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I don't think DartNode did anything wrong by suspending a service after abuse complaints. It's the surprise KYC from C-Servers and their refusal to refund that is the problem.
What I don't understand is that if you have the IP you most certainly have the customer's details? I know these are NAT services but surely not all of these customers were sharing one ip? The abuse site linked shows the source port that the abuse was mapped to, can't you use that to identify what customer it was?
If there was more than 1 IP at this location why would everyone have to do KYC?
Hey
Finally a productive answer, love to see it! Thank you for your time, first and foremost.
The case #A-23099-7918 was closed by mistake, but I was still nevertheless going to see what was somehow the issue and take care of it as best as I possibly could (despite the fact that I didn't have that much detail to begin with). I don't ignore any such reports and all of them, without exception, are taken seriously. At all providers.
Considering the adjustment of posture on DartNode's end and since the server got unsuspended, I've naturally taken care of that past-due balance as well, already. I'll also open a ticket so that you can add a tag for us as a hosting provider, which was never opened because... I didn't know that hosting provider tag even existed at DartNode, to be honest (is that stated somewhere? I've looked quickly on the website and didn't find it).
That ticket is now opened, with the reference #23448.
Collective punishment + a mentality of "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear". It's the kind of thing you expect from a corrupt prison warden, not a professional hosting provider.
They may not be logging that information. That's on them...
The translation to the human language:
We don't want to do refund and want to rob our customers!
SCAM
Thanks for the reply, if a hosting provider did log ports and IPs to customers this would make the abuse trivial to identify correct? I would assume that this would be standard practice for someone running a NAT hosting service as the low cost can sometimes invite more abuse...
@yoursunny That's an unfair proposal to the moderators, even an abusive one.
You don't have the right as an user to throw a company under the bus at a forum for those reasons. No user does. For any company. "Sudden KYC" is a ridiculous reason to use for that to begin with, most especially when it is clearly written on our T&Cs and FUP that KYC can happen at any time. And it will happen at any time, if we do so deem it necessary. In fact, I could launch tomorrow a full KYC accross the entire user pool and customers would theoretically need to comply, we're just not doing it because that was never the posture from the get-go - it is used as an exception, not the rule. As it should be everywhere: strictly when necessary. It's most effective that way.
"Refusal to refund on service failure" was never the issue at hand when the e-mail states clearly that no different refund rules will apply, which means that the standard refund rules will still apply regardless. I have three customers to refund next week regarding this service and they will be refunded direct to card because they had packages compliant with the refund rules at the company.
What you can't obviously do, and many customers do attempt such sheer stupidity, is to purchase a NanoVPS-384 Special US that clearly states from the get-go that it is non-refundable, we're still refunding it to account credit, and suddenly I have seven PayPal "cases" that are not from anyone else but customers that have circumvented the minimum amount AND the location on PayPal payments that was clearly stated as not including China because, guess what?, this exact thing happenned in 2024. Which will be even more enforced on the next week, or even PayPal payments will be entirely removed yet again, since people don't know how to freaking respect a rule. This unnecessarily affects legitimate customers that simply want to use PayPal to pay. It's ridiculous.
If you have AI and Live Chat for refunds now you can essentially thank these customers. Same thing goes for the support changes on sub-12 USD plans. Because otherwise we'd be pretty much happy to keep a normal ticket system. But just can't be done.
And if I may say so very clearly: this forum is an absolute wreckage on what pertains to users comitting fraud. Since we've advertised here some campaigns, the fraud rates have increased fourfold in comparison with the whole year of 2025, where we advertised mostly at the OGF and were still at Solus. But don't worry, because we'll be nicely taking care of that. I'll personally look over that one.
Everyone should put a very, very good hand on their conscience, if they still have some.
Obviously that's for a minor share of users at this forum (aka lurkers), because the vast majority of users at LET are legitimate users. But one should most definetly talk and vet the audience that is going around here, because it's absolutely abnormal this level of fraud at a forum. Absolutely abnormal.
And after that people go and cry "ooooh, the provider X deadpooled, they're a scum" or "chargebaaaaack" or "see? I told you they were no good", all while forgetting they've done their own faith by attempting to force their hand and disrespecting the work of a company and their contractors. Which is still as legitimate as it gets. (Exception for things like VeloxMedia and such.)
You're paying higher fees and getting KYC at progressively more and more providers because you're inflicting yourselves that pain with what you do with a VPS. If you can't realize that, then at some point you will when no provider goes without requesting KYC or that is demanded e.g. in Europe or in the US as an industry standard given the rampant cybercrime and the general state of affairs these days. We already have identity control on some areas, it's probably a matter of time elsewhere.
Over and out.
PS - users will still get compensation on double the days as the service was down, I'm a man of my word. I'll make personally sure this is known via e-mail later on Monday.
The fuck?
