New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
According to the Spamhaus data:
Date Listed: April 16, 2025 15:32:52
Date Removed: April 25, 2025 13:28:40
It also mentions it tried to connect to Spamhaus honeypots twice with different HELOs
74.48.77.91 2025-04-16 15:30:00 smtp.johnsonservices.net
74.48.77.91 2025-04-15 07:40:00 ckpuirp.kwzsib.com.local
If OP didn't really send those, then something in the server was unprotected and it may have been exploited to become part of a C&C botnet.
Passive DNS lookups for the given IP for the last 3 months
Name Count Record Type
iminchina.com. 10 A
api.iminchina.com. 7 A
www.iminchina.com. 3 A
chat.iminchina.com. 25 A
it is possible that even if OP didn't send them directly, that any of the apps hosted on that server were compromised and became part of a botnet. Of course, this assumes that OP is innocent and hanlon's razor applies.
Edit: OP states that none of those domains point to him, but they don't need to. A server can HELO as anything it wants and most of the time it's made up names.
You don't need to. A compromised server can HELO as anything it wants, it doesn't have to point to your server. Hence why FCrDNS is a thing.
i have a strong feeling, OP doesn't have enough tech skills on many things, and his English is bad, maybe he doesn't understand what we and Cloudcone talking about.
sad story, i recommend you choose local provider next time, at least you can understand each other, this time, seems Cloudcone is clean.
I have VPS at Cloudcone in IP range 74.48.77.xx, same as OP. Port 25 is not blocked on my VPS,
Thank you everyone for the opportunity to respond and clarify the situation.
@SantaClaws We’re sorry to hear about your experience, and while we understand your frustration, we’d like to provide some context from our side for transparency.
There were two abuse reports associated with your account. Our system sent notifications for each case, and per our standard protocol, a response is required within the specified window. Unfortunately, we received no reply for 11 days on your first report, and no response for 7 days on your second report, which eventually resulted in the termination of the associated service. We had sent timely reminders on your first report requesting for action taken to resolve the case.
We also noticed that instead of replying to the active abuse ticket, you reopened an unrelated older ticket in a different department, one that does not operate 24/7. In that message, your response didn't address the abuse case directly but rather denied the abuse entirely with offensive remarks, making it harder for our team to follow up effectively.
We do our best to give fair notice and multiple opportunities for clients to respond, but timely and appropriate communication is crucial, especially in abuse cases that may put our entire infrastructure at risk.
That said, we’re always open to further discussion. If you’d like to revisit this or seek clarification, please feel free to open a new ticket with our abuse team. If your case is approved, you will be able to deploy a new service going forward.
https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/205179/recommend-maintaining-distance-from-cloudcone-services
Thats a total joke on you, my account is already deleted by you guys. How to open a ticket after the account is deleted?
I checked the IP presented in tickets. It is not currently listed in any public blacklist according to HetrixTools.
@SantaClaws might be right on this one.
For those who did not realize this is a total shame on the Cloudcone.
It's because the hammer is not hit on yourself, you guys can enjoy the hammer from Cloudcone later.
Members around here are reading this thread and others like this. The shame remains to be established.
Yes. This is why some are likely already taking backups (if they did not do so before).
With regards to this ticket, doesn't @Cloudcone block port 25 by default? Have you previously raised a ticket with them to request removal of such restriction?
@SantaClaws I just confirmed, your account is not blocked, your servers are only suspended. You can log in and raise a new ticket or reply back to the abuse reports to proceed.
"Discontinuing Our Money Back Guarantee"
Have you previously opened a ticket to request opening of port 25 in order to send email messages?
I need an answer to this because it does not make sense to be suspended for something you could not possibly do, since clearly port 25 is blocked for the past 6 years. Not only this, but Cloudcone offers a hosted email solution set by themselves in case clients need to host their email.
Something does not add up here. How can one be suspended for spam on port 25, if the service does not allow sending email to port 25?
Discontinuing Our Money Back Guarantee
We wanted to let you know that starting June 7th, 2025, CloudCone's 7 day money back guarantee policy will be changed.
