Frequently Asked Questions 

Here are answers to questions we often receive from our users.

What is FreezePage?

FreezePage is the World’s first service for taking online snapshots of individual Web pages. With FreezePage you can freeze pages from the World Wide Web so they can be recalled in their exact form at a later time or date. Web pages change all the time, but with FreezePage you can be sure they stay the same.

What can I use FreezePage for?

FreezePage can be used for a number of things. If you use FreezePage instead of saving Web pages to your own hard disk, you can access your saved pages from anywhere on the Web. And you can easily show the pages to friends, colleagues, or a greater public exactly as they were when you froze them.

Since you cannot change a frozen page, FreezePage can also be used to prove exactly how a Web page looked at a specific date. For instance, professionals can use FreezePage to document copyright infringement. Consumers can use FreezePage to document special offers, prices, terms, etc. they have come across on the Web.

Does FreezePage cost anything to use?

All our basic services are free. From this moment, you have your own, fully-functional personal account (“My Frozen Pages”) at no cost.

If you use FreezePage a lot, you may want to subscribe to “FreezePage Plus” for additional space and access to certain advanced features.

Another site had a link to FreezePage. Are they your partners?

FreezePage is privately owned and remains entirely independent of other sites. That is why you can use FreezePage to document the content of a given Web site at a given point of time. Web pages saved on your own hard disk can easily be modified and therefore represent poor evidence in any kind of dispute or demonstration. Frozen pages cannot be changed and FreezePage is an independent third party who guarantees their authenticity.

How does FreezePage work?

In principle, it’s very simple. When you enter a Web address, we take a snapshot of the Web page and save it (cache it) on our system. Along with the main Web page, we also download and save all the elements on the page (images, stylesheets, script files, etc.). It all happens within a matter of seconds, depending on how fast the other site is. We then add the page to your list of frozen pages so you can easily recall the page in its original form.

How do I share a page with other people?

When you freeze a Web page, we automatically add it to your list of frozen pages. But we also provide you with a unique shortcut to the page, like this: http://www.freezepage.com/1234567890ABCDEFGHIJ. It always consists of 10 digits (based on the time) and 10 random capital letters.

With this unique shortcut (Web address), you or other people can recall the page at any time. To share the page, either create an ordinary email and include the Web address yourself or use our “Tell A Friend” function. Our “Tell A Friend” function creates an email with the necessary Web address and sends it to the address(es) you specify.

Can I freeze any kind of page with FreezePage?

Our system works properly with the vast majority of Web pages. However, a few exceptions exist:

• You cannot freeze secure pages. Secure pages are SSL encrypted pages at addresses starting with “https”.
• You cannot freeze pages which have been personalized to you. For instance, if you try to freeze your inbox at your online email service, you will not see your personal inbox, but probably a log-in/sign-up screen. The reason is that the email service provider will not recognize you behind the FreezePage service. Instead, the email service provider will assume that FreezePage is a new user who is logging on for the first time.
• Finally, you cannot view contents based on scripts. In most pages, this does not affect the main contents, but only means that banner ads etc. do not appear (for more information, please see the question below). A few pages, however, check if the users have enabled JavaScript and shut them out if they have not. If you try to freeze a page like this, you may get a message like “You must enable JavaScript to access this page”.

Why does this frozen page not look (exactly) as when I view it in my browser?

You can be sure that FreezePage always displays pages exactly as they were retrieved from the Web site. There are, however, three main reasons why a page may appear different when you freeze and view it at FreezePage and when you visit it directly:

• The most obvious explanation is of course that the page has changed since you froze it. By nature, the front page of online news providers and similar services can change from one minute to the next. This is also true with advertisement contents, which is typically rotated and replaced constantly.
• Another reason is that some Web sites use technology to personalize their pages according to who they are sending it to. As explained in the above answer, you cannot freeze pages, which have been personalized to you via a login. But there are also many Web sites that send different pages to users who have never logged in. For instance, some Web sites look at your IP address and determine where you are located. They can then send you a Web page in your own language, possibly containing local contents. If you are from another country or region than FreezePage, which is located in the U.S., you may get a different page than us from the same address.
• A final explanation is that the contents you view is based on scripts. Some HTML pages contain JavaScript and other client-side script languages, which add to or modify the Web page after it has been downloaded to the browser. We automatically disable these scripts to avoid redirects and conflicts with FreezePage’s system. For that reason, some frozen pages may be missing dynamic contents or interactive elements such as drop-down menus that appear when viewing the page directly with your Web browser.

Are there any limitations to what pages I can freeze?

In order to save resources, we have set a few rules for the size of Web page you can freeze. The Web page must be less than 750 KB in total, have less than 150 embedded elements (images, stylesheets, script files, etc.) and be retrievable within 90 seconds. In practice, these limitations enter into effect rarely and, in these cases, we will let you know when you try to freeze the Web page.

How long will pages be stored?

From the moment you enter our site, you have your own personal account. When you freeze pages, they are automatically saved to your account as “My Frozen Pages”. To save space on our system, we require that you use your account regularly, i.e. that you log in or visit any page on our site. If you are an unregistered user, you must visit our site every 30 days. If you are a member (sign up for free), we only require you to log in every 60 days. If you don’t, we may delete your account and all the frozen pages in it.

FreezePage does not work on my computer. What should I do?

If you have found a bug in FreezePage, we would be very happy to know. Please notice, however, that we only support relatively recent browsers. A Web service always has a trade-off between innovative features and the ability to run on all platforms and browsers.

We have chosen to test our system against Internet Explorer 6.0 for Windows and Mozilla Firefox (currently version 1.07). Testing on all browsers takes a lot of time - we would therefore appreciate it if you would consider upgrading your browser, if you are using an older or more exotic piece of software than the two mentioned. :-)

Why can new pages not be removed from the trash can?

Only pages older than 24 hours are removed when the trash can is emptied. The purpose of this restriction is to prevent users from retrieving hundreds or thousands of pages per day, by deleting them immediately after they are frozen. That would require a lot of bandwidth from our servers. If you need to freeze a lot of pages, you also need to purchase additional space for your frozen pages.

I am running a Web site. Can I prevent you from freezing my pages?

No. You cannot prevent users from freezing a page from your server, just like you cannot prevent your visitors from manually copying pages to their own computer. In this context, the FreezePage engine does not obey robot tags (such as <META name="ROBOTS" content="NOARCHIVE">), since we do not consider FreezePage a robot. FreezePage acts as an agent between the user’s browser and your Web server, but there is a real person behind each request.

It is, however, our intention to respect copyrights and other legal issues. FreezePage provides a system for saving and recalling Web pages, but we cannot effectively check all frozen pages on our system. It is the responsibility of the users to respect copyrights and other contents-related issues. If you encounter misuse of any kind, please contact us through your local authorities and we will help you identify offenders through our log files.