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Suggestion: Providers optional (?) list with info about their company
I'll throw here a suggestion for the forum.
Every time I search for an offer, willing to try some not known or tested (at least by me) providers, I search for details about their business. Like, who are running the place, how long they are in business etc.
Wouldn't be useful for the sake of transparency and safety, having a catalogue of providers that posting offers on LET with their details, bio and specs about their companies, as:
- Real name of the owner and the city/country he lives
- Address and phone number of the company
- Company details if it is registered
- What year did they establish their company, how many years are online (the company, not crap like 100 years of combined experience on hosting industry)
- Their other/parent/sister companies they run
- Some basic info and bio for the owner and the company (how did they start, the evolution etc.)
- The datacenters they use
- The hardware they mostly use
This could not be mandatory for posting offers, but everybody that participates should take a badge like "verified", "transparent" or other.
I guess such a list could be very helpful for many of us to decide if we or not willing to buy something from a provider. Do you find something like this interesting and useful?
- Is a feature like that useful for LETers?48 votes
- Yes, this list would be something useful81.25%
- No, I don't need to know more, mystery is intriguing my fantasy!10.42%
- I really don't mind, I will do my own research anyways!8.33%
Comments
Majority of people here see a 7$ deal they are buying it first and worrying about the rest later
Ah... since just nice that someone mentioned about it, I am in the process of building a website relevant to this.
I have been wanting to do this for a while, and has acquired relevant domains and social media etc but it just takes a while for me to plan and decide what are the scopes I want to cover.
Not sure when it can happen but hope to receive supports from everyone once it is launched.
IF I can support this in any way, count me in! I just think that this would be a useful plus motive for providers posting offers in LET.
Thank you for offering to help. It does but I have to emphasize there is quite a bit of balance to strike here. It could go both way as hosting by itself is more risky and prone to fraud than a lot of other businesses.
This is especially true for providers who offers "anonymous hosting" / "bulletproof hosting" or the like, which can cause them to get swatted or get themselves into danger.
So while I dont agree with every data point you mentioned in your original post, a certain level of information is very helpful on deciding the trustworthiness of a provider. However, some protections should be given for hobby hosts because they are doing it for the low end spirit only.
Don't disagree, that's why I am suggesting that it could be mandatory and in a subcategory.
nomore22kfruitcryptoscams
Reject modernity, embrace $7?
why bother. just go to their website, if you dont see upfront details that you are looking for, just go elsewhere. If they choose to be obscure, it's usually for a reason and they pay the price by having less business.
Or, just list which providers have proper company and contact details and which dont. No need to actually duplicate that data here
can you add your gut feeling about % chance company is around in 5 years
Full transparency? Such a thing would scare away potential patron providers, negatively affecting the Bilohbucks economy. Therefore, it will be implemented next week.
I guess it will help those that are really lazy to do their own research before making the decision. But then again I believe shit can and will still happen even if a company looks extremely healthy on the outside.
I remember dedipath , limewave ......
Honestly when something is too cheap it should be a sign of a red flag but sometimes is just a game of how long they can keep the ball rolling zzzzzz
It makes sense as an extension to this community.
However, another directory when several already exist including those aimed at hosting companies seems pointless.
Please add LET verified role for the providers
Maybe our project might might interest you.
We are creating a centralized platform that allows you to quickly purchase or switch between different cloud providers in just a few seconds.
Additionally, we offer SLAs, so if you encounter a problem with a provider, we are responsible for it
I recommend checking the following topics:
https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/4151058#
I would, but I think most LET users don't care.
Looking forward to this!
lol u.
I'm in mixed minds about this. In my country, it's trivial to get this information from the company number, but I don't publicly associate my name with my own company except to clients (BTW my company is not involved in hosting, but the point applies).