That's just a slip-up. I wouldn't call that serious. It's @alfatarsos not knowing how to track which user is abusing a NAT VPS despite the source port being reported that is a problem, but the bigger problem is their mentality that everyone on that VPS needs to get KYCed because, apparently, only bad people refuse KYC. Zed put it best in his highly-thanked comment:
I get it, you've experienced a lot of rude customers abusing your services, but you have all the information you need to find the real abuser without forcing KYC on everyone. Sure, you have the legal right to KYC any customer (just like we have the right to criticize your behavior, despite your claim that we do not), but your mentality that only an abuser would object to KYC is a huge slap in the face to people who value privacy. You're basically saying that all of us are abusers if we don't take a selfie for you to keep a cheap VPS, especially when KYC would do nothing here (it's supposed to be for AML compliance, not collective punishments or "if you have nothing to hide" mind games).
Now, if this was only a matter of KYC, people would grumble but that would be it. But that's not what this is. People aren't mad just because of the KYC. People don't like to be told "one of you stole a cookie, now line up and empty your bags! Anyone who refuses is clearly the thief!". For all your talk about respect, that's extremely disrespectful.
That is why people are mad, not simply because of KYC and not simply because you want to kick out abusers.
Most people really dislike KYC, because it means handing over their privacy to the other party. Even big companies like Google are very cautious about KYC, let alone a small company like yours. Requiring all users involved to undergo KYC just because of so-called abuse is obviously very unreasonable. By doing this, not only will you fail to catch those who are actually abusing the system, but you will also disappoint normal users who were using your product properly and cause them to lose confidence in you.
Additionally, you may feel comfortable and within your rights to slap a non-refundable tag on services then be unable to provide those services and laugh to yourself about how it's fine because see the fine print, but this is the internet and collectively we remember shitbags unsavory providers.
edit: i am enjoying the doubling-down though.
@alfatarsos - given the Dartnode reply, should nanovps us be back online now?
@alfatarsos You were pretty calm in your first statement, so I guess the chargeback fee hits your seller account pretty hard huh.
Where's the KYC instruction? It's been almost four days since the final update email and you explicitly mentioned that it will be emailed within 24-48 hours after the final update.
I see many of users are facing the same issue my vps has also been active but offline for over 24 hours with zero know why or updates from them and just ai bot if you need chat
We weren't hit with any chargeback fees whatsoever. It's called PayPal Seller Protection.
Regarding the KYC instructions, I will not produce any statements at this moment on one direction or the other, as there are some pending details yet following the changes from DartNode. What I can state is that if this can get solved without going to KYC, it will be solved without going to KYC, which will nevertheless still not prevent any users from getting suspended or terminated due to malicious action/intent.
But that was what I said all along: it's an exception, not the rule.
I've been checking that and just got what is causing the issue a couple of minutes ago - and will be sorted out as soon as possible.
KYC will not solve it either. It's still astounding that you think that you can find out who is behind the abuse by seeing who refuses to do KYC. That is the reason you are receiving so much criticism right now.
You have the source IP and source port. That is enough to find out who the abuser is on a NAT VPS. If you didn't do enough monitoring and don't have the information you need, consider it a learning experience and don't make the customers pay for your mistake, especially when the "solution" hurts both the abuser and innocent parties.
You clearly don't know how a NAT system works under libvirt and/or VirtFusion and that's all I'll be saying to you today, forest. Can't disclose more than that, but the idea you're spanning is deeply incorrect, to say the least.
KYC will solve if necessary and this company will still reserve due right to proceed with KYC, as explicitly allowed under the Terms and Conditions and Fair Usage Policy all users at the node explicitly accepted upon purchase. What is being attempted is not to proceed with it, there's a convenience and a certain reasonability to it if things go north, but that right is duly reserved and will be used if necessary.
Stating that KYC hurts is like hearing Nazareth saying love hurts. (Great song, by the way.)
Best regards and have a good night.
Then that's a VirtFusion issue. You shouldn't have chosen that product if it doesn't have the features you need and if you are unable to work around its limitations. If you think it's impossible to work around those limitations, I can suggest some decent (if a bit outdated) literature by Douglas Comer that will help you better understand TCP/IP.
Thank you for for reiterating the exact mentality that is leading to you being criticized. Not one person here claimed you didn't have the legal right to enforce KYC. And, let me remind you, it was you who claimed that people here don't have the right to criticize you the way we are doing when @yoursunny called out your actions.
So, in summary:
All of that is very easy to say - but not to do. You wouldn't even last three months as a hosting provider judging by what you are stating here.
Everything else is just a waste of time to answer and I won't bother with that - you are more interested in winning an argument than healthily debating whichever issue is at hand.
It's all very easy to write when you're not on the other side of things. Very, very easy. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Good night!
You're proving my point.
If everyone is hounding on you for your behavior, maybe you should step back and reflect that it might be a you problem.
Anyway, have a good night.
Blackmail?
In a sense, but his mindset is that only a bad person would refuse KYC. He thinks it's a way to "smoke out" bad behavior. So I think it's more ignorance than malice, Hanlon's razor and all that.
Aren't these the folks selling "lifetime" servers on OGF? For me, that tells me all I need to know about their business practices. Either KYC people when they buy your service or don't do it at all. Surprise KYC is a non-starter.
