Responsible Use & Scope Limitations

TraceForge is designed strictly for authorized defensive security audits, forensic investigations, verified bug bounties, and academic research.

1. Authorized Operator Mandate

Operators must hold explicit, written authorization from asset owners before performing active reconnaissance or network scans.

Defensive Incident Response: Investigating compromised workstations, servers, or internal network traffic.
Authorized Penetration Testing: Auditing targets defined strictly within a written statement of work.
Bug Bounty Programs: Testing domains and scopes explicitly declared by the program policy.
Law Enforcement & Forensics: Ingesting and analyzing evidence under valid legal warrant.
Academic Research: Conducting security and metadata analysis in controlled laboratory environments.

The following actions are strictly prohibited with TraceForge:

Unauthorized computer access, network intrusion, or port scanning without asset owner consent.
Denial-of-service (DoS/DDoS) attacks or deliberately exhausting target bandwidth/resources.
Bulk scraping of private individuals for harassment, stalking, doxxing, or unauthorized surveillance.
Intercepting private communications or Wi-Fi traffic without legal authorization.

Unauthorized computer access is a criminal offense under international cybercrime legislation:

India: Information Technology Act, 2000 (§§ 43, 66, 66B, 66C, 66D, 79).
United States: Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA, 18 U.S.C. § 1030).
European Union: Directive 2013/40/EU on attacks against information systems.
United Kingdom: Computer Misuse Act 1990 (Sections 1, 2, 3, 3A).

See DISCLAIMER.md and RESPONSIBLE_USE.md for full policy terms.