Better Uptime

Overview

Better Uptime (now part of Better Stack) is an uptime monitoring and incident management platform that also offers hosted status pages. Its client-side presence on third-party websites is primarily through embeddable status page widgets — small components that display real-time system health indicators, current incident status, and uptime history. These widgets are embedded by operators who want to provide transparency to their website visitors about service availability without directing them to a separate status page URL.

What This Script Does

Better Uptime's status page widget loads from Better Stack's CDN (typically betteruptime.com or betterstackdata.com asset domains) and performs the following:

• Polling requests: The widget makes periodic HTTP requests (typically every 30–60 seconds) to Better Uptime's API to fetch current service status and any active incidents. These requests include the widget's public identifier but do not transmit visitor personal data.
• Notification preference cookies: If the widget includes a "Subscribe to updates" feature, clicking it may set a cookie to remember that the visitor has requested notifications, storing their subscription preference locally.
• No tracking pixels: Better Uptime's status widget does not set advertising cookies, does not transmit visitor identifiers to Better Stack for profiling, and does not participate in any advertising or analytics networks.
• IP address exposure: The polling requests expose the visitor's IP address to Better Stack's servers as a natural consequence of the HTTP request. Better Stack's infrastructure logs these in standard server access logs.
• Incident display: Active incidents and maintenance windows are rendered directly in the widget using data returned from the API, with no visitor data involved in the display logic.

The overall data collection footprint is minimal — status polling with IP exposure, and optional notification preference cookies.

Consent & Compliance

GDPR and ePrivacy: Better Uptime's polling requests expose IP addresses to Better Stack's servers, but this is incidental to content delivery (fetching status data) rather than targeted tracking. IP addresses processed as part of CDN and API infrastructure are generally handled under legitimate interest. If the subscription feature sets a persistent notification preference cookie, that cookie is functional to the feature the user has explicitly requested and may be treated as essential to that interaction. No advertising tracking occurs.

CCPA/CPRA: IP addresses are personal information under CCPA. The service provider context — Better Uptime processes this data to deliver status information on behalf of the operator — and the absence of any data monetization by Better Stack means this is a standard service provider relationship with no "sale" or "sharing" implication.

This vendor falls in the mixed category (functional + essential). Status display is functional to transparency communications; subscription cookies are essential to the notification feature the user requests.

Should You Block This Without Consent?

No.

Better Uptime's status widget serves a functional transparency purpose with no advertising or behavioral tracking components. The IP address exposure is incidental to content delivery and covered under legitimate interest. No consent gating is required for the core status display widget. If the subscription notification feature is used, the associated cookie is functional to the user's explicit action.