What Surface Check looks at, and what it never does

We only use standard requests that anyone could make: up to 10 pages of your site, your public domain settings, public certificate records, secure connection details and a few well-known files. We never try to break in, guess passwords, scan for weaknesses aggressively or change anything.

• Anyone who runs a check sees what kind of problem each finding is and how serious it is, and every check that passed in full. Why a finding matters and the steps to fix it show only for the findings Atlas releases after checking them by hand, never with sensitive details.
• With a free Atlas account you can save your report, and only a saved report is reviewed: Atlas reviews every free report saved to an account by hand and releases findings as it checks them, though the detail of some may not be part of the free report. A report nobody saves is never reviewed, and is deleted after 30 days.
• When you prove you control the domain (a DNS record), you can run a free owner check, one a week. On it, a serious problem Atlas has confirmed shows where it is and the first step to contain it; Atlas reviews the other findings by hand and chooses which to release. A check started from the public form shows the public view only, so start your free owner check from your account. We never show a leaked secret itself.
• With a Reviewed Report or Surface Watch, a verified owner also sees exactly how we checked each finding, so you or your IT person can repeat it. Paying never unlocks this on its own: you must prove you control the domain first.

There are 100 founding places, released in rounds of 10. The counter on the home page shows the real number of places left in the round and how many of the 100 are claimed. A free check holds a place for your domain for 24 hours; to keep it, sign in to an Atlas account and prove you control the domain. A held place that is not kept comes back to the round when its 24 hours end, so a full round can open again before the next round starts; the counter says when the first hold ends. When every place in a round is kept, free checks close until the next round opens. One place per business domain, and only its owner can keep it.

We keep the detailed evidence from a check for 7 days, then delete it. Your saved report stays in your account. Summaries are written automatically by our own software from the findings; no AI service writes them. A Reviewed Report is reviewed within 2 business days of its report check: Atlas’s AI reviewer checks the findings against the evidence, and Hayden Bruinsma at Atlas starts and approves each review before release. The AI reviewer is given only the masked findings of your check, never your account or payment details. Your account shows when your report was delivered. Read our privacy policy.

Each check, what it looks for, why it matters and the standard behind it, in plain words: read every check explained.