Requiring KYC to continue using the service is fine by me, Requiring it for a REFUND however is insane. Just give me back my money and let me go somewhere else.
Funny enough, the hosting providers I currently like and use never required KYC, while I ended up leaving all the ones I did KYC with for various reasons.
First of all, a "port scan detected from x.x.x.x" may have been caused by IP spoofing.
In this kind of attack, the perpetrator manipulates the "Source IP" field in the IP packet header to impersonate another party. As a result, security systems may initially log the victim's IP address as the attacker. However, Layer 3 itself does not provide a reliable way to verify the true identity of the sender. An attacker can easily forge raw packets by placing the victim's IP address in the packet header.
All attacks of this type share the same weakness: the attacker cannot complete the TCP three-way handshake or establish a genuine connection, because the replies will be sent to the spoofed victim IP rather than the real attacker.
Because of this, the victim's network devices, such as routers or firewalls, will often log a large number of unsolicited SYN/ACK packets. Since the victim never initiated those requests, the devices will simply drop the packets or respond with RST. This pattern — inbound SYN/ACK traffic without any corresponding outbound SYN requests — is strong evidence that the victim may have been framed through IP spoofing.
If the IDC provider or its staff had been able to log and identify this distinctive pattern, this incident might never have happened in the first place. This would allow IDC providers to back up their actions with evidence, while also giving users valid grounds to challenge false accusations.
Modern ISPs usually implement ingress filtering, which drops packets that originate from one network but claim to use the source IP address of another. However, failures and exceptions do happen.
I wont judge the KYC issue,because i totally cant understand why doing KYC for this.This confuses me so much that I have no idea what to say about it.
Thanks god I wasn't running any important stuff with this provider (despite having 5-6 vpses mostly idling most of the time). If someone can terminate your vps which has been with you for an year or two without even intimating and not giving an option to backup things, that doesn't gel well, whatever the issue could be. And on top of that, confidently telling that an email was sent regarding FUP issue even though I didn't find any such email in my mailbox and nothing in the panel itself, it feels like they just want idlers to buy their services and as soon as you will start using them for some serious work, a termination hammer will be around the corner.
Let me share my own timeline with these guys, because it exposes exactly how broken their system and their logic is.
I was looking for cheap NAT VPS deals on Server Hunter, saw their amazing pricing, and decided to test them out. I bought 1 US node and 1 Germany node, paying for 6 months upfront for both.
The Germany node was stable, but the US (Texas) node kept crashing constantly and required manual reboots. One day, it died completely. I couldn't even use the "kill" or "restart" functions in the panel—it was totally unresponsive. Thinking it was an issue on my end, I wanted to open a simple ticket just to request a manual reboot.
But guess what? There is no human support. I was immediately walled off by an AI bot that has absolutely zero authority to do anything.
I soon found out the issue wasn't me; the Texas nodes were completely down. Knowing that the US node was doomed, I decided not to wait for a miracle. I paid to upgrade my server to a much stronger Finland node (4GB RAM) and paid for 3 months upfront.
Since there is literally no ticket option in the panel, I sent them an email stating that my data on the US node wasn't important, I consent to full data loss, and I just want my new Finland node activated.
The response I got was an automated slap in the face:
"At the present moment, this e-mail is only for customers with ongoing topics... If you have new queries, access our Support Centre and click on 'My Tickets'."
So, the email tells me to go to the panel, and the panel blocks me and sends me to an AI bot. A perfect endless loop.
I decided to just wait it out. But the very next day, that infamous email dropped: "Mandatory KYC for everyone, or we terminate everything with NO refunds."
Here are the glaring logical and ethical holes in their operation:
The KYC Blackmail: I bought these servers specifically as NO-KYC. Imagine renting an apartment, signing the contract, and paying 6 months of rent upfront in cash. A month later, the landlord knocks on your door and says, "I'm installing cameras in every room. If you don't like it, get out, and I'm keeping your money." How is this legal or ethical?
Their Own "Support Rules" Are a Lie:
With my recent upgrade, I currently own two servers: one with 4GB RAM ($6.5/3mo) and one with 1GB RAM ($5.5/6mo). According to Tiago's recent "Support Adjustments" email, only plans below 896MB RAM are blocked from human support. I clearly meet the criteria for human support. Yet, I am still locked out, ignored, and forced to talk to an AI bot. They happily took my upgrade money, didn't activate the server, and cut off my communication.
Retroactive Terms of Service:
You sold these VPS packages with a support guarantee. You collected mass upfront payments based on that premise. Stripping away that right retroactively after pocketing our money is a blatant bait-and-switch.
Legal Obligations:
Every country has consumer protection laws regarding after-sales support. You are legally obligated to provide service continuity for the duration of the prepaid term, especially when the downtime is caused by your own infrastructure/upstream failures. Forget about fixing it immediately—you guys can't even provide a definitive update or a channel for us to talk to you about issues you caused.
If you don't want to provide support, refund the unused months and part ways. Holding our money hostage behind a sudden, retroactive KYC demand is just a scam with extra steps.