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[SCAM ALERT] HSTQ Network Holding RIPE /24 Hostage - Extorting Money for BGP/LOA
Hi everyone,
I’m writing this to warn the community about HSTQ Network and their predatory business practices. I found this provider because I needed a solution that could handle a high volume of fake DMCA complaints for my project. I rented a dedicated server and a full /24 subnet (168.222.183.0/24).
Since I am the holder of AS200833, I requested my network to be announced. What followed was a series of extortions and technical lies:
The $200 "Announcement Fee"
They charged me $200 USD per year just to "allow" the announcement of my own ASN. I paid this like a fool, thinking I would get professional service.Resource Withholding & Arbitrary Limits
Despite paying for a full /24, they only announced 128 IPs (two /26 blocks). They refuse to route or announce the remaining 128 IPs, effectively holding 50% of my paid resources hostage behind "internal regulations."Extortion for a Simple LOA ($50)
I decided to use an external BGP tunnel (Lagrange) to manage my own network since they were so restrictive. I didn't ask them to configure anything on their routers. I only asked for a standard Letter of Authorization (LOA). They are now refusing to provide this basic PDF document unless I pay another $50 USD. They are literally holding my ASN and Subnet hostage for more money.rDNS / PTR Lies
They claimed they completed the rDNS delegation to Cloudflare. It has been over 24 hours, and Cloudflare still shows "Waiting for registrar." They are lying about technical tasks just to buy time and ignore me after receiving my money.
They take your money ($200+ for announcement).
They limit your subnet to 50% for no reason.
They ignore your tickets once paid.
They demand extra fees ($50) for a free document (LOA) that belongs to my own resources.
I have already filed a formal complaint with RIPE NCC for resource withholding.
Avoid HSTQ if you want professional service. They will try to find any excuse to charge you extra money for standard networking tasks.
Even the basic rDNS delegation is not working. They claimed they pointed the nameservers to Cloudflare for my rDNS zone, but after 24+ hours, it’s still not propagated. They are lying about technical tasks just to ignore me after receiving payment. Total scammers.
Invoices:
Comments
Announcement fees are not uncommon, nor are fees for an LOA. But only giving you two /26 blocks when you paid for a /24 is failure to render service. I think that's the only thing here that could be called a scam.
Btw, your ticket screenshot is unreadably small.
Hi,
thats indeed creative delivery...
ordered: 1x /24
delivered: N x /YX ( that might give in sum 1x /24 )
....
next time, when i order 1x big car, i should take care that they wont deliver 2x small car XD
Or you order 1x CPU with 4 GHz and receive 2x CPU with 2 GHz...
... creative contract interpretation... not seen something like this.
Especially if 1x /24 was invoices.... obviously 1x /24 has to be delivered
If not... failed to deliver = refund or deliver correctly.
Good luck with this!
Yes, this topic will force them to reconsider and let go the hostage.
How does this even work? They can announce a /26 as much as they want, but most of the internet is going to ignore it. Effectively, they haven't announced anything at all.
Reguards
you can click
https://ibb.co/R42MrcKM
Yeah, reading that screenshot, the important message is 23/2/2026 05:51 - when they switch from saying "sure we can announce your /24" to "only the middle half of your /24 is routed to your server and if you want the other half, you need to pay for another server". From what I can see on their website, they only advertise /24 and larger, their ToS don't mention any limit, nor the FAQ.
I guess they are advertising the full /24 and then only routing the middle 2 /26s to his server.
Seems the OP has been scammed by a bait and switch.
Not sure about the provider, looks like a dodgy Russian outfit registered in the BVI. Looks dodgy a.f. and I don't think I'd have touched them with a bargepole if I was in OP's position.
Best option now is for the OP to get the hell away and hope they stop announcing their prefix when they move to a decent provider.
Oh that's interesting. Perhaps ibb dynamically resizes images to low resolution if it thinks I'm a bot trying to scrape them, because the full image I can see is only 100x637, even when I click on it.
are they on LET? never heard of them
needs JS to load https://i.ibb.co/rfkL8HhL/Screenshot-2026-02-27-at-09-51-39-View-Ticket-HSTQ-Hosting.png
Thanks.
lmfao
So let me see if I understand. You paid a $500/month service to get your /24 announced. They said that would be fine. After you paid, they said that their "internal regulations" (which they did not disclose to you at the time of purchase) only allowed you to have half of that unless you upgraded to a more expensive plan. Yeah, that's completely fraudulent. With that said, you were also acting unprofessionally by spamming the ticket when they took more than a few hours to reply. But that doesn't excuse their fraud.
Both you and them entered into a contract whereby you would provide them $500/month and they would announce your /24. If they cannot or will not render the service as agreed upon, they must refund you or they are in violation of contract law.
This is no different than if someone offered $12/month for 4 GB RAM, then provided a server with 2 GB RAM and said "I'm sorry, but internal regulations say we can't give more than 2 GB for a $12/month plan".
Wait, how can they announce a /26?
They can't, at least externally. Internally they can route it to the /24 but for the outside world, it has to be a /24 at least.
200 USD for BGP announcement is high. 50 USD for a LOA is downright insane. But holding a /25 out of a /24 for no reason is just stupid. What are they going to do with the 126 IPs, use them internally?
Also, I like that basically the address for the user is "private address, private city, private everything" and then the name is a sufficiently distinguishable Turkish name to be catched...
I noticed it’s originated by AS16276 (OVH SAS) when I looked up the subnet.
They might be limited by OVH’s many weird terms and simply pass those limitations on to you.
In other words, they are probably just a reseller pretending to be a real LIR.
The two /26's are internally routed within OVH’s network.
Ah, then we can conclude that they seem to try gas-lighting OP to pay more. Really evil
OP holds AS200833 so he is an ASN operator, OP should do BGP yourself
He needs an LOA for that and they're demanding $50 to send him the PDF.
Exactly. It’s a sunk cost fallacy. If I pay the $50 for the LOA, they’ll just find another 'internal regulation' to demand more. They are already in breach of our /24 agreement, so there’s zero trust left. It’s just endless 'nickel and diming' at this point.
OP is 100% an email spammer. Asking for the "IP list" and then saying which range you prefer is the biggest red flag, ever.
https://bgp.tools/prefix/168.222.183.0/24
ip block owned by OVH, wowge
the ips are owned by ae.saftalmc not ovh, they are just routed there
Even if they are, that doesn't excuse the provider's attempt to defraud them. It's not like the provider is specifically trying to scam spammers. It could have happened to anyone, which is the issue.
SEO ım not doing email, i getting daily 1000+ fake dmca and fake phishing email.
Guys I getting huge web traffic very popular keywords, so competitors sending fake notices
Can you give some examples?
If AS200833 is to be announced then it is not private.