run a site
To ask us to stop reading your site, or to talk to us about the fare watcher, email bot@myfarewatch.com.
We stop reading your site as soon as we read your request, and we confirm it in writing. We read it again only with your written permission.
If your site shows the fare watcher a challenge, such as a CAPTCHA, a bot check, or a 403 or 429 answer, we take it as a request not to read. The fare watcher stops reading your site for the rest of that watch, and your site is closed to the fare watcher in that market, on every machine. It stays closed until a person at MyFareWatch has looked at what happened. Nothing turns it back on automatically.
If your site shows the fare watcher its own error page, the fare watcher does not try your site again in that watch.
Where it runs
For Australia, the fare watcher runs in Fly.io's datacentre in Sydney and connects to sites from there.
It never uses residential or mobile proxies or VPNs. It never changes its address, its user agent or anything else about itself to get past a block. Any change to where it connects from will be announced on this page.