XC Skies has long been a proponent of transparency. We describe our techniques, reply to all technical questions in full disclosure and make the website fully discoverable.
By making the site "discoverable" that means our interfaces are exposed and can be discovered by savvy web developers. Knowing how to call our API (program interfaces) means some people can take advantage of XC Skies' services by bypassing our website and writing scripts to "scrape" and "rip-off" the data we provide to users who support our efforts via small subscriptions. The individuals can and have been identified, but solutions to preventing abuse on the site could potentially impact some pilots who are legitimately using our services. This conundrum is hard to balance.
We'll be implementing schemes to thwart the free-loaders of XC Skies while hopefully not causing problems with legitimate subscribers.
Another issue is the abuse of our free 30 day trial subscriptions. Anyone can signup freely and use XC Skies for 30 days, no questions asked and no obligations attached. This also means some users who find XC Skies indispensable, yet don't want to support it at a $4.95 / month fee, can just keep creating new users each month. Again, we know who these folks are, but what to do? These users account for a significant usage of the website. Do we (as XC Skies and the greater soaring community) put up with this abuse as a cost of business or do we take action to lock down the free 30 day trial process?
Additionally, many users share their accounts. The price points for subscriptions are modest with little to no profit based on the average user's activity. Sharing accounts cuts into the utility of the services for everyone. Yet another Q that will be addressed...
We'll be addressing these issues shortly too.
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