Going forward, most of our products will be non-refundable by default. This includes payments for new orders, renewals, upgrades, and add-ons. Your account’s ‘Available Balance’ can be refunded.
This change allows us to maintain competitive pricing and reduce fraud/abuse on our systems while continuing to offer you a reliable and secure service through CloudCone.
How To Confidently Place An Order.
In case you're unsure about committing long term, we recommend starting with a monthly plan of your desired service. We also encourage our users to test our network performance before ordering. You can check on latency and speed within your region using our looking glass tool: http://la.lg.cloudc.one/
Honestly, this policy change feels like you're treating every customer as a potential fraud. What the hell? Not everyone is here to scam you. Instead of improving your support — which, by the way, has been the slowest I’ve ever dealt with — you're cutting off basic buyer protection.
I stopped using CloudCone over 3 years ago because of issues like this, and clearly, not much has changed. With moves like this, you’re only pushing more people away. Think again, @CloudCone.
Actually I am with Cloudcone on this one. Money Back Guarantee means an abuser can simply order a compute instance, spam the living daylight for a couple of days, then ask for money back. Meanwhile the provider is stuck with the complaints plus blacklisted IPv4 and IPv6 addresses which he has to do extra work for in order to delist IPs for the next possible customers which could randomly get that addressing space.
No. Cloudcone is right on this one. There should be no money back guarantee. There should be no free service. If anyone wants to ping addresses and looking glass, they can get it, but free service is always off the board, because humans in general can't have nice things due to their own bad behaviour proven so far (this thread excluded).
Looking glass gives you no indication of what service with $provider will be like, get a grip.
"Hey if service is shit too bad thanks for dono lolol".
You do know there are reviews. You also know there are benchmarks. You also know there are forums (like this one) where people may ask for benchmarks and reviews.
There is no reason to pay for expectations, especially with a provider in business for multiple years now.
Maybe a conditional refund would be a more fair policy? Refund only if no abuse has taken place on the rented machine (blacklisted IPs, spam, etc).
Tough situation, but I used Cloudclone before, guys were always really good and attentive.
The majority of hosts don't allow refunds unless the service hasn't been delivered yet or if the host messed something up. You'd be surprised how far people are willing to go to abuse lax refund policies and free trials.
I haven’t used CloudCone’s VPS or dedicated servers, but I have experience with their cloud servers on a monthly (hourly billed) basis. I was a customer for over three years, and my first support interaction with them dates back over six years. While the service was generally usable for my needs—such as testing applications on temporary instances—the support experience during critical issues was disappointing.
There were times when support staff seemed unable to understand or address the actual problem. I wasn’t seeking a refund—only a solution—but the communication and technical handling left much to be desired.
When deploying new instances, I often encountered delays; some remained in “pending deployment” status for hours. On a few occasions, I received login credentials that didn’t work, only to find out the instance had been assigned a null-routed IP. This kind of oversight should have been proactively addressed by the system.
I also used their WHMCS module, which consistently failed to provide console/VNC access. Despite providing all necessary details to support, I was told the issue stemmed from the module itself. However, no updates were provided even after a year. Their response at the time was:
However, it should be out in the upcoming months 
”
“We do not have an exact time as of yet
Unfortunately, that promise remained unfulfilled.
Although I still have credits remaining with CloudCone, I no longer use their services. I may consider returning in the future, but certain concerns remain.
One key factor that made their service appealing was the flexibility of hourly billing. If they have already removed that option—or decide to do so in the future—it significantly reduces the value for users who only need a server temporarily. Their stated policy of “no refunds” further complicates this, especially for those who simply need short-term access but end up being billed monthly.
Additionally, I’ve noticed their cloud servers have consistently been provisioned on older hardware, such as E5v2 nodes. In all my experience with them, I’ve yet to see a deployment from newer-generation nodes like the E5v4, which raises questions about their commitment to keeping infrastructure up to date.
I had a box with them for nearly a few years, so did others i know. I never had a major problem myself, but over the last 6 months or so what i heard from others started to change in tone enough that renewing for another year at a time gave me pause.
Jesus Christ. You can't even use the control panel to login or properly respond to tickets.
Give up, pay someone to do this for you.