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Hosteons hosting experience
I'd like to provide a personal review about hosteons hosting service. I hate having to come out and say bad things about a provider, but I feel this is just too unreasonable that has happened to me, and after arguing with them did not bring to any resolution.
I signed up vps hosting with hosteons, I hired a developer to make the website and put up my site, after a few months I got notification email about permanent suspension. The reason: Fraud or phish hosting site: mydomain.com
After contacting them, I got the following response:
_IT is listed at Spamhaus as phishing which is enough for us to not reactivate or allow on our network :
Ref: SBLxxx
45.83.140.xx/32 is listed on the Spamhaus Block List - SBL
2021-02-24 19:05:53 GMT
Fraud or phish hosting site: mydomain.com
httpxxx://mydomain.com/about/
Much of the site copied from:
httpxxx://www.anothersite.com/about/
mydomain.com. 21599 IN A 45.83.140.xx
Better contact your developer to not use such content, this account cannot be reactivated as we cannot risk Spamhaus blacklisting our IP permanently_
So basically they responded that the service cannot be reactivated because they cannot risk Spamhaus blacklisting their IP
I then responded to hosteons that their entire IP block was blacklisted, not only my IP, and it is likely someone else did nasty stuff to their IP, since I am certain that until now my VPS only occasionally send email to my own email address in case some service issues happen. And that I agree that there are still some pages on my website that hasn't been rewritten, but all those pages were labeled robots noindex so they do not appear in search engines. All pages that have been rewritten have been indexed by google. A hosting provider should not care about that as long as we don't get any complaint. (The content of the whole site is about advertising our service, just like the way hosting providers talk good about their service on their website, so it is better called duplicate content and shouldn't be called phishing or fraudulent. And I told them that there are a few pages, really a few pages only, and I can remove them if they want)
They then replied:
_Did you even read the complain ?
It has nothing to do with spamming or mailing
httpxxx://mydomain.com/about/
Much of the site copied from:
httpxxx://www.anothersite.com/about/
IT is is copyright content and possibly phishing
IT is specifically for domain hosted on your VPS, it's not about any other client
This VPS will not be reactivated_
So now they have changed their mind, at the beginning they said the service is permanently suspended because it is listed in Spamhouse as phishing, and they cannot risk their IP. Now they implied that the reason is because there is complaint about copyright and possibly phishing. Any case, as a customer I don't expect to get permanently suspended in this case, which is the first incident with them. I don't know if it is reasonable for the bulk of other customers, so I just put up everything here so people understand how they operate their business for their better decision
Comments
Do you have offsite backup?
Did you try to tell them that you will remove the copyrighted content?
Did they offer reactivation if you remove the content?
Yes, I had a backup, not so fresh but okay to be used in bad situation. As I wrote above, I told them that is only a few pages and I will remove them immediately if they want. They insisted that the service will not be reactivated, so there is no more chance for further resolution.
Just to clarify this client is using VPS and hosting a site which is listed by Spamhaus as "FRAUD or Phishing" and it's an exact copy of another site
No other IP of ours are listed at Spamhaus, Spamhaus has clearly mentioned the domain hosted by this user along with exact URL, which we have provided to them.
We don't allow any kind of Fraud or Phishing sites on our network and it's against our TOS, hence services have been suspended, just giving excuses that my developer did it etc... are not acceptable
Sorry but you can carry on with your reviews trying to defame us, but we cannot reactivate such services or allow it on our network.
Just joined today to write a review about us "Username march Joined 6:05PM Visits 2 Last Active 7:43PM Roles Member Thanked 0"
I'm sure LET users can judge better
@march want me to post the Spamhaus listing url ?
Thanks
Now do you change your mind again and say that the issue is spamhouse?
No it is not exact copy. you can google my site site:hostkilo.com (The site is actually not important for me as we have changed our business plan). By selecting the cache you can see the cache content by google cache. This is a light website and has only around 10 pages. Some examples:
here
and here
All IPs from 45.83.140.50-45.83.140.60 are listed. So I guess your entire subnet was listed there: spamhaus[dot]org/lookup/
Any case, if an IP is listed, you can still ask your customer to delist it if that IP is exclusively listed. (I think customer cannot delist if the whole subnet is listed.
That Spamhaus listing for a different reason, de-listing is already requested as there was another VPS user running a forum involved in fraud, that VPS is also already suspended and marked for termination just like yours
But here is the exact listing for your IP - https://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/query/SBL517514
It is specifically for you IP, since you have already mentioned the URL, I'm posting the Spamhaus URL
You can check here, that is the whole subnet
https://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/query/SBL518003
And I feel it is funny, did you check that website before? You can check it now if you haven't. Check copyscape. You should also give a chance for your user to clarify and make changes if there is any issue. The door shouldn't be shut immediately like that ...
Do you understand how Spamhaus works ?
If there are multiple complains or a serious issue they blacklist whole /24 and sometimes even whole ASN
But your VPS is suspended due to this complain - https://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/query/SBL517514
Just go ahead and read it
And yes I did checked the URL mentioned in Spamhaus listing, you have all copied design and content
Your VPS is not suspended due to - https://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/query/SBL518003 this complain only involves one vps on our network 45.83.140.200 and it is already suspended so don't indulge in other complains
"all design and content"? Did you check copyscape for the content? I don't know about the design, as that was done by a developer. But I changed content myself for most of the pages. You can enable the VPS and past the urls to copyscape to check. In any case, there should be room for resolution, from the beginning of communication.
Spamhaus has even marked your site for FRAUD or Phishing, could you explain that ?
Copyright + FRAUD
Sorry we cannot allow such sites/clients on our network
You can always reach out to Spamhaus directly to try and resolve the fraud/phishing complaint (can't guarantee you success) but it's worth trying @march -- you're going to need to resolve this prior to moving to a new provider.
Spamhaus listed you within the category "fraud or phishing" and then further expanded on the reasoning being: "Much of the site copied from" -- At first glance, it sounds like you have ripped content and possibly a ripped theme?
So your provider decided to suspend you as they were alerted by their upstream of the complaint. One can argue whether they should have, or haven't suspended you.
After some interaction between you and your provider HostEONs they eventually decided to permanently keep the site suspended (can't comment here).
What I will say is to fix any stolen content, and pick a paid theme (or custom design) to prevent this from happening. Usually, providers would receive a DMCA for this, relay it to you so that you could fix, address and or counter the DMCA but in most cases, your site would have been suspended through the process.
Thanks @dustinc, I also believe things should work like that.
Did you copy the names of the other site's employees or maybe their address/contact details? If you did then you deserve the fraud blacklist.
I actually don't know. I was passed down a site like that from a developer, I changed the sentence, phrase from a few pages and after that I did not continue since I have a better choice at other business. So that site was abandoned. Any way, I think even if it has the name or details of others, hosteons should give me a chance to resolve the problem right? We can simply remove the problematic pages, or get rid of the domain, and we can also request for spamhaus removal. This is the first time a hosting issue happened to me.
If it was a normal DMCA complain we work with client and give them time to resolve unless it's coming repeatedly but with Spamhaus and especially when it's about FRAUD sorry we don't entertain such clients, just because you ignored the content or your developer messed up, we cannot mess with Spamhaus. Contact Spamhaus get your domain removed from Spamhaus and once they confirm they are fine with it, we can reactivate, but none of these reasons/excuses works with Spamhaus
Thanks for changing your mind to offer a way for resolution. But that offer is too late. I don't need it anymore.
Thanks