The information is only really useful for doxxing a very small provider if you want to give them grief at some point. It's of no consequence once a company gets above maybe 10 people, because the owner of the country isn't going to be concerned about individual purchases, especially at the low-end promotions price point. If you have any issues, they want you to follow their publicised support route, not hassling the owner.
Address yes (maybe), but again trivial to obtain in most places from the company number. It's worth noting that for many companies, their registered address isn't the same as their correspondence address as many companies use their accountants' address as their registered address. Personally, I don't think a phone number should be required if phone isn't their preferred contact method.
Absolutely. It's a legal requirement in many places, e.g. where I live in the UK, for the company number to be on the website for the company and yet the majority of low-end providers who claim to be in the UK don't even do this. It's also amazing how many of them are just fronts for operations in India and they shut down their UK company after a year when they are required to submit their accounts. I've been shouted down before (by other people, not mods), when I've warned people about such companies, so now I just keep quiet.
For UK companies, I wouldn't buy anything important from them until I've gone onto companies house and looked at their last submitted financials to make sure they're at least minimally compliant with the law. That usually rules out any company younger than 18 months. For companies that have been around for many years with decent reputation , there's usually not as many issues.
That said for a couple of dollars a month server, I don't really care. If the company turns out to be sketchy in any way, I'll just suck it up and take loosing that money as a learning opportunity.
Maybe also add ASN or Looking Glass as well. Some of the time some providers actually put an ASN/Looking Glass which helps, but some providers don't. I had to one time scroll through 12 pages to find a looking glass/test IP to find an ASN for a provider.
Good idea!
Fucking no. Why they should know? If the company wants to tell then yes. Because of uptime? Ask for proofs, details. Not everyone wants to disclose their datacenters.
Bad idea, if you do this then ask why providers that protects privacy and freedom of speech disappears from the forum. This is a bad idea.
Why? Not all business are the same. Others provide resistant against censorship others protects freedom of speech, privacy and other things.
I could agree here, but why you need to know which hardware they are using in their VPS Nodes? If the company doesn't want to disclose they are in the right to.
This is a joke right? Not all companies use telephone for support.
Nop, this should be optional. The reasons are the same before.
Do you think that Incognet and other similars providers will agree with this? No, no.
If you want a legit company just go with OVH / Hetzner you couldn't have any issue with them.
I agree with all except Hetzner recommendation, lol.
I agree with most but the owner information could be a step too far.
Owners/CEO have the right to privacy too, they can have their registered office address public but in the past I have been the victim of it back when I first came into hosting
You put the the owners personal name and city they live in, you get some internet tolls who maybe have their service removed for breaking the TOS or law, next thing you are are having hassle at your home or vile delivers.
If you have verified yourself with eg companies house to register the company that should be enough, if there are problems of fraud or some other legal issues this can be followed the correct channels but from the voice of experience getting boxes of shit sent to your home, if the internet was a safe place and the world did not include utter nutters then sure but you need to consider both sides.
Maybe if the details are needed to verify but are never actually pubic and are removed from the system after verification in case of a system breech that is an option but to have a list of the owners, their city's since its not hard to look up eg Jim Jones, approx. age 25-30 London
Also if everything is public, just a book for data harvesters to annoy the fuck out of owners or spam them like crazy with irrelevant rubbish. Same happens when you register a brand new company, accounts, banks ect all send junk to you, would be this then some
...and their habits, lovers, cats and dogs and drugs of course! Would you like to public such info about yourself over the Internet? I'm not!
When you're putting $7/mo into something, you might as well get to know them really, really well. Then you don't develop parasocial relationship with your lowendprovider.
Yes, it's very important for me to know how Oles does his business.
and walks with his pets.
with regard to german companies, i would like to refer to handelsregister.de. this creates transparency and, in my opinion, can also help to improve a company's reputation. if further details / help are needed, i would be happy to contribute.
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
Don’t talk rubbish, would you welcome a random person who is unstable to your home, put your family at risk simply because you cancel their service for breaking the tos/